Father Pitt

Tag: Alden & Harlow

  • Rowe’s Department Store, East Liberty

    The C. H. Rowe Co., Penn and Highland Avenues

    Here is a drawing of Rowe’s department store that was published in 1907, when East Liberty was booming as it became the business hub for rapidly developing East End neighborhoods. The building, put up in 1898, still looks much the same today, though it has been many years since it housed a department store. By choosing Alden & Harlow, the most prestigious firm in the city, as his architects, Mr. Rowe declared to East End residents that he would offer them as high a class of merchandise as they could find anywhere downtown.

    Rowe Building

    The drawing came from a lavishly illustrated book published in 1907 by the Pittsburg Board of Trade—a book that, oddly, has two titles: Up-Town: Greater Pittsburg’s Classic Section/East End: The World’s Most Beautiful Suburb. Here is what the book tells us about Rowe’s:

    C. H. ROWE CO.

    To the residents of the East End the department store of C. H. Rowe Company, at Penn and Highland avenues, is a household word. Little can be said of it which every woman and child does not already know, yet no history of the development of the East End would be complete without mention of this enterprising company.

    It was in 1898 that C. H. Rowe Co. began to relieve the residents of the East End of the necessity of going down town to meet any requirements they had in the matter of dress goods, undermuslins, white goods of every description, millinery, children’s outfittings, all that the feminine domestic economy required.

    Such enterprise as the firm of C. H. Rowe Co. has shown has naturally received a hearty response from the residents of the East End. The aim of this section of the city is to provide every want that its citizens require. So far as the dry goods business is concerned that is what this company has done.

    It takes a modern four-story establishment, with 58,000 square feet of floor space to accommodate the company’s stock of goods. It requires 125 persons in the dullest season to attend the wants of the customers of C. H. Rowe Company and many delivery wagons are employed in distributing the goods to such customers who prefer that accommodation.

    The directors of the company include Messrs. C. H. and W. H. Rowe, D. P. Black, H. P. Pears and J. H. McCrady. James S. Mackie is the general manager.

    It is little wonder with such attention to all the requirements of the East End public that C. H. Rowe Company’s store has become the veritable center of the East End trade, and that its growth is so much a matter of pride not only to the members of the firm but to the residents of the entire East Liberty community.

    More pictures of the Rowe’s or Penn-Highland Building.

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  • Rowe Building (Penn-Highland Building), East Liberty

    Rowe Building

    Built in 1898 for Rowe’s department store, this building has been called the Penn-Highland Building for years now. The architects were Alden & Harlow.

    Crest on the corner

    Lions stare back at you from all over the building.

    Lion ornament
    Rowe Building
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens.
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  • Garrison Foundry Administration Building, South Side

    Garrison Foundry Administration Building

    Longfellow, Alden & Harlow were the architects of this elegant little building in a simplified Renaissance style, which was finished in 1895. It does its best to convince us that the men who run the foundry are civilized people, in spite of the soot that surrounds them. The larger shop building behind it, built in 1901, was designed by Alden & Harlow, after the firm had decided to divide up the work, with Longfellow remaining in Boston and Alden & Harlow taking all the Pittsburgh jobs.

    Garrison Foundry buildings

    These buildings sat derelict and open to the weather for years, but have been cleaned up and put back together very neatly.

    Garrison Foundry Administration Building
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    Map.

  • Going Upstairs in the Library

    Looking up at the ceiling of the stairwell

    Just walking upstairs in the main Carnegie Library is an aesthetic adventure.

    Looking up past the light fixture
    Detail of the ceiling decorations
    Stairwell
    Light fixture
    Base of the light fixture
    Looking at the stairwell from the second-floor corridor
    Second-floor corrido

    The second-floor corridor. At the ends of the corridor are two cherub medallions, identical except for the motto.

    Omne labore

    Omne labore—“Everything with effort.”

    Vivere est cogitary
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    Vivere est cogitare—“To live is to think,” as Cicero said.

  • Standard Life Building

    Standard Life Building

    Built in 1903, this early skyscraper was designed by Alden & Harlow, who festooned it with terra cotta.

    Plaque: “Standard Life Building, 345”
    Fruity swag
    Entrance
    Terra cotta
    Standard Life Building
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • Byers-Lyons House, Allegheny West

    Byers-Lyons House
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    The Byers-Lyons house was built in 1898. It was designed by Alden & Harlow, Andrew Carnegie’s favorite architects, and it has fortunately been preserved by being turned to academic uses—it is now Byers Hall of the Community College of Allegheny County. It looked warm and inviting last night at sunset, so Father Pitt took quite a few pictures.

    Perspective view
    From the corner
    In sunset lights
    Byers Hall
    Iron filigree
    Iron portal
    Silhouetted iron filigree
    Ionic capital in iron
    Ionic capital
    Iron gatepost
    Arcade
    Rntrance porch
    Arcaded porch
    Entrance
    Dormers and chimneys
    Dormer and chimney
    Chimneys

  • Some Houses on Bigelow Boulevard, Schenley Farms

    Ledge House

    As we mentioned before, we are attempting to photograph every house in the residential part of Schenley Farms. Here is a big album of houses on Bigelow Boulevard, which becomes a residential street as it winds through the neighborhood. Above, Ledge House, the strikingly different home of A. A. Hamerschlag, the first director of Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University). It was designed by Henry Hornbostel, who designed the Carnegie Tech campus and taught at Carnegie Tech. It has recently been cleaned of a century’s worth of industrial soot and restored to its original appearance.

    Ledge House
    4107 Bigelow Boulevard

    Above and below, the D. Herbert Hostetter, Jr., house, architects Janssen and Abbott. Benno Janssen and his partner abstracted the salient details of the Tudor or “English half-timber” style and reduced it to the essentials, creating a richly Tudory design with no wasted lines.

    4107 Bigelow Boulevard

    Because we have so many pictures, we’ll put the rest below the metaphorical fold to avoid weighing down the front page here.

    (more…)

  • Carnegie Library, West End Branch

    Carnegie Library, West End branch

    This little library was the second of Carnegie’s branch libraries, after the one in Lawrenceville; like all the original branch libraries, it was designed by Alden & Harlow.

  • How to Improve a Design by Alden & Harlow

    Here is how the Land Trust Company building (later the Commercial National Bank) looked in 1905:

    Land Trust Company
    From Palmer’s Pictorial Pittsburgh.

    And here is how it looks today:

    Land Trust Company today

    Much better, isn’t it?

  • Carnegie Library, Hill District Branch

    Carnegie Library, Hill District Branch

    Another elegant little branch library by Alden & Harlow. Although the branch library moved a short distance away to a larger modern building, this one was fortunately taken over by a mosque and is therefore still loved and kept up.

    Oblique view