The Imperial station on the Montour Railroad has become, with much remodeling, the Findlay Township Activity Center, which residents can rent for (you probably guessed already) activities. A neat little red caboose sits beside the old railroad bed, which is now the Montour Trail.
On the southeast side of Voelkel Avenue in Dormont are three eye-catching apartment buildings. Since patterned brickwork was a favorite trick of Charles R. Geisler, the most prolific designer of apartment buildings in Dormont and Mount Lebanon, old Pa Pitt suspects he was responsible (but of course would be happy to be contradicted by someone with real information). The building above has kept its original art glass in the stairwell, but the front windows of the apartments have been replaced with modern picture windows.
This one has a different configuration of apartment windows, possibly more like the original. It has lost its art glass in the stairwell, however.
The entrance to the D’Alo, on the corner of Voelkel and Potomac Avenues.
Across the street are two smaller apartment buildings with a similar riot of patterned brick. We suspect Geisler has struck again.
The Montour Trail claims to be the nation’s longest suburban rail-trail. That is a matter of definition, of course: the trail connects to the Great Allegheny Passage, a rail-trail that goes through suburbs of at least three major cities—Pittsburgh, Cumberland, and Washington. But the Montour Trail is entirely within the Pittsburgh suburbs. It follows the path of the old Montour Railroad, which carried mostly coal until it finally gave up the ghost in the 1980s.
There are many short bridges along the trail, because it follows Montour Run for much of its length, and trains cannot afford to be as whimsical in their curves as small rivers often are.
This bridge is prominently dated in the concrete.
The Church of the Ascension, an obviously prosperous Anglican congregation in Shadyside, has just finished a new narthex and several other improvements. The architects were Rothschild Doyno Collaborative.
No lights are hid under bushels here.
The new entrance was meant to be “welcoming and transparent.” It does not attempt to imitate the style of William Halsey Wood’s original design for the church, but it does use similar stone, so that it seems to belong to the church.
The cornerstone is the only direct imitation: it is patterned after the original cornerstone of the church.
In Moon Township, Montour Run alternates between placid pools reflecting the forest around them and gentle burbling rapids.
In the terminology of Pittsburgh Regional Transit, Stevenson is a “stop” rather than a “station,” meaning that you board from the low-level door—the one old Pa Pitt calls the “Pittsburgh door”—and walk up three steps, whereas at a “station” you enter by one of the platform-level doors.
Founded as Montour City, Imperial was renamed for the mining company that founded it, the Imperial Coal Company. It is picturesque in its decay, and yet not decayed enough that it is not a pleasant town to live in. The buildings along the old Montour Railroad below, for example, are still in use by a construction contractor. The other two views are parts of the business district on Main Street, which has little business these days.
How old is your sidewalk? Quite possibly more than a century old. The spelling “Pittsburg” was federally official between 1891 and 1911, and though some institutions continued to use the shorter form after the spelling officially reverted to “Pittsburgh,” the lettering on this bronze plaque is very much a nineteenth-century style. The Pittsburgh Orbit site featured this plaque a few years ago in its roundup of sidewalk plaques; the editor there is of the opinion that the sidewalk could not be more than a century old, but old Pa Pitt is of the opinion that well-laid concrete is forever. Especially if you repair the segments that crumble too much.
Outsiders visiting Pittsburgh are often surprised to find that, when buildings are in the way, we just drive right through them. This is Henry Street, which goes through the Software Engineering Institute.
