Father Pitt

Tag: Art Deco

  • Haller Baking Company, Emsworth

    Roofline of the Haller Baking Company building

    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.

    Haller Baking Company
    Haller Baking Company
    Haller Baking Company
    Compass rose

    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.

    Haller Baking Company
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ornaments
    Haller Baking Company
    Haller Baking Company
    Haller Baking Company
    Rear of the Haller Baking Company
    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.

  • A Little Bank in the McKees Rocks Bottoms

    241 Ella Street

    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.

    Beehive

    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.

    Entrance decorations
    Deco relief
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • G. C. Murphy Building

    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.

    Terra-cotta decoration

    The terra-cotta decorations were originally brightly colored. In the photograph above, we have boosted the color to make the remaining colors evident.

  • Top of the Pittsburgher

    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.

  • Pennsylvania Railroad Fruit Auction & Sales Building and Produce Terminal, Strip

    Pennsylvania Railroad Fruit Auction & Sales Building
    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.

    Produce Terminal
    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.”

    The Terminal
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

  • Auditorium Entrance, Andrew W. Mellon Middle School, Mount Lebanon

    Entrance to Andrew W. Mellon Middle School

    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.

    Medallion with theatrical masks

    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.

    Medallion with lyre
    Marquee
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The marquee is festooned with unexpectedly colorful Art Deco swags.

  • The Roxian, McKees Rocks

    Roxian Theatre
    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.

    Marquee of the Roxian
    Mask of comedy
    Mask of tragedy
    Roxian Theatre
    Pilaster
    Roxian Theatre
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Moderne Terrace in West Park

    610–614 Woodward Avenue

    We have seen many answers to the question of how to make a cheap row of small houses attractive. This streamlined terrace is certainly one of the more interesting answers. It would have been even more striking with the original windows and doors and without the aluminum awnings.

    Geometric patterns in the bricks
    Porch and doors
    Moderne terrace
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Boulevard Theatre, Brookline

    Boulevard Theatre, Brookline

    According to its page at Cinema Treasures, this theater opened as the Braverman in 1928, just at the beginning of the sound era, but was soon renamed the Boulevard Theatre. We can see multiple layers of renovations, the most significant of which happened in 1937, when it was given the Victor Rigaumont treatment. Mr. Rigaumont was Pittsburgh’s most prolific architect of neighborhood movie palaces, and indeed his works can still be found all over the Northeast. Here the Art Deco panels on the second floor are certainly his work. The later ground-floor treatment was beamed in from the parallel universe where Spock wears a beard. After the theater closed, this was used as a Cedars of Lebanon hall for some years. Now it is a nightclub belonging to the Beechview-based Las Palmas empire, which also includes half a dozen Mexican groceries, a restaurant, and a radio station.

    Old Pa Pitt apologizes for the poor pictures. The sun was behind the building, and he had gone out with nothing but a phone in his pocket, not expecting to take pictures; then a delay in his other business left him with nothing to do for half an hour on Brookline Boulevard, one of his favorite commercial streets in the city.

    Insomnia nightclub
    Boulevard Theatre
    Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • The President Apartments, Shadyside

    The President Apartments at night

    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.