Father Pitt

Tag: Automobile Dealers

Horst & Mooney Garage, Brighton Heights

Now it belongs to a contractor, and the filling-in with concrete blocks and artificial siding is probably a fair sample of a Pittsburgh contractor’s taste. But the building is, on the whole, in an excellent state of preservation. It shows up on our 1923 map as the Horst & Mooney Garage, and we can probably guess what brand of cars it sold and serviced.

Update: Mr. John Hempel has pointed out that this was a Packard dealer in 1930. “In your fascinating Car Dealers page, Horst & Mooney may have been a Chev dealer more recently, but it was originally a Packard dealer. Pitt archives has a photo – just search Horst & Mooney.”

Many thanks to Mr. Hempel for pointing out the old photograph. Here is the picture he mentions, and the signs certainly leave no doubt about what cars this dealer was selling:

You can see a very-high-resolution scan at the Historic Pittsburgh site. Because the resolution is so high, we can see that the little decoration at the peak of the roof was there from the beginning:

It is possible that this is not meant to be a Chevrolet logo, but both the shape and the blue color seem hard to mistake.

So Father Pitt’s working hypothesis is that this was a Chevrolet dealer before it was a Packard dealer, but the well-to-do Brighton Heights clientele justified moving up in the world.

The 1930 photo gives us a good look at the original state of the building and confirms that, except for the filling-in of windows, it has not changed very much. As a bonus, we also get a good look at the California Methodist Episcopal Church and, right at the corner of the garage lot, a streetcar shelter.

July 8, 2023
Samson Dealer, Oakland

Continuing our visits to car dealers of the past, we come to the Samson dealer. At least it seems to be a Samson dealer, although it could also be a Sampson dealer. Our 1923 map shows it as “Samson [sic] Motor Co.,’ but these maps are prone to slight misspellings. On the other hand, Sampson was a very rare brand of car, and this seems like a fairly grand dealer to be built for a rare marque. On the third hand, Samson was a brand of tractors and trucks in the early 1920s, and this looks like a rather classy building for a dealer in farm implements. At any rate, it was a motor-vehicle dealer of some sort. More recently it was a gallery of some sort, and now it is decaying, although part of the building appears to be still in use.

The front is a feast of terra-cotta details.

September 17, 2022
Pierce-Arrow Dealer, Shadyside

We continue our visits to car dealers of the mythic past with one that catered to the very highest class of motorist. The Painter-Dunn Company sold Pierce-Arrow cars, a luxury brand that lasted until 1938. This dealership is the architectural equivalent of the Pierce-Arrow advertisements, which concentrated on elegant design without trying to tell us how good the car was. The design conveyed the message.

Father Pitt does not know the whole history of this building. The elaborate cornice at the top of the second floor suggests that the third floor was a tastefully managed later addition.

Addendum: The Construction Record in 1915 confirms that this building was put up as two floors, and names the architects: “Architects Hunting & Davis Company, Century building, awarded to Henry Shenk Company, Century Building, the contract for constructing a two-story brick and terra cotta garage and assembly shop on Center avenue, Shadyside, for the Painter-Dunn Company. Cost $100,000.”

Note how Millvale Avenue runs right into the garage entrance.

September 5, 2022
White Motor Company Dealership, Oakland

Continuing our visits to car dealers of the past, we visit the White Motor Company dealer on Melwood Avenue, which has fortunately found a new use in the medical-industrial complex.

White started in the automobile business with a successful steamer (more Whites were built than Stanleys), but as gasoline-powered cars took over the market, White abandoned steam and went with the crowd. At some point around World War I or after, White left the car business and concentrated its efforts on trucks and buses. The company was very successful in that business, and remained a manufacturing force until it was bought out by Volvo in 1980.

