Father Pitt

Tag: Arts and Crafts Style

  • Store and Apartments by Louis Stevens, Carrick

    2551 Churchview Avenue

    This was an early commission for Louis Stevens,1 who would be best known in his career for houses and mansions for the rich and the upper middle class. It was built in 1911 on Churchview Avenue (then called Church Avenue, but renamed Churchview when Carrick was taken into the city of Pittsburgh), just off Brownsville Road. Four years earlier, Stevens had been studying architecture in Carnegie Tech’s night school. The front of the building has been muddled a bit, but the renovations were done in a halfhearted manner that allows us to appreciate the original composition.

    2551 Churchview Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. Our source for the attribution is this map of Stevens’ works created by a Google Maps user, to whom many thanks. ↩︎
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  • Endangered Buildings in Carrick

    Berg Place

    It is never pleasant, but old Pa Pitt feels as though he has a duty to document things that might be gone soon. Sometimes miracles happen, and we can always hope, but without a miracle we can only turn to the photographs to remember what has vanished.

    “Berg Place,” a group of three apartment buildings along Brownsville Road in Carrick, probably cannot be saved. It’s a pity, because the buildings, in a pleasant Arts-and-Crafts style flavored with German Art Nouveau, have a commanding position along the street, and their absence will be felt. They were abandoned a few years ago, probably declared unsafe, and since then they have rotted quickly.

    Berg Place
    Decorative brickwork and brackets

    Some of the simple but effective Art Nouveau decorations in brick and stone.

    Fire-damaged buildings

    These two buildings across the street from Berg Place, damaged by a fire, may possibly still be saved. At present one of them is condemned, but that is not a death sentence, and it looks as though prompt action was taken to secure the one on the corner after the fire. They are typical of the Mission-style commercial buildings that were popular in Carrick and other South Hills neighborhoods, and they ought to be preserved if at all possible. Carrick is not a prosperous neighborhood, but much of the commercial district is still lively, and with the increase in city property values the repairs might be a good investment.

    2554 Brownsville Road
    Art glass in the display window
    2546 Brownsville Road
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS
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  • Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church, Mexican War Streets

    Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church

    R. Maurice Trimble designed this charming little church, which was finished in 1909. It is still in nearly original condition, and still owned by its original congregation.

    Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church
    Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church
    Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • Warwick Apartments, Mount Lebanon

    Warwick Apartments

    A simple but dignified design that preserves its Craftsman-style three-over-one windows.

    Warwick apartments, perspective view
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Storefront on Brownsville Road, Mount Oliver

    149 Brownsville Road

    This storefront on Brownsville Road has layers of history. The original 1920 building must have been an interesting design; enough remains to show us that somebody tried hard to make it distinctive and up to date.

    Date stone with date 1920

    The ground floor looks like a postwar remodeling, and a well-preserved inscription in the floor of the entrance tells us that it was a shop called Harvard’s.

    Harvard’s

    As Mount Oliver trendifies, this storefront may become more desirable, and if you are the owner of a small business moving in, old Pa Pitt has a suggestion: whatever your business is, call it “Harvard’s.” You then have a ready-made logo, as well as a distinctive sidewalk inscription to welcome your customers. It would be an especially good name for the intellectual sort of used bookstore.

    Harvard’s entrance

    Father Pitt had to stand in the street and risk the wrath of the No. 51 bus to get this picture, but that is the kind of effort he is willing to make for you, his faithful readers.

    Finial
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    As you pass by on the opposite side of Brownsville Road, pause to admire the finial at the peak of the gable.

  • Houses on Bausman Street, Knoxville

    Houses on Bausman Street

    For two blocks, Bausman Street in Knoxville is lined with these houses, which are modest in their dimensions but unusually fine in their design. There are four basic shapes, which repeat in the same order on both sides of the street.

    327 Bausman Street
    327 Bausman Street
    325 Bausman Street
    315 Bausman Street
    313 Bausman Street
    313 Bausman Street

    The houses were built for the Knoxville Land Improvement Company as a speculative venture. Father Pitt has not yet discovered who the architect was, but the developers got their money’s worth from these designs.

    321 Bausman Street
    309 Bausman Street
    311 Bausman Street
    319 Bausman Street

    Knoxville is a bit tattered around the edges at the moment, and a few of these houses have been lost to the ravages of time and poverty—two forces whose destructive power is surpassed only by the even more destructive force of prosperity. The remaining houses ought to be preserved as a document of the best early-twentieth-century styles in middle-class housing, and because, as a streetscape, they are a work of art.

    Houses on Bausman Street
    Sony Alpha 3000.

  • Valley Presbyterian Church, Imperial

    Valley Presbyterian Church

    This charming Arts-and-Crafts Gothic church is the most distinguished building in the little hamlet of Imperial. It was built, according to the date stone, in 1911 for a congregation that had been founded in 1840, and the large cemetery behind the church has tombstones going back to that foundation.

    Date stone: 1840 and 1911
    Valley Presbyterian Church
    Tower

    The outstanding feature of the church is its belfry, with simple and massive woodwork that echoes the Gothic arches below, but also flares out into bell shapes, like a Sunday-school-supplement illustration of the bells within.

    Belfry
    Belfry
    Rear of the church
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

    A postwar Sunday-school wing in the rear is built from nearly matching brick.

  • Pittsburgh Foundry Office, South Side

    Pittsburgh Foundry office

    This tidy little building in the back streets of the near South Side was built as the office for the Pittsburgh Foundry plant. The style brings a bit of Arts-and-Crafts to the usual industrial Romanesque. Note the patterned bricks.

    Corner view
    HDR images from a Kodak EasyShare Z1285 set to bracket three exposures at intervals of 1 EV.

  • A Charming Cottage in West Park

    401 Russellwood Avenue

    Old Pa Pitt was on his way out of West Park and already late for an appointment, but when he passed this house on the McKees Rocks side of the neighborhood, he had to stop and take pictures. It is not quite like any other house he has ever seen, and the original trim is well preserved.

    Front of the house
    Porch brackets
    Dormer
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • Neville Township Municipal Building, Neville Island

    Neville Township Municipal Building

    Of the 130 municipalities in Allegheny County, Neville Township is the only one entirely surrounded by water. It is coextensive with Neville Island, the largest river island in the area, which is mostly industrial but has a small town at its western end.

    This is a charming little building that would have been even more charming with its original windows, doors, and roof brackets. Old Pa Pitt is especially taken with the starburst window above the main entrance and the decorative bowling pins framing the inscription.

    Main entrance
    Inscription: “Municipal-Building, Township of Neville”
    Neville Township Municipal Building
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.