Father Pitt

Tag: Antebellum Remains

  • Fulton Bell Foundry

    120 Boulevard of the Allies

    This building seems to date from before the Civil War, possibly the 1850s. It was designed in the very free interpretation of Italian Renaissance that was popular at the time; later architects would have studied their historical precedents more closely, and later architects than those would have repudiated historical precedent altogether.

    The building originally belonged to the Fulton Bell Foundry, which made bells for decades in downtown Pittsburgh. It’s a remnant of Victorian Second Avenue. All the remnants of Second Avenue downtown are on the south side of the Boulevard of the Allies; the street was widened in the 1920s by tearing out the buildings on the north side.

    Lintels

    The well-preserved carved stone lintels have been lovingly cleaned.

    Fulton Foundry
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  • The Largest Antebellum Building Downtown (Probably)

    2 Market Square

    This building was probably put up shortly after the Great Fire of 1845, to judge from the fact that it appears in an engraving of the Diamond as it was before 1852. Few buildings from before the Civil War are left downtown, and this is almost certainly the largest.

    View of the Diamond before 1852
    “Old Pittsburgh Court House and Market. Taken down 1852.” Source: Allegheny County: Its Early History and Subsequent Development. By Rev. A. A. Lambing, LL. D., and Hon. J. W. F. White. Pittsburgh: Snowden & Peterson, 1888.

    The building in the engraving is not quite the right dimensions, but the engraver (at the firm of John C. Bragdon, Pittsburgh’s busiest engravers) was probably working from hasty sketches.

    Note the volutes and incised decorations in the lintels over the windows, bringing the building up to date with the latest trends in Greek Revival style.

    Window
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