Correction: We had identified the architect as Edward B. Lee, based on the Construction Record for November 18, 1911: “Architect E. B. Lee, 1307 Peoples Bank building, has completed plans-for a two-story brick and reinforced concrete garage and sales building, to be constructed in the East End, for the White Motor Car Company, 3122 West Twenty-fifth street, Cleveland.” However, it appears that this entry refers to the building at the corner of Craig Street and Baum Boulevard, which later became an Oakland dealership (Oakland automobiles, that is). A picture of that dealership appears in the September 1913 issue of The Builder, with the caption “Garage and Sales Room for the White Motor Company, Pittsburgh, Pa., Edward B. Lee, Architect, Pittsburgh.”

September 2, 2022
Ask the Man Who Owns One

We continue our look at the remarkable number of early automobile dealers preserved in Oakland and Shadyside. This old Packard dealer on Baum Boulevard is still in the luxury-automobile business. Only the marque has changed; the building has been sensitively updated for our century, but in outline it is much the same as it was when Packards gleamed in its generously large showroom.

August 24, 2022
The Craig Street Automotive Row, All at Once

Old Pa Pitt obsessively documented every building in the Craig Street automotive row. But he was even more obsessive than that. The thing that is most impressive about that row is that it is contiguous and intact: not a single one of the buildings, all put up at about the same time in the early years of the automobile, has disappeared or been seriously mutilated. Individual pictures do not show that impressive fact. Therefore, Father Pitt has made this composite view—by hand, he might add, since no automatic software was up to the task.

Click on the picture to make it very big.

The brands these dealers sold, left to right: Nash, Oldsmobile, Jordan, Kelly-Springfield tires, B. F. Goodrich tires, Franklin, and Oakland.

Much of the background had to be filled in with plain blue, and the joints are very obvious if you enlarge the picture. But this is the only way to convey the extraordinary fact that this whole row has survived intact. How long will it last? We can only keep our fingers crossed. But if these buildings disappear, at least this picture can show future generations what this row was like.

August 23, 2022
Craig Street Automotive Row Again

Old Pa Pitt was not satisfied with the pictures he published of the Craig Street automotive row two weeks ago. The light was wrong: the sun was behind the buildings. We did our best with those pictures, but really the only way to get better ones would be to return at a different time of day. Father Pitt is so thoroughly dedicated to his readers that he did exactly that, so now here is a duplicate of that article, but with better pictures.

If this is not unique in North America, it has to be at least very rare: a complete contiguous row of buildings from the early days of the automotive industry, intact and largely unaltered. They are lined up one after another, without any gaps, along Craig Street from Baum Boulevard northward. It is one of Pittsburgh’s unrecognized treasures. Fortunately only one of the buildings seems to be endangered at the moment: the others have found new uses, and the owners have not made substantial alterations to the façades, several of which have fine terra-cotta details.

Update: Father Pitt has made a composite photograph of the whole row at once, so you can see how the buildings fit together.

In 1905, a splendid amusement park opened on this site: Luna Park, the first of a chain of Luna Parks that spanned the globe.

This one did not last long, however: it closed in 1909—partly as a result of competition from the well-established Kennywood Park, where you can now see a smaller model of the Luna Park entrance.

The closing of the park opened up a broad expanse of cleared land, and the newly rich automobile industry moved in here. By 1923, all these buildings had been constructed in a long row.

We begin at the corner of Baum Boulevard, where the grandest of the lot actually sold low-priced cars. This was a dealer in—coincidentally—Oakland motor cars, which were named for Oakland County, Michigan, where they were made. Oakland was General Motors’ cheap division before GM bought Chevrolet.

Next in the row up Craig Street is a Franklin dealer.

Next come two tire dealers in identical buildings. The one on the left sold Kelly-Springfield; the one on the right sold B. F. Goodrich. These buildings are now the Luna Lofts, which probably sounds better than Kelly-Springfield and B. F. Goodrich Tire Lofts.

