A field of native flowers in Robin Hill Park, Moon Township.
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Coraopolis Armory
This little armory was built in 1938. The striking design, stripped-down Art Deco or lightly Decoized modern, was by Thomas Roy Hinckley, about whom old Pa Pitt knows only that he designed this building, the single work attributed to him at archINFORM. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
The Gehryesque Nightmare
Yesterday we published this picture of Robin Hill—
—with a bit of a story about how the picture was made. It was stitched together from three separate photographs, but trying to do it automatically flummoxed the stitching software and, as Father Pitt said at the time, “produced a comical monstrosity reminiscent of Frank Gehry.”
In a comment, Von Hindenburg writes,
I think that I speak for many of your readers when I say that I’d like to see the Gehryesque nightmare as an example of the process that you go through to share these images.
How many of those readers do share that desire will never really be known, but old Pa Pitt is always happy to oblige even one of them.
These were the three original photographs:
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA 
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA 
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA This is what the Hugin software—which is normally very good at its job—did with them:
Father Pitt then tried the experiment of putting together only the left and center photographs, which worked perfectly. But trying to add that combined picture to the third one made a different but equally comical mess. The only thing to do was to put in the control points—points of identity between the pictures—by hand. Normally Father Pitt would just give up before doing that, but he was feeling stubborn, and he thought he might get a picture he liked.
Now you know a little about how old Pa Pitt normally does otherwise impossibly wide-angled pictures of buildings. Usually it is a matter of pressing a couple of buttons and letting the machine do the work, then tweaking the results. Once in a while, though, it involves what almost feels like honest labor, which is against our usual principles, but may be indulged in on rare occasions.
One response
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Some Houses on Washington Road, Mount Lebanon
Four houses at the southern end of the Uptown business district in Mount Lebanon. First is what we might call a center-hall foursquare—the basic foursquare design, but widened to place the reception hall in the center and add a library or second parlor to one side.
It is fairly unusual to find a brick-and-shingle house with the wood shingles still intact, even in a rich neighborhood. Here is one with its original roof, its original shingles, and either its original shutters or good replacements.
Here is a kind of Tudor or English Manor design with a very vertical idea of half-timbering.
Finally, a house of a later generation, probably the late 1920s. Father Pitt does not know the architect, but the second-floor oriel in a front-facing gable was a favorite device of Lamont Button.
One response
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Garden Face of Robin Hill, Moon Township
Composite of three photographs from a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6. Old Pa Pitt had intended to place this picture with the rest of the pictures of Robin Hill the other day, but his automatic stitching software failed him. He had been reasonably careful in taking the three photographs so that they would line up nearly perfectly, but the stitching software produced a comical monstrosity reminiscent of Frank Gehry. What went wrong? Only because Father Pitt was stubborn enough to edit the “control points” himself—“control points” being identical features marked in two pictures, so that the software knows how to align them properly—did he discover the problem. The parade of identical windows was too much for the program. The extreme symmetry caused it to identify this window as the same as that window, which caused the whole building to collapse in a heap.
So old Pa Pitt stubbornly picked out all the control points himself, and produced a nearly perfect rendering of the garden side of the mansion. Stubbornness is a character flaw, but it has its uses.
One response
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Southminster Presbyterian Church, Mount Lebanon
Two grand Presbyterian churches stand at the two ends of Uptown Mount Lebanon. But they are different kinds of Presbyterians. The one to the north was the United Presbyterian church, but it has now become Evangelical Presbyterian. This one is now Presbyterian Church (USA).
“In these days of mergers,” James Macqueen (himself one of our notable architects) wrote in the Charette in 1930, “one wonders why theological differences stood in the way of unity, and that these Presbyterians did not build one great building in this community instead of two with their attendant extra overhead involved. However, both of these two churches are worthy of a visit, as they show the great advance that has been made in Church work during the past few years…”
Southminster was designed by Thomas Pringle and built in 1928.
These quatrefoil ornaments at the top of the tower can be properly appreciated with a very long lens.
The office and education wing is done in a complementary Jacobean style. The arcade makes both a visual and a practical link to the main church.
Appropriately for a building dedicated to Christian education, the Reformation slogan VDMA—Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum (“The word of God endureth for ever,” 1 Peter 1:25)—is engraved in an open book.
We have more pictures of Southminster Presbyterian from a couple of years ago.
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Tasselflowers
Common weeds in more tropical climes, these flowers are valued here for their hot, bright colors. They resemble our common hawkweeds and were once classified in the same genus, but are now put in the genus Emilia. Sorting out the species is more than poor old Pa Pitt can handle.
Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6. -
Two Moderne Apartment Buildings in Mount Lebanon
On Florida Avenue, a street that runs behind the Uptown business district in Mount Lebanon, two apartment buildings in a toned-down version of Moderne streamlining face each other. The most striking feature of number 666 is the stairwell set into a tall groove with a two-floor window of glass blocks.
The decorative brickwork at the corners suggests quoins, but in a modernistic manner.
Across the street is a pair of identical buildings with less streamlining and no abstract quoins.
Both buildings would probably have had windows with more character when they were new.
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Robin Hill, Moon Township
Robin Hill was designed for Francis and Mary Nimick by Henry Gilchrist. He gave them a classic Georgian country house, and, like many country houses, it is really meant to be enjoyed from the garden side.
The house was built in 1926, and for nearly half a century the Nimicks enjoyed it. When Mary died in 1971, she willed the whole estate to the township to be preserved as a park.
The front of the house presents a dignified appearance to the visitor.
Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000; Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.
