Since old Pa Pitt has made it a rule to record all the names on every war memorial he photographs, this picture is huge—about 50 megapixels. If you enlarge it, all the names should be legible, from Abbott to Zorn.
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Soho Public Baths
Built in 1907–1908, this splendid bathhouse was designed by Carpenter & Crocker,1 who did the whole ground-floor front in terra cotta.
This bathhouse served Soho, once a crowded neighborhood of tiny houses, many without indoor plumbing; long lines would form on Saturday nights as the working classes took their one chance to get clean. Almost all the houses are gone, and most of the other buildings, leaving overgrown foundations; this stretch of Fifth Avenue is spookily deserted. Even the neighborhood has ceased to exist in Pittsburghers’ imaginations. Soho once referred to the area around the north end of today’s Birmingham Bridge, but there is no such place now on city planning maps. What used to be Soho is divided officially between “Bluff,” “West Oakland,” and “South Oakland.” Soho is generally mentioned only when Andy Warhol comes up, because he was born there; but if you ask where Soho was, Wikipedia will tell you it is a synonym for Uptown, which it will also tell you is the same as the Bluff. (In fact the house where Andy Warhol was born, now a patch of woods on a deserted street, is in the part designated West Oakland by the city.)
This building was in use more recently than most, but it, too, has been left to rot. It is one of only three or four standing public baths in the city, only one of which—the Oliver Bathhouse—is still serving its original purpose.
Old Pa Pitt painted out the close-up graffiti in this picture, because they were distracting, and because if street gangs want to advertise on his site, they can pay for it.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
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Clark High School, Scott Township
Just outside Carnegie on Washington Avenue, this school opened in the fall of 1935. It was designed in a bracingly modern style by Mount Lebanon architect J. Lawrence Hopp, who designed a number of other schools in nearby suburbs. It has been an office building for quite a while now, but the alterations to the exterior have not been severe, as we can see from a 1950 photograph of students trying their hands at rescue techniques.
Photo by Post-Gazette photographer Paul Slantis, from Historic Pittsburgh (go there to see it in full resolution). A certain number of students were probably lost every time these drills were performed, but that is the price we pay for preparedness.
Some history of the building and all the yearbooks are at the Chartiers Valley Historical Society page on Clark High School.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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Engine Company No. 8 and East End Police Station, East Liberty
City architect Richard Neff designed this palace of public safety in the style old Pa Pitt likes to call American Fascist, which combines classical detailing with an Art Deco sensibility. It is currently getting a thorough renovation.
It’s Construction Safety Week! But don’t worry. You still have fifty-one weeks in the year to be careless.
Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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Cast-Iron Front on Wood Street
A well-preserved cast-iron front, though the building has lost its hat. Father Pitt would probably paint it a different color.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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Telephone Exchange, East Liberty
Inside the building was a mass of wires and electrical equipment and operators’ switchboards. But the Bell Telephone Company insisted that the outside of every telephone exchange must be an ornament to the neighborhood. They were all Renaissance palaces like this until the 1930s, and it is likely that they all came from the same architectural office—namely, the office of James Windrim, who also designed the 1923 Bell Telephone Building downtown. After Windrim, Press C. Dowler took over as the Bell company’s court architect, and the style changed to refined Art Deco.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens.
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St. Mary’s Church and Lyceum, Lawrenceville
Dedicated in 1873, this church for an Irish parish was designed by James Sylvester Devlin, about whom old Pa Pitt knows only that he designed this church. It has closed as a parish, and when Pittsburgh Catholics leave a church they take everything distinctive and valuable with them, so that, for example, all the stained glass is gone. But the building is still in good shape.
A good summary of the history of the church is in James Wudarczyk’s Faith of Our Fathers: Religion in Lawrenceville.
Clear glass reveals that there is still at least part of an organ in the building.
For hardware connoisseurs, a door pull on one of the side entrances.
The altar end of the church.
Behind the church is the Lyceum, built in 1914.
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Dormont Methodist Episcopal Church
Built in 1920 in an angular modern-Gothic style, this church served its original congregation until 2013, the year of the great collapse of Dormont mainline churches, when the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Baptists all threw in the towel. The building became a Buddhist temple for a while (the Buddhists gave it the current paint scheme), but it seems not to be active right now. It is, however, kept up well.
Thanks to the Gazette Times of September 13, 1920, we have a picture of Bishop McConnell of the M. E. Church laying laying “a copy of the Gazette Times containing announcement of the corner stone laying, coins of the present day, a list of trustees and a list of members of the Dormont and Banksville churches, recently combined” in the cornerstone.
This cornerstone is a top contender for the coveted title of Most Awkward Word Break on a Stone Inscription Outside a Country Graveyard.
It seems that another capsule was laid in 2009, four years before the church dissolved.
None of the news stories we found mentioned an architect, but we hope to find a name eventually.
Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6; Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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Marine Bank Building
Built in 1890, this rich feast of stonework was designed by Frederick Osterling in his Richardsonian Romanesque phase.
The carved ornaments are by Achille Giammartini, including old Pa Pitt’s favorite gargoyle in the city.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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