Here is the one building Father Pitt considers endangered, because vacant and ill-kept buildings catch fire mysteriously. It belonged to the Van Kleeck Motor Co., which sold Jordan automobiles. The façade is mostly original, though it has had some curious alterations, especially the door to nowhere with its tiny iron balcony. The terra-cotta decorations are well preserved, and Father Pitt was able to pick some of them out with a long lens:

Next comes an Oldsmobile dealer.

And finally the Nash dealer, now home to a branch of North Way Christian Community, which has made the front look gorgeous.

This is the whole contiguous row along Craig Street, and it is incredible enough that the entire block of buildings has survived intact. There were also other car dealers in the same immediate area, and even more remarkably they have survived, too. We’ll be seeing more of them soon.

August 22, 2022
Win Some, Lose Some

When he published his recent pictures of the Craig Street automotive row, old Pa Pitt promised his readers pictures of some of the other nearby buildings from the early days of the automobile. Yesterday he walked over to Melwood Avenue to get pictures of the old Chevrolet dealer and found that he hadn’t walked fast enough, because this is what it looks like now:

Yes, it has been demolished for another apartment tower. Doubtless this will bring rolling waves of prosperity, though not everyone in the neighborhood is happy about it:

On the bright side, the demolition revealed an old painted sign that probably had not been visible for more than a hundred years:

Father Pitt has not been able to read the names of the two superimposed companies. This wall had been obscured by the Chevrolet dealer since before 1923, so this sign dates from the first decades of the automobile.

August 20, 2022
Craig Street Automotive Row, Oakland

Update: Father Pitt has improved on these pictures and published more or less the same article over again, but with much better lighting.

If this is not unique in North America, it has to be at least very rare: a complete contiguous row of buildings from the early days of the automotive industry, intact and largely unaltered. They are lined up one after another, without any gaps, along Craig Street from Baum Boulevard northward. It is one of Pittsburgh’s unrecognized treasures. Fortunately only one of the buildings seems to be endangered at the moment: the others have found new uses, and the owners have not made substantial alterations to the façades, several of which have fine terra-cotta details.

In 1905, a splendid amusement park opened on this site: Luna Park, the first of a chain of Luna Parks that spanned the globe.

This one did not last long, however: it closed in 1909—partly as a result of competition from the well-established Kennywood Park, where you can now see a smaller model of the Luna Park entrance.

The closing of the park opened up a broad expanse of cleared land, and the newly rich automobile industry moved in here. By 1923, all these buildings had been constructed in a long row.

We begin at the corner of Baum Boulevard (the picture at the top of the article), where the grandest of the lot actually sold low-priced cars. This was a dealer in—coincidentally—Oakland motor cars, which were named for Oakland County, Michigan, where they were made. Oakland was General Motors’ cheap division before GM bought Chevrolet.

The ornate capitals of the corner columns are worth a closer look.

Next in the row up Craig Street is a Franklin dealer.

Next come two tire dealers in identical buildings. The one on the left sold Kelly-Springfield; the one on the right sold B. F. Goodrich. These buildings are now the Luna Lofts, which probably sounds better than Kelly-Springfield and B. F. Goodrich Tire Lofts.

Here is the one building Father Pitt considers endangered, beacuse vacant and ill-kept buildings catch fire mysteriously. It belonged to the Van Kleeck Motor Co., which sold Jordan automobiles. The façade is mostly original, though it has had some curious alterations, especially the door to nowhere with its tiny iron balcony.

Next (and please forgive the glare from the sun in the wrong part of the sky) comes an Oldsmobile dealer.

And finally the Nash dealer, now home to a branch of North Way Christian Community, which has made the front look gorgeous.

This is the whole contiguous row along Craig Street, and it is incredible enough that the entire block of buildings has survived intact. There were also other car dealers in the same immediate area, and even more remarkably they have survived, too. In the future, Father Pitt hopes to bring you pictures of the Chevrolet dealer, the Packard dealer, the Studebaker dealer, the Ford dealer, and the Sampson dealer.

August 8, 2022