Perched on the side of a steep hill, this tiny schoolhouse was built in 1874.1 After Allegheny was conquered by Pittsburgh, this was known as the Milroy School (after Milroy Street, which passes on the right side of the school). After it closed as a school in 1938, it was used as community center called Milroy House, and then a preschool; and now it is abandoned and waiting for its next life.
The school appears to have had three classrooms: left, right, and rear.
A picture taken in 1923, when the building was already half a century old, shows how the school looked with its belfry and its real windows.
St. Henry Church has been abandoned for years, and it is slowly rotting away. Yet the neighborhood still remembers it as a point of pride: when Father Pitt was taking pictures along Arlington Avenue the other day, some locals stopped to talk and immediately asked, “Did you see our church?”
And, of course, our utility cables.
St. Henry was designed by Marlier & Johnstone and built in 1952, when the neighborhood was thriving.
Each of those squares had a symbolic relief at its center, with a big metal cross in the middle of the façade. Those have all been taken away, because when Catholics abandon a building, they generally preserve whatever is unique and valuable about it and place it in another parish if possible. It does leave the building looking stripped, but we can understand the impulse.
The entrance is sharply drawn in a style that flavors modern with just a bit of late Art Deco.
An abstract cross-topped cupola.
An exhibition of utility cables.
The rectory is older than the church; it is hard to guess the age of it, and it has been added to in various eras and various styles.
The school next to the church has been abandoned twice. It was a public primary school for a while after the parochial school closed, but the public school closed a few years ago.
Homewood is prospering now more than it has done in decades, but there are still many forgotten corners. This house, in the part of Homewood traditionally called Brushton, has been abandoned and forgotten for a very long time, though the other houses on the street are inhabited and well kept. Because it has been left alone for decades, it preserves details of crumbling shingle and woodwork that have been replaced on all its neighbors. It appears to have been built in the 1890s for J. M. Gruber, and it is a good example of how the Queen Anne style filtered down to the middle classes.
Even though it is on the grounds of a parish that is still open, with a school that is still open, this glorious Second Empire building is abandoned and crumbling, with scraggly Trees of Heaven—the badge of abandonment—taking root all around it. In its current state it looks like a drawing by Charles Addams.
The far end of Manchester still has some work to do. A few houses have been restored; about an equal number are abandoned and condemned. A few have been restored, and then abandoned and condemned. A few have been renovated in a way that seems regrettable. We can only hope that someone will rescue the houses that need rescuing.
It is always especially sad when we see that the last thing residents were able to do to their house was decorate it for Christmas.
Here we have a frame house refurbished to be habitable and comfortable. “Multipane” windows were used, of course, because is there any other kind? (Old Pa Pitt was shocked to visit a house with modern “multipane” windows and discover that the “panes” are really just cartoon lines drawn in plastic across a single sheet of glass.)
This house suffered a fire years ago and appears to have been abandoned since then. At least some minimal work has been done to stabilize it. The dormer is distinctive; it would have been more so with its original decorative woodwork.
We find some of the houses in better shape as we approach the western end of the street.
This building seems to have been put up for Allen Kirkpatrick & Co., but for years it was the home of the Pittsburgh Tag Co., as this ghost sign tells us. It has been vacant for some time.
Pittsburgh, Pa.—The Pittsburgh Tag Company, care of Charles F. C. Arensberg, 834 Amberson street, Pittsburgh, recently organized with a capital of $50,000, plans the operation of a local plant for the manufacture of paper tags and kindred specialties. Mr. Arensberg will be treasurer of the new company; James M. Graham and Jonathan S. Green will be directors.
Old Pa Pitt knew absolutely nothing earlier this morning about the C. S. Hixson Candy Company, but neither does the rest of the Internet. This article, therefore, immediately becomes the Internet’s leading and only source of information on the subject.
The building was put up in 1917, to judge by listings in the American Contractor. Excavations had begun by April 28:
Factory: $25,000. 4 sty. 59×96. Adams & Fulton sts, Priv. plans. Owner C. S. Hixson Candy Co., 1024 Vickroy st. Gen. Contr. C. E. Murphy & Sons, 516 Federal st. Carp. & conc. work by gen, contr. Brk. mas, to C. B. Lovatt, 1203 Federal st. Plmg, to Walter Gangloff, 2471 Perrysvilie av. Excav.
The company, however, did not prosper long. Its charter as a Delaware corporation was repealed in 1921 for failure to pay taxes. In 1926, The International Confectioner reported that “There will be a meeting of the stockholders of the C. S. Hixson Candy Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., Jan. 17, to consider the question of selling or leasing the business, or to liquidate it and close up.”
And there you have everything Father Pitt was able to find out in twenty minutes, which is twenty minutes more than anyone else on the Internet has ever devoted to the subject.
This old industrial building is tumbling to bits, and if the neighborhood were more valuable it would have been gone years ago. It is not a work of outstanding architecture; the construction listings specified “private plans,” which probably means “We can do without an architect.” The borders of the Manchester Historic District were carefully drawn to exclude it while including the modest Italianate houses next to it. The work going on at the top may be part of a demolition; at any rate, the cornice was intact a few years ago. But it is an interesting little bit of history, and it preserves a record of its original owner on the eastern face of the building.
The old painted sign is still visible, and nearly legible with the help of some heavy manipulation. This is what it appears to say:
C. S. HIXSON CANDY CO. MANUFACTURES [sic] OF HIGH GRADE CHOCOLATES
Appeals having been exhausted, this row of buildings on Market Street at First Avenue is scheduled to be demolished soon. They are not works of extraordinary architectural merit, but it will be a small urban tragedy to lose them. This block of Market Street was one of the few streets left downtown with human-sized old buildings on both sides of the street. This was the Pittsburgh of the Civil War era, not only before skyscrapers but also before the grand six-storey commercial palaces that came before skyscrapers.
The old Lowman-Shields Rubber Building is also condemned, having sat derelict for two decades or more. This Rundbogenstil warehouse is in very close to its original state externally, including the ghosts of old painted signs on the ground floor, probably dating from before the Lowman-Shields Rubber Company owned the building.
It seems certain that this building, formerly the girls’ school for St. Michael’s parish, will be demolished sooner or later; what has saved it so far is the expense of demolishing a large building in a neighborhood with low property values. But the South Side Slopes, like many city neighborhoods, have become much more valuable lately.
Right now, the building appears to house a whole alternate civilization of “homeless” squatters. In an ideal city, perhaps, it could continue to do so, but with a city budget for maintaining it and providing the elementary comforts to the residents. We do not live in that ideal city.
At any rate, it seemed worth stopping to record a few details of the building before it disappears entirely, and another piece of Pittsburgh’s rich German history is gone. We also have a few pictures from a year and a half ago, including a composite view of the front.
Most recently the Homewood Church of God, this building seems to be vacant right now; and although Homewood is prospering more than it has done in decades, it is not likely that this church can be saved. It was built in 1905, and renovated enough in 1961 to merit a new cornerstone.
Addendum: The architects were Struthers & Hannah. Source: American Architect and Building News, June 24, 1903, p. xv. “Architects Struthers & Hannah let the contract to Frank H. Fulmer for the Hamilton Avenue United Presbyterian Church to be erected at Idlewild St. and Homewood Ave. Cost $40,000.”
