This phone-camera picture is soupy with noise reduction if you enlarge it, but it gives us a good idea of how the Flash Gordon glass-block window in the stairwell looks at night.
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The President Apartments, Shadyside
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The Negley, Shadyside
The Negley was probably built in about 1909; the architects were the firm of Janssen & Abbott. Some of the original details have vanished over the years, but Benno Janssen’s spare version of Georgian style still leaves an impression of dignity and elegance.
An unusual choice: the doorway frames are cast iron.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. -
Two Apartment Building on Potomac Avenue, Dormont
One of these two apartment buildings was almost certainly designed by architect Charles Geisler for the developer Oscar Larson, and old Pa Pitt is inclined to think that both of them are Geisler’s work. Charles Geisler lived nearby in Beechview, and Dormont and Mount Lebanon are peppered with buildings he designed. These fit his style—patterned brickwork and bracketed overhangs being two of his favorite tricks.
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. These were the first pictures Father Pitt took to test the 50-megapixel phone camera, so they’re a little unsophisticated. But they’re big. -
Washington Square, Mount Lebanon
Since we saw the Washington Square apartments from the Florida Avenue side a few days ago, it would almost be neglectful to leave out the Washington Road face of the complex. It makes an attempt to fit into an urban streetscape by setting the high-rise apartment tower back from the street, with a low row of shops or offices in front along the sidewalk.
In Father Pitt’s opinion, the attempt is not entirely successful. The modernist style of the shops is uninviting in the most unfortunate sense: it is hard to tell how one is supposed to get into them. Is the entrance in front, or do we drive into a parking lot between them and enter from the lot? But wait—the drive between the shops is an exit only. Can we find the entrance? Should we find the entrance?
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Because of the precipitous lot, the Washington Avenue side of the main building is shorter than the Florida Avenue side by several floors.
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Washington Square Condominiums, Mount Lebanon
Composite of six photographs from a Kodak EasyShare Z1285. Only because no one else would do it, here is a composite picture of the entire Florida Avenue face of this high-rise apartment block. In the fifteen minutes he devoted to the search, old Pa Pitt was not able to find evidence of the architect; but it has Tasso Katselas written all over it. (Update: Father Pitt confirmed this attribution by asking the architect himself, which is almost like cheating. Mr. Katselas tells us that it was a difficult project because the budget was very tight.)
We also have pictures of the Washington Road side of Washington Square.
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Two Moderne Apartment Buildings in Mount Lebanon
On Florida Avenue, a street that runs behind the Uptown business district in Mount Lebanon, two apartment buildings in a toned-down version of Moderne streamlining face each other. The most striking feature of number 666 is the stairwell set into a tall groove with a two-floor window of glass blocks.
The decorative brickwork at the corners suggests quoins, but in a modernistic manner.
Across the street is a pair of identical buildings with less streamlining and no abstract quoins.
Both buildings would probably have had windows with more character when they were new.
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Apartment Buildings on Academy Avenue
Academy Avenue in Mount Lebanon has a mixture of single-family homes and small to medium-sized apartment buildings. We have seen some of the apartment buildings before; here are a few more.
We saw the building above once before; here it is in a different light at a different time of year. The architect was probably Charles Geisler, and buildings in variations of this same basic plan are all over Mount Lebanon and Dormont.
This is a tidy double duplex in very close to original condition. The little details make all the difference in its appearance: the tile roof overhangs, the proper windows for the era, and the little German-art-magazine ornaments in the brickwork.
Cameras: Nikon COOLPIX P100, Kodak EasyShare Z1285.
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Cornell Gardens, Mount Lebanon
Charles Geisler designed numerous apartment buildings in Mount Lebanon, Dormont, and Squirrel Hill, among other places. This one he also owned, at least when it first went up.
A picture of the building when it was new in 1929 (taken from a blurry microfilm copy of the Pittsburgh Press) shows us what has changed: the roof overhangs, some of which have been removed, were originally tile; the roof was flat (replaced now with a hipped roof, doubtless to solve persistent leaking problems); and the apartment windows matched the ones in the central stairwell.
The entrance and stairwell are the least-changed parts of the building, and we can see how Geisler used tastefully simple arrangements of brick and tile to create apparent ornamental richness.
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The Royalton, Mount Lebanon
Le Corbusier introduced the world to the idea of the cruciform apartment building. He regarded the form as so perfect, in fact, that he proposed demolishing Paris and replacing it with a sea of cross-shaped towers.
In Pittsburgh, cruciform buildings were a bit of a fad in the late 1940s and early 1950s, probably encouraged by the national attention lavished on Gateway Center. They do have certain advantages. A cross-shaped building can give every apartment cross-ventilation and a view of open spaces, while still putting quite a bit of building on a small lot.
Tennyson and Van Wart were among the architects who picked up on the idea. Alfred Tennyson was a Mount Lebanon architect who would continue with a very prosperous career in the second half of the twentieth century. John Van Wart, as half of the partnership of Van Wart & Wein, had been responsible for some big projects in New York in the 1920s and early 1930s; in the middle 1930s, he moved to Pittsburgh to work for Westinghouse, and then formed a promising partnership with Tennyson. His unexpected death in 1950, probably while this building was under construction, put an end to the partnership, and Tennyson went on alone.
The style is typical postwar modernism, but not pure modernism. A few little decorative details, like the subtle quoins, give the modernism a slight Georgian flavor.
The scalloped woodwork, if it is not a later addition, must have been one of those details added to persuade prospective tenants that this building was, after all, respectably Colonial enough not to embarrass them.
As with many Pittsburgh buildings, the question of how many floors this one has is a complicated one. The answer varies between three and six, depending on how you look at it.
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The Berkshire, Mount Lebanon
We have seen the Berkshire before, but those pictures weren’t very good, so old Pa Pitt went back and got better ones. It’s a courtyard apartment building in the Mount Lebanon Historic District; as Father Pitt said the first time he visited, this building is in a simple but attractive Jacobean style, where a few effective details carry all the thematic weight.
