A street of Georgian rowhouses, all in identical red brick, is a beautiful sight. But there is something jazzy and invigorating about the endless variety of textures in the back streets of the South Side, even if individually some of the artificial sidings people applied to their houses in the twentieth century were never very attractive. The textures are probably best appreciated in black and white, so old Pa Pitt stuck some monochromatic film in his Retinette and went for a walk around the block.
Benjamin Henry Latrobe, much more famous for his work on the United States Capitol, was Pittsburgh’s first resident professional architect. This is his only remaining work here, and the only original 1814 building left from the Allegheny Arsenal.
This plaque was originally on the gatehouse to the Arsenal grounds.
A memorial put up by the Daughters of 1812 appears to have had a bronze relief, probably stolen many years ago.
The Arsenal is most famous in history for exploding during the Civil War, killing dozens of the workers, many of whom were children. We note that the building where the powder was stored did not explode—an indication, perhaps, that the architect knew his business.
DESIGNED BY BENJAMIN H. LATROBE; BUILT BY CAPTAIN ABRAM R. WOOLLEY ON LAND PURCHASED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM WILLIAM B. FOSTER. SERVED AS AMMUNITION PRODUCTION CENTER DURING INDIAN, MEXICAN AND CIVIL WARS. THIS TABLET COMMEMORATES AT LEAST 79 CIVILIAN WORKERS—MEN, WOMEN AND MANY CHILDREN—KILLED IN THREE MYSTERIOUS EXPLOSIONS, SEPTEMBER 17, 1862.
Old Pa Pitt would add that the explosions were not as mysterious as all that. It was an arsenal. The place was devoted to manufacturing things that explode, using explosive materials. Everyone knew that Dupont & Co. had been supplying powder in leaky barrels, probably reused in spite of the specific requirement not to reuse them. Everyone knew there was explosive stuff dusting the ground here and there. The only mystery was which of several possible causes set off the first spark, and that mystery will probably never be solved.
The remains of the dead were buried in a mass grave in Allegheny Cemetery, where an expensive marble memorial was put up. The marble eroded into illegibility by the 1920s, and it was replaced with a new monument with a bronze plaque that will last a few more centuries if it is not stolen and melted down.
Today the powder magazine sits in the middle of a pleasant urban oasis called Arsenal Park. Instead of explosive materials, it has rest rooms.
The current building is only a century old, but the congregation of Montours Church—also spelled Montour’s or Montour, depending on where you look—was founded in 1778, and the adjoining cemetery is full of Revolutionary War veterans.
A modern chapel built in 1978 is as tall as it is long, with a striking window at the far end.
A bell cast in Cincinnati in 1888 sits beside the church; it probably came from the older building that the 1924 church replaced.
Designed by Washington (D. C.) architect Philip Morison Jullien, the Fairfax was one of the grandest apartment houses in Pittsburgh when it opened in 1927. It certainly isn’t our biggest apartment building now, but it still makes a strong impression as you walk past on Fifth Avenue.
A fairly large building for the little town of Imperial. The depth of the building and the blankness of the ground floor make old Pa Pitt wonder whether it was used as a theater.
“Penn Main” is the name Pittsburghers give to the district around the intersection of Penn Avenue and Main Street, which (this being Pittsburgh) is not the main street of anything. On city planning maps, Penn Avenue is the border between Lawrenceville and Bloomfield; and since the sun was shining on the Lawrenceville side when we visited, all these buildings are counted as being in Lawrenceville for planning purposes. We begin above with a nicely preserved example of a typical small Victorian store with apartment above.
Penn Avenue and Main Street do not meet at a right angle, so the buildings on the corner are forced into odd shapes. The one above deals with its acute angle by blunting the point of it. The one below (seen in a picture from two years ago) has a less offensive obtuse angle to deal with.
The Second Empire style in its Pittsburgh incarnation is common in this section of the city. Little incised designs often decorate the lintels.
This building would have matched its neighbor originally, but at some point the storefront was filled in to make an apartment. Now that Penn Main is becoming a desirable neighborhood, the alteration might be reversed.
Two quite different houses. The one on the left is a duplex, though it may have been built as a single-family house. The one on the right is a kind of lean-to parasite on its larger neighbor, uncharacteristically set back from the street so that it has a front yard and a porch, as if someone was trying to create a little country house in the city.
This picture only: Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
This one is getting a going-over. Father Pitt would prefer to see more original-looking windows, but at least the size of the windows has not been altered, and any future owner who feels motivated will be able to replace them with proper double-hung two-over-two sash windows.
These are all pictures taken directly from the camera without any processing—as close to unmediated natural beauty as photography can give you. They were taken in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, and near the Montour Trail, Moon Township.
