Built in the 1920s in a strikingly modernistic style, the Dormont Recreation Center still serves the citizens of the borough who come every summer for one of the area’s most popular swimming pools, which first opened in 1920.
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Dormont Recreation Center
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Annunciation School, Perry South
Benno Janssen and Edward J. Hergenroeder were the architects of this school, which seems to show the economy of line old Pa Pitt associates with Janssen. Hergenroeder would go on to design many Catholic schools, as well as the convent around the corner from this one (which we’ll be seeing soon).
The parish school closed years ago, but the building has found another use, so it is occupied and well maintained.
Among the decorations are several inscriptions, most of them not from Catholic sources.
“Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.” —Addison.
The side entrance on Arvada Way.
“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.” —Shakespeare.
Terra-cotta figures of children enjoying their childhood decorate the side walls of the school.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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Allegheny General Hospital
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Haller Baking Company, Emsworth
Built in about 1933, the Haller Baking Company was designed in an up-to-the-minute Art Deco style by Paul Scheuneman. You can see a picture of the building as it originally appeared at the Avonworth Historical Society. “Oven to Home” was the company’s slogan: it delivered bread, cakes, and other baked goods straight to your house. In the 1950s the building was turned into a furniture store, with glassy additions in front that were later bricked in when it became an office.
Father Pitt does not know the origin of this stylish compass rose. It does not look new, but it is not in the photographs of the bakery or the furniture store that replaced it.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10. There’s not much to see in the rear of the building, but old Pa Pitt climbed the hill to document it anyway, just for the sake of completeness.
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A Little Bank in the McKees Rocks Bottoms
This little building, unless Father Pitt’s correspondents and his own conclusions are mistaken, was the Bottoms branch of the First National Bank of McKees Rocks, and it was a late work of the firm of Alden, Harlow & Jones. Whether the identification is correct or not, however, it is a fine piece of work, and another demonstration of the remarkable architectural riches of the McKees Rocks Bottoms.
The beehive, symbolic of industry and thrift, would be a good emblem for a bank. It is a bit odd for the business that has occupied the building for decades now, which is an undertaker’s establishment.
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G. C. Murphy Building
Part of the flamboyantly Art Deco G. C. Murphy building, which with this addition grew into “the world’s largest variety store,” as it still called itself in the 1990s before it shrank and the whole chain eventually collapsed under the ownership of Meshulam Riklis. The building was designed by Harold E. Crosby.
The terra-cotta decorations were originally brightly colored. In the photograph above, we have boosted the color to make the remaining colors evident.
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Top of the Pittsburgher
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. The Pittsburgher was built in 1929–1930 as a hotel; the architects were the H. L. Stevens Company of New York. For many years, converted to offices, it was known as the Lawyers Building. In 2015 it was bought by a company called King Penguin Opportunity Fund, which restored the original name and put it in lights at the top. This view was taken from Gateway Center with a very long lens.
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Pennsylvania Railroad Fruit Auction & Sales Building and Produce Terminal, Strip
Composite of three photographs. In the 1800s, the produce industry was concentrated on Liberty Avenue downtown, and a railroad ran right down the middle of the street to serve the wholesalers.
Gradually the business moved to the Strip, and in 1906 the tracks in Liberty Avenue were torn up. For a while the produce auctions were conducted in the open air straight from the freight cars, and a 1923 map shows the “produce yard” in the middle of the sea of tracks that built up in the Strip:
In 1926, the railroad built a colossal terminal for the produce business. The Fruit Auction & Sales Building at the northeast end (above) had two tall floors; from there the Produce Terminal stretched five blocks, a quarter-mile long, making a dramatic open plaza of Smallman Street.
After sitting mostly vacant for a while, the building was renovated at a cost of more than $50 million and reopened as a shopping, eating, and entertainment center called “The Terminal.”
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Auditorium Entrance, Andrew W. Mellon Middle School, Mount Lebanon
The National Forum warns us that we have to keep an eye on this school. All the schools of its era in Mount Lebanon were designed by Ingham & Boyd, or by Ingham, Boyd & Pratt once Pratt became a partner. This one comes from the era when they were adapting Art Deco elements to their usual ruthlessly symmetrical classicism, and the result shows some similarity to the same firm’s Buhl Planetarium. It has not changed much since it was built, except that, when the name was changed from “Junior High School” to “Middle School,” the inscription was clumsily applied with no spacing between the letters. That bugs old Pa Pitt, but he is not going to get up on a ladder and fix it himself.
Father Pitt does not know the sculptor of these two medallions, but he has a pretty good guess. Compare them to the reliefs by Sidney Waugh on Buhl Planetarium: The Heavens and The Earth and Primitive Science and Modern Science. It seems likely that the same architects hired the same sculptor for these reliefs.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. The marquee is festooned with unexpectedly colorful Art Deco swags.
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The Roxian, McKees Rocks
Composite of three photographs from the Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. One of the most cheering indicators of new vitality in McKees Rocks is the Roxian, beautifully restored and adapted as a concert venue. Its glorious terra-cotta façade looks as fresh as when the building was put up.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
