Better known to Pittsburghers as Motor Square Garden: it opened as a market house in 1900, but failed a few years later and began a long association with the automobile business. The architects were Peabody and Stearns, who also designed Horne’s department store downtown and several prominent mansions in the East End neighborhoods.
[Update: This article has been thoroughly revised with information about the architect and date, with thanks to David Schwing.] Continuing our visits to car dealers of the past, we come to the Samson dealer. 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 building was put up in about 1918, as the automobile business was passing from big business to colossus of American industry. The architect was probably R. Maurice Trimble, who was hired to design a building here when the Samson Motor Company bought the land. The only uncertainty is that the building was announced as a four-storey structure, but plans often shrink on the way to execution.
The front is a feast of terra-cotta details.
![Service entrance]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Sampson_Motor_Co.%2C_Oakland%2C_2022-08-19%2C_service_entrance_01.jpg)
Gazette Times, January 30, 1918: “One of the finest buildings devoted to the automobile business in the city will result from a sale closed recently, whereby the Atlantic Land Company has sold to H. Samson a plot of ground approximately 91×218 feet on the north side of Baum boulevard near Melwood street. The plot is in the heart of the automobile district and is situated between the Atlantic Refining Company’s building and the Kaufmann & Baer garage. The consideration was $30,000. The proposed building will be constructed over the design of Architect R. M. Trimble, bids to be received next month. It will be a brick, concrete and steel structure covering the entire plot and will cost $150,000. It is understood that the deal was negotiated by George Bros.” The 1923 Hopkins map shows 4643 Baum Boulevard belonging to Samson Motor Co., with the Atlantic Refining Co. gas station on one side and the Kaufmann & Baer garage on the other.
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.
