Father Pitt

Tag: Janssen (Benno)

  • Twentieth Century Club, Oakland

    Ywentieth Century Club

    As you can see, it takes some effort to achieve this kind of symmetry in Pittsburgh, a city where the phrase “ground floor” is ambiguous at best. Pittsburgh’s premier women’s club hired Pittsburgh’s premier architect of clubs, Benno Janssen, to design this splendid Renaissance palace, built—according to the inscription—in 1930. The inscription also tells us that the club was founded in 1894. The rest (on the right) is the club motto: “Not for ourselves alone, but for the whole world.” The building now belongs to Pitt.

    Lintel
    Cartouche

    Janssen liked this kind of cartouche with monogram: compare his Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association.

    Lower entrance

    The entrance on the Bigelow Boulevard side, at lower ground level.

    Relief: Non nobis solum, sed toti mundo

    A relief over the Bigelow Boulevard entrance bears the club motto again. For context, here is an older picture from the corner of Bigelow Boulevard and Bigelow Boulevard (no one said navigating Oakland was easy); the lower entrance is behind the elegant stone wall.

    Corner view

  • Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association, Oakland

    Another of Benno Janssen’s imposing clubs. We have seen this building from the front before; this corner view gives us an impression of the scale of the whole structure. It is now Bellefield Hall of the University of Pittsburgh.

  • Masonic Temple, Oakland

    Masonic Temple

    Another magnificent clubhouse by Benno Janssen; it is now Alumni Hall of the University of Pittsburgh.

    Masonic Temple

  • Pittsburgh Athletic Association

    One of Benno Janssen’s masterpieces; here we see it from the Cathedral of Learning grounds.

  • Mellon Institute at Twilight

    Mellon Institute at twilight

    The colossal columns of the Mellon Institute illuminated from within.

  • Pittsburgh Athletic Association, Oakland

    Fifth Avenue façade

    This grand Renaissance palace by Benno Janssen has a lighting scheme that emphasizes its architectural details.

    South corner
    With cannon silhouette

    In the foreground, the silhouette of one of the cannons on the grounds of Soldiers and Sailors Hall.

    East corner

  • Porch of the Mellon Institute

    Porch of the Mellon Institute

    Behind the world’s largest monolithic columns on the porch of the Mellon Institute.

  • Pittsburgh Athletic Association, Oakland

    Pittsburgh Athletic Association

    The Pittsburgh Athletic Association, one of the prolific Benno Janssen’s most elaborate designs, as it was in 2000 before the recent renovation. Above, from across Fifth Avenue; below, from the grounds of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial. Old Pa Pitt took these pictures with a Kodak Retinette, which comes close to his ideal of the perfect 35-millimeter camera.

    Pittsburgh Athletic Association and cannon

  • Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association, Oakland

    Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association

    If your club was prospering, you could have a clubhouse by Benno Janssen, Pittsburgh’s favorite club architect. Among the club buildings he designed that are still standing we may mention the Twentieth Century Club, the Keystone Athletic Club, the Pittsburgh Athletic Association, the Masonic Temple, and this one, a cultural and athletic center that was one of the ancestors of today’s Jewish Community Center. Like several of Janssen’s other club buildings, this one, built in 1924, takes the form of a Renaissance palace. The building now belongs to Pitt, of course, which calls it Bellefield Hall and still keeps up its splendid indoor swimming pool.

    Inscription

    The university has glassed in the huge arch that forms the main entrance; old Pa Pitt has ruthlessly manipulated this picture to bring the inscription out from behind the glass.

    Cartouche

    Father Pitt imagines the sculptor, having worked months to intertwine the letters Y, M, W, and H in this artistic cartouche, proudly presenting his work to Mr. Janssen and being told, “You left out the A.”

    With fountain in foreground

    A view of the building from Heinz Chapel’s new formal garden across the street.

  • Terra-Cotta Decorations on the Buhl Building

    Terra cotta

    The Buhl Building, an earlier work of Benno Janssen, is covered with Wedgwood-style terra-cotta decorations. Below, the Market Street end of the building.

    Buhl Building
    Terra cotta