In the shadows of the ever-encroaching university and hospital buildings, these tiny rowhouses still survive in a little alley in the back streets of Oakland.
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Alley Houses on Halket Place, Oakland
Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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Guastavino Tile Ceiling in a Back Alley
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. One of the hidden beauties of downtown Pittsburgh: you have to go back behind the Bell Telephone Building on Strawberry Way, a tiny alley, where you will find an unexpectedly elegant arcade. Look up and you discover the ceiling of Guastavino tile in subdued greenish shades—a gem hidden from everyone who refuses to go wandering in back alleys.
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Garrison Place
Garrison Place, formerly Garrison Alley, was part of the original Woods plan of downtown Pittsburgh. It was named for the adjacent Fort Fayette. Today it is a typical Pittsburgh alley—which is to say it is a very narrow passage but not called an alley, because Pittsburgh officially has no alleys. Above, looking southward across Penn Avenue toward Liberty Avenue. Below, looking northward, with Allegheny General Hospital in the distance.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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Exchange Way
Exchange Way is an ancient alley that has served the backs of buildings on Liberty Avenue and Penn Avenue for two centuries or more. It has never been completely continuous, and a two-block interruption caused the name of the stub of the alley that branched off Cecil Way to be forgotten, so that it was renamed Charette Way when the Pittsburgh Architectural Club opened a clubhouse with its entrance on the alley. But originally that alley was part of Exchange Way, too.
A good alley is a symphony of textures, and some of Father Pitt’s favorite pictures are black-and-white photographs of alleys.
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Dimling’s Ghost Sign on Exchange Way
Old Pa Pitt recommends wandering in back alleys as a hobby. You never know what you might find, from antique sculpture to ghost signs. Dimling’s hasn’t had a candy shop here for more than fifty years, but this sign still sits on the back of the building the shop once occupied, facing Exchange Way at the intersection with Tito Way.
When it was prospering, Dimling’s Liberty Avenue shop occupied two buildings and covered them with tiles that made the entire Liberty Avenue façade a giant billboard. The picture above is a detail of a much larger photograph taken by the Pittsburgh City Photographer in 1965: it may still be encumbered by copyright (although probably not, unless the copyright was renewed), but if the city of Pittsburgh wants a fee for using it Father Pitt can probably afford a quarter or so.
By the 1970s, the buildings were still a billboard for Dimling’s, but a photo from 1973 shows that the tenants were Arthur Treacher’s, an adult theater, and a massage parlor.
The wheel of history kept turning, however, and the restoration of Liberty Avenue brought these buildings back to respectable use. Peeling away the tiles revealed the old Victorian fronts, which have been lovingly restored and now make up part of the extraordinary Victorian streetscape of Liberty Avenue in the Cultural District.
Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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Allegheny General Hospital
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An Alley in Lawrenceville
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Garden Way looking eastward from Fisk Street.
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Alley in Lawrenceville
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Garden Way, looking eastward toward Children’s Hospital.
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Steeple of Third Presbyterian Church, Shadyside
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Seen from Ewers Way.
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Charette Way
This short alley no longer has a street sign, but it still appears on maps as Charette Way, which seems like a peculiar name for an alley.
From OpenStreetMap, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). A “charette” is a term well known to architects: it’s a session of intense work to meet a deadline. Supposedly it comes from the charrette or cart that used to come around to collect the drawings at the French architectural schools, with the students frantically putting the final touches on their work as the cart rumbled along. The magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club for many years was called The Charette.
In 1928, the Pittsburgh Architectural Club got itself club rooms with an entrance on the right-hand side of this tiny alley, and with the aid of some friends in government, Charles Stotz, the club president, managed to have the alley renamed “Charette Way.”
Kodak EasyShare Z981. From the January, 1929, issue of The Charette, we reprint the story of the name.
Charette Way—Number One
New Address of the Club Rooms of the P. A. C.
The passer-by will notice a new street sign marking the little alley leading off Cecil Place. To many the name will mean nothing more than another odd street name. To the few who recognize the French origin of the word it will seem to be quite appropriate with the store trucks constantly entering and leaving the picturesque little street, but for those interested in using the attractive doorway entering off the right side of the alley, the name “Charette Way” has considerable significance. It is a curious fact that the Architectural Club is not only in possession of an ideally central down-town location, but has also been able to christen the alley which it fronts. We direct the attention of the skeptics to the City Ordinance reproduced herewith. The prompt execution of this bit of business is due to the cooperation of Councilman W. Y. English, to whom the Club at its last meeting extended a unanimous vote of thanks.
AN ORDINANCE—Naming an Unnamed Way lying between Penn Avenue and Liberty Avenue and running from Fifth Avenue to The Rosenbaum property line, “Charette Way.”
SECTION 1. Be it ordained and enacted by the City of Pittsburgh, in Council assembled, and it is hereby ordained and enacted by the authority of the same. That an Unnamed Way lying between Penn Avenue and Liberty Avenue and running from Fifth Avenue to The Rosenbaum property line, be and the same is named “Charette Way.”
SECTION 2. That any Ordinance or part of Ordinance conflicting with the provisions of this ordinance be and the same is hereby repealed so are as the same affects this Ordinance.
