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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Telephone Exchange, Coraopolis
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.
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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.
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VFW Post, Coraopolis
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.
The building stands at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Mulberry Street in Coraopolis.
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.
A cornerstone on the Mulberry Street side dates at least this part of the building to 1941.
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.
Kodak EasyShare Z981. -
Oaks Theater, Oakmont
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.
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Art Deco in the Strip
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.
Kodak EasyShare Z981. -
Moderne Industrial Building on the North Side
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.
Sony Alpha 3000. -
Decorations on the County Office Building
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.
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.
An Art Deco gargoyle.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
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.
What is unique is the row of ornamental heads above the bosses’ floor, perhaps representing the severed heads of the developer’s political opponents.
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J & K Building, Allegheny West
This building, in a Deco Gothic style, appears to have been part of the Western Theological Seminary, and perhaps an expert in Allegheny West history can shed some light on it. Old Pa Pitt published a picture of it once before, but recently he noticed the concrete flaking away from the obliterated date stones by the door.
This is the stone to the right of the door. The date was purposely obliterated (why do people do that?), but it is clearly legible now through the later layer of concrete: 1933, which, judging by the architectural style, would be just right for the date of the building itself.
The stone to the left of the door bore the date 1872, and Father Pitt must admit to being ignorant of its significance. It is not one of the various dates usually claimed as the foundation of the Western Theological Seminary, which in 1884 claimed to have been founded in 1825. Perhaps a historian from its successor, the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, can enlighten us.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. This floral ornamentation is carved in the stone that frames the main entrance.
