Father Pitt

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Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown

This was built as the Pittsburgh Hilton, which opened in 1959. William Tabler, the house architect for Hilton Hotels, designed the main building, which is a box of square windows. Originally the parts between the windows were gold-colored aluminum, but that was painted over to remove the last trace of anything exciting about the building.

In 2014, after years of delays and a change of ownership, a new lobby addition opened on the front of the building, designed by Stephen Barry of Architectural Design, Inc. In old Pa Pitt’s opinion, the addition does not belong on this building. It belongs on a much more interesting building. Here it looks like some sort of parasite attacking the main structure. Nothing about it matches the original building in shape or color, and it is too interesting not to draw attention to itself as something that does not belong here.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

August 13, 2024
Fun with Bricks in Coraopolis

A commercial block where someone had a lot of fun with bricks. The storefronts appear to have been updated at some point in the Moderne era.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

August 12, 2024
Warwick House, Squirrel Hill

Warwick House was built in 1910 for Howard Heinz, son of the ketchup king H. J. Heinz. The architects were Vrydaugh & Wolfe, who designed several other millionaires’ mansions around here, as well as a number of fine churches. The house now belongs to the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, and it is rented to Opus Dei for a dollar a year, under the condition that the tenants undertake the maintenance, which is enormous.

Once a year the residents throw a big open house, which gave us a chance to get a few pictures. We would have got more, but we were having too much fun.

A French door in the back leading out into the garden.

The rear of the ballroom, an addition built in about 1929. It is now a chapel.

An arbor with some splendid ironwork runs along the back of the garden.

From an earlier visit, we also have several pictures of the interior of Warwick House.

Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10. Most of the pictures are HDR stacks of three photographs at different exposures.

August 11, 2024
Sewickley Presbyterian Church

This is one of the few remaining churches designed by Joseph W. Kerr, who was one of our top architects in the middle 1800s (he also designed the Shields Chapel nearby in Edgeworth). It opened in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War.

In Father Pitt’s opinion, Mr. Kerr had good taste. Both this church and the Shields Chapel belong to the middle nineteenth century, but they were never embarrassingly out of date; to the last gasp of the Gothic style in America a hundred years later, an architect familiar with the idiom would have found this a pleasing and successful design.

It is fortunate that the congregation has the money to keep the glorious steeple in excellent shape…

…right up to the iron pinnacle at the top.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

August 11, 2024
Washington Square, Mount Lebanon

Since we saw the Washington Square apartments from the Florida Avenue side a few days ago, it would almost be neglectful to leave out the Washington Road face of the complex. It makes an attempt to fit into an urban streetscape by setting the high-rise apartment tower back from the street, with a low row of shops or offices in front along the sidewalk.

In Father Pitt’s opinion, the attempt is not entirely successful. The modernist style of the shops is uninviting in the most unfortunate sense: it is hard to tell how one is supposed to get into them. Is the entrance in front, or do we drive into a parking lot between them and enter from the lot? But wait—the drive between the shops is an exit only. Can we find the entrance? Should we find the entrance?

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

Because of the precipitous lot, the Washington Avenue side of the main building is shorter than the Florida Avenue side by several floors.

August 10, 2024
Chapel, Office, and Gatehouse at the Homewood Cemetery

Albert Spahr of MacClure & Spahr designed the chapel, the administration building, and the gatehouse for the Homewood Cemetery in a Perpendicular Gothic style. (Mr. MacClure had already died, but his name remained at the head of the firm.) The effect is to make us think of our ideal image of an English village.

The doors have impressive iron hinges and pulls.

Here is an extraordinarily rare thing: a tower clock that is keeping accurate time.

The administration building.

The gatehouse appears to have been expanded by a third on the right; the seam is only just visible in the front, but much more obvious in the rear.

Cameras: Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

August 10, 2024
Stone-and-Shingle Cottage in Dormont

Stone below and shingle above—a popular combination in the 1920s, but almost all such houses have had their shingles replaced with artificial siding. On this house in Dormont, however, the shingles remain. The roof and windows are newer replacements, but otherwise this house stands just about as it was originally built.

These pictures are very large; be careful on a metered connection.

Note how the basement garage door is carefully matched to the rest of the house.

August 9, 2024
St. Joseph’s Church, Coraopolis

William P. Hutchins was the architect of this church, built in 1924. It takes its inspiration from ancient Roman basilicas, with a light overlay of Art Nouveau. Most architectural historians would probably just say “Romanesque” and leave it at that, but it is a more interesting building when we recognize its ancient sources.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

August 9, 2024
Remnants of the Oil Industry in Moon Township

California’s gold and Pennsylvania’s oil were the two great booms of the 1800s. The Gold Rush gets all the glamorous stories, because gold is shiny and oil is dark and slimy. But oil made bigger fortunes. According to Wikipedia, oil production in Pennsylvania peaked in 1891. Well into the twentieth century, it was common to see oil derricks even in back yards in suburban towns. “Oil Wells in Moon Township” at the Moon Township Historical Society has some personal memories of the oil industry in Moon Township.

Robin Hill Park preserves some memories of the oil industry, which you can easily visit if you walk down the access road behind the Robin Hill mansion.

Some of the pictures in this article are enormous, with more than 20 megabytes of data if you enlarge them. Be careful on a metered connection. We are trying out a Samsung cell phone with a 50-megapixel camera. The results are okay. It will not replace good cameras, but it gives us more pixels to crop out in an emergency cell-phone picture.
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August 8, 2024
Washington Square Condominiums, Mount Lebanon

Composite of six photographs from a Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

Only because no one else would do it, here is a composite picture of the entire Florida Avenue face of this high-rise apartment block. In the fifteen minutes he devoted to the search, old Pa Pitt was not able to find evidence of the architect; but it has Tasso Katselas written all over it. (Update: Father Pitt confirmed this attribution by asking the architect himself, which is almost like cheating. Mr. Katselas tells us that it was a difficult project because the budget was very tight.)

We also have pictures of the Washington Road side of Washington Square.

August 8, 2024