Old Pa Pitt knows nothing about this little bank except that it was built in about 1921. Its classical style is designed to say “bank” as soon as you see the building.
Those spindly Corinthian columns at the entrance look like an afterthought. Father Pitt imagines the architect presenting his clean and dignified plans to the client, who immediately points and says, “Where are the columns? It’s a bank, for Pete’s sake.”
Vrydaugh & Wolfe, famous for churches and millionaires’ mansions, were the architects of this tiny bank, built in 1904. Newspaper stories of the time seem to tell a tale of contracted ambition, and it is probable that the building as it stands was meant to have more floors added as the bank prospered. (Instead, in the late 1920s, the bank built a much larger building across the street and down the block a bit, and then shortly after that failed in the great bank massacre of the early Depression.)
In January of 1904, we read that the Franklin Savings and Trust Company was planning a $30,000 four-story building on its newly purchased lot1. But just four and a half months later, in the middle of May, we read that the bank had occupied its new building, which had cost $20,000 and had only one floor.2 It was fairly common in those days to plan a building so that it would support additional floors when they were needed, and old Pa Pitt suspects that is what happened here: the bank decided it would be prudent to save some money for the moment. Perhaps the luxurious interior appointments of mahogany and marble had cost more than the directors had anticipated.
The result was a little bank that looks almost as if it could be towed away by a large truck. But the pediment over the entrance and the arched windows (now filled in and muraled over, except for the shrunken one in front) would have given it a prosperously bankish look.
A banking palace from the 1890s, with the ground floor still in use as a bank. The style is classical on the ground floor but Romanesque above; we suspect the ground floor may be a later alteration. Father Pitt does not know the architect yet. L. A. Raisig, a successful architect and builder who designed many buildings in Wilkinsburg, kept his office here, so it is possible that he designed the building.
George S. Orth, who lived in Bridgeville, designed this building,1 which was put up in two stages, beginning in 1903 or 1904, for the Bridgeville Trust Company. If you look very carefully, you can see the seam in the middle of the long side along Station Street, marking the line between the original square building on the corner and the later addition behind it. At some time in the middle twentieth century, the ground floor was entirely redesigned to look more like a modern bank, so that only on the second floor is Orth’s work visible today. The building was still a bank (a branch of PNC) until just a few years ago.
Across the street, the First National Bank of Bridgeville was going up at the same time. James E. Allison was the architect of this one.2 Soon—probably while this building was still going up—he would take his brother David on as a partner in the firm of Allison & Allison. In 1910 they moved to Los Angeles, and they flourished there as architects of some of the most notable buildings in the city.
Trowbridge & Livingston, Andrew Mellon’s favorite architects, designed this block-long palace of finance. The legendary interior was destroyed in the 1990s for a blink-and-you-missed-it department store, but the exterior is almost completely unchanged from the day the building opened in 1925.
Built as a branch bank, this tidy little modernistic building seems to be succeeding in its second life as a little neighborhood grocery. It is one of several “flatiron” buildings in Sheraden, and old Pa Pitt had to stand in the middle of a fairly busy intersection to get this picture of the sharp end:
One of several “flatiron” buildings produced by the irregular street layout of Crafton. This one is odd angles all around.
The main entrance is on the sharp corner facing the intersection of Noble Avenue, Crafton Avenue, and Dinsmore Avenue (which is what we meant when we said Crafton had an irregular street layout).
A segmental pediment—that is, a pediment whose top is a segment of a circle, rather than the more usual triangle.
The side entrance would have led into the upstairs offices: a bank putting up a building like this would expect to make extra income from office rentals, and bank buildings were usually prestigious addresses.
The side of the building not meant to be seen is finished more cheaply.
One of the most imposing-looking banks in the whole Pittsburgh area, this expensive—we had almost said egregiously expensive—Doric pile seems not to be occupied at the moment, but it is in beautiful shape externally. It was still in use as a bank until about six years ago, so it is fully accessible and waiting for the next tenant who needs a building that will knock people’s socks off.
Addendum: The architects were Mowbray & Uffinger of New York, specialists in banks, who also designed the Peoples Building in McKeesport.1
A sharp-looking but still respectable bank in a kind of baroque version of Art Deco. It is no longer a bank, but it is kept in fine condition by the current occupants.
N. G. Pollock of Cleveland was the architect of this small but rich-looking bank, which was built in about 1916.1 It seems likely that some sort of ornate classical crest is missing from the corner above the name “
