Father Pitt

Tag: Art Deco

  • 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.

  • Telephone Exchange, Coraopolis

    Telephone exchange

    A simple but pleasingly proportioned telephone exchange that was almost certainly designed by Press C. Dowler, who got all the telephone company’s local business in the Art Deco era.

    Ornament
    Entrance
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

  • Coraopolis Armory

    Coraopolis Armory

    This little armory was built in 1938. The striking design, stripped-down Art Deco or lightly Decoized modern, was by Thomas Roy Hinckley, about whom old Pa Pitt knows only that he designed this building, the single work attributed to him at archINFORM. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

    State seal and inscription
    Coraopolis Armory
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • VFW Post, Coraopolis

    VFW

    Addendum: Thanks to a kind correspondent, we were directed to this article on Coraopolis history, where the architect of the VFW post is identified as T. Ed. Cornelius—an old friend of ours who always kept up with the latest styles and executed them well. The article as originally written follows.

    Father Pitt does not know the history of this building, but it is certainly a fine outcropping of Art Deco, and very well preserved in nearly its original state.

    VFW Keith Holmes Post No. 402

    The building stands at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Mulberry Street in Coraopolis.

    Above the entrance
    Veterans of Foreign Wars
    Keith Holmes Post No. 402
    Mulberry Street side

    The Mulberry Street side has its own entrance, and this part of the building may date from a different time—but not very different, since it is also in an uncompromising Art Deco style.

    V. F. W.

    A cornerstone on the Mulberry Street side dates at least this part of the building to 1941.

    Cornerstone
    Brickwork

    The architect (or the bricklayer) was someone who understood the effects of shadows, creating geometric patterns in light and dark by arranging bricks at different angles.

    Brickwork
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

  • Oaks Theater, Oakmont

    Oaks Theater

    Pittsburgh architect Victor A. Rigaumont designed dozens of movie houses, large and small, all over the Northeast. Most of them are gone, but a few remain, and this is one of them. It’s still open and still showing movies on a single screen.

    Oaks
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Art Deco in the Strip

    2001 Penn Avenue

    Almost all the decorative effect of this building is achieved by arranging bricks in different ways. The original windows in the upper floors also have a part to play in the rhythm of the design: it would not be nearly as effective if they were replaced with single panes of plate glass.

    Decorative brickwork
    2001 Penn Avenue
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

  • Moderne Industrial Building on the North Side

    900 West North Avenue

    A streamlined industrial building on North Avenue. We suspect that the part now filled in with red diamonds may have originally been a storefront or showroom for the business.

    Entrance with the inscription “Abbott / 900”
    Galveston Avenue side
    Sony Alpha 3000.

  • Decorations on the County Office Building

    Eagle and county arms

    The County Office Building, which opened in 1931, was designed by Stanley L. Roush, who was the king of public works in Allegheny County for a while. Its combination of styles is unique in Pittsburgh, as far as old Pa Pitt knows. In form it is of the school Father Pitt likes to call American Fascist, the weighty classical style filtered through streamlined Art Deco that was popular for American public buildings between the World Wars, and of which the grandest example in Pittsburgh is the federal courthouse. But the details are Romanesque rather than classical—an acknowledgment of the lingering influence of the great Richardson’s greatest masterpiece, the Allegheny County Courthouse. The carved ornaments are Art Deco adaptations of medieval themes, except for the eagle above, which is not at all medieval, and which clasps the arms of Allegheny County in its talons.

    County Office Building

    The Fourth Avenue side. The County Office Building is roughly square, so the four sides are similar, except that this side lacks an entrance. But this was the side that was lit by the sun when Father Pitt was taking pictures. It took a lot of fiddling and adaptation to get the whole side of the building across a tiny narrow street, so you will see stitching errors and other anomalies if you enlarge the picture.

    Gargoyle

    An Art Deco gargoyle.

    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Decorative relief
    Frieze
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Base of the Law & Finance Building

    Base of the Law & Finance Building

    The Law & Finance Building was a rather old-fashioned skyscraper when it went up in 1927–1928. It was designed by Philip Jullien of Washington (D. C., where he wasn’t allowed to design skyscrapers, owing to city height limits that are still uniquely in place) in the base-shaft-cap formula typical of the early age of skyscrapers. It even has the regulation bosses’ floor above the base.

    Base of the Law & Finance Building

    What is unique is the row of ornamental heads above the bosses’ floor, perhaps representing the severed heads of the developer’s political opponents.

    Ornamental heads
    Ornamental head