-
Coraopolis Junior High School
Edward Stotz, who also designed Fifth Avenue High School and Schenley High School (the country’s first million-dollar high school), was the architect of this staid and respectable school, now turned into apartments.
The inscription over the door was hand-painted by someone with a distinctive idea of quotation marks.
Kodak EasyShare Z981. 
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
Mellon Hall, Duquesne University
Composite of four photographs from the Fujifilm FinePix HS10. Built in 1968, this is the only design in Pittsburgh by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; it was one of his last works. (The IBM Building at Allegheny Center was designed by Mies’ firm after Mies died.) This is a composite of four long-telephoto photographs taken from the back streets of the South Side across the Monongahela River. At full magnification, atmospheric distortion makes the straight lines slightly wavy.
We also have some closer pictures of Mellon Hall.
-
A Gift from Henry Phipps
When Phipps Conservatory opened in 1893, Henry Phipps donated this statue, which has has sat in the Palm House ever since.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
Mother of Sorrows Church, Norwood
Mother of Sorrows Church was sold to a nondenominational congregation some time ago, and when Father Pitt took these pictures some maintenance work was being done, so we hope the building will stand for a long time to come. But old Pa Pitt misses the original parish for one very selfish reason: every year it had a festival, and every year it advertised the festival with banners stretched across Island Avenue at the bottom of the hill proclaiming in big, cheery letters, “MOTHER OF SORROWS FESTIVAL!” If Father Pitt had known the parish was closing, he would have bought those banners and donated them to the History Center.
Note the round apse in the rear.
The rectory was built from matching Kittanning brick; a later extension just about doubled the size of it.
The rectory was connected to the church by this little infill decorated with patterned brickwork.
The tower terminates in a cross-topped dome teetering on the brink of Art Deco.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
Highland Building, East Liberty
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. This picture is more than 13 megabytes if you enlarge it; be careful on a metered connection. Designed by Daniel Burnham, this is the only skyscraper left in East Liberty; another one, designed by Frederick Osterling, was demolished decades ago when the neighborhood’s fortunes were sinking. Now the neighborhood is once again bustling, and the Highland Building, after years of abandonment, is beautifully restored.
-
900 South Negley Avenue, Shadyside
Old Pa Pitt knows nothing about this apartment building, and it is probably not one of the masterpieces of modernism. But it was different enough from the ordinary brick boxes to be worth a couple of quick pictures with the phone camera. It was probably not worth the effort Father Pitt later put into adjusting the perspective of the picture above by slicing it down the corner and adjusting it on two planes, but the “violent perspective” (as photography critics used to call it) of the wide-angle lens on the phone offended him.
Enlarge the picture and you can see that one of the corner apartments is infested with plastic coyotes.
An abstract pattern of shaped glass blocks over the entrance creates interesting patterns of light inside.
-
Front Door of the B. F. Jones House, Allegheny West
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. Steel baron B. F. Jones’ front doorway is a feast of elaborate terra cotta. This is a very large picture: enlarge it to appreciate the details of the terra cotta and ironwork.
-
St. Francis de Sales School, McKees Rocks
This composite picture is big; enlarge it to appreciate the variety of classical ornament. Unlike the adjacent church, St. Francis de Sales School found a new use when it closed, and it is still maintained. The alterations were heavy and unsympathetic, but we can still see enough of the original design to imagine the rest. The original part of the school was built in 1909; it appears to have been expanded later. This is the Margaret Street end, with the original inscription.
This end of the school appears to be a later expansion.
The open belfry in this entrance tower, and the entrance below it, suggest some Art Nouveau influence.
Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
