On the southeast side of Voelkel Avenue in Dormont are three eye-catching apartment buildings. Since patterned brickwork was a favorite trick of Charles R. Geisler, the most prolific designer of apartment buildings in Dormont and Mount Lebanon, old Pa Pitt suspects he was responsible (but of course would be happy to be contradicted by someone with real information). The building above has kept its original art glass in the stairwell, but the front windows of the apartments have been replaced with modern picture windows.
This one has a different configuration of apartment windows, possibly more like the original. It has lost its art glass in the stairwell, however.
The entrance to the D’Alo, on the corner of Voelkel and Potomac Avenues.
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
Across the street are two smaller apartment buildings with a similar riot of patterned brick. We suspect Geisler has struck again.
In spite of considerable alteration, much of what makes this building on McCoy Road distinctive has been preserved. Most noticeable, of course, is the patterned brickwork that reminds old Pa Pitt of some buildings known to have been designed by Charles Geisler, prolific architect of small and medium-sized apartment and commercial buildings. He was also fond of this style of roof, which would originally have been covered with tile. And Father Pitt thinks the slightly clashing juxtaposition of a round arch in the middle with extremely broad Jacobean arches is also very Geislerian.
The building was originally a store with two apartments above; the store has been filled in with Permastone (or the equivalent) and made into a third apartment.
Mother of Sorrows Church was sold to a nondenominational congregation some time ago, and when Father Pitt took these pictures some maintenance work was being done, so we hope the building will stand for a long time to come. But old Pa Pitt misses the original parish for one very selfish reason: every year it had a festival, and every year it advertised the festival with banners stretched across Island Avenue at the bottom of the hill proclaiming in big, cheery letters, “MOTHER OF SORROWS FESTIVAL!” If Father Pitt had known the parish was closing, he would have bought those banners and donated them to the History Center.
Note the round apse in the rear.
The rectory was built from matching Kittanning brick; a later extension just about doubled the size of it.
The rectory was connected to the church by this little infill decorated with patterned brickwork.
The tower terminates in a cross-topped dome teetering on the brink of Art Deco.
West Park is a pleasant neighborhood in Stowe Township and McKees Rocks, whose absurd border runs diagonally through the neighborhood, slicing through a number of buildings along the way. If you wander through the area, as old Pa Pitt was doing the other day, you will doubtless be struck by a certain characteristic look of the architecture around you. A surprisingly large number of buildings are decorated with patterned brickwork in hand-me-down Art Nouveau patterns. There is also a strong preference for the buff and yellowish shades of Kittanning brick. We suspect that one or two very local architects were responsible for most of these buildings, which give the neighborhood such a distinctive look that you could probably guess where you were right away if you woke up on Broadway Avenue with no memory of how you got there.
Father Pitt was taken with this distinctive corner entrance.
This terrace is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. It seems to have been build a little after 1923, filling in a gap between two existing terraces (both of them in buff Kittanning brick). There was room for seven houses in the row, from which the architect created an impression of four-part symmetry. Mathematically and geometrically, it is an impressive feat.
The decorations are also remarkable. The buff-brick stripes certainly stand out (and remind us of several other buildings we’ve seen above), and the Stars of David are, as far as Father Pitt knows, unique in Pittsburgh rowhouses. Father Pitt does not know the history of these houses, but he does note that they are an easy stroll from a large Jewish cemetery.
Almost all the decorative effect of this building is achieved by arranging bricks in different ways. The original windows in the upper floors also have a part to play in the rhythm of the design: it would not be nearly as effective if they were replaced with single panes of plate glass.
Father Pitt does not know the history of this building, and would be delighted to be informed. A real-estate site says it was built in 1920. It is residential now, but it has the look of a club. That impression is strengthened by the brickwork double-headed eagle at the peak of the Ella Street front. Old Pa Pitt is ashamed to admit that he didn’t notice the eagle when he hurriedly snapped these pictures on his way between the Ukrainian National Home and St. Mark’s School, but you can see it pretty well if you enlarge the picture above, and it is a clever bit of bricklaying. The eagle’s heads seem to be sharing some sort of military cap. Was this an Albanian or Serbian club? (Update: We have heard from the McKees Rocks Historical Society that this was indeed Serbian, which explains the double eagle.)
The windows were arched originally; the arches have been bricked in so that the windows could be replaced with cheap stock models.
The two-storey section at the rear is a later addition, after 1923 to judge by old maps; it may have been added when the club was converted to a residence. The bricks are carefully matched to make the link between the parts seamless. The tops of the doorways, however, seem to have been bricked in at different times, one of them with almost-but-not-quite-matching brown bricks, and the other with ordinary red bricks.
Charles W. Bier was a fairly successful Pittsburgh architect, especially busy with medium-sized churches, who flirted with Art Nouveau in the days before the First World War, but retreated into a more traditional style in the 1920s (see, for example, his 1923 Mount Lebanon Methodist Episcopal Church). Here we find him at his most radically modern in a line of three identical double duplexes, built in about 1915 or 1916.1
These broad entrance arches with strong vertical lines show up on Mr. Bier’s churches of the period as well.
The geometrical brickwork ornaments remind us of the decorations in German art and architecture magazines of the period, and they may be where our architect got his ideas. (According to Martin Aurand, Frederick Scheibler took much inspiration from those German magazines, so they were available here.)
The building at the right end of the row seems to be stuck in the middle of a refurbishing project, with new windows installed and new wood framing inside. We hope the work can continue, because these three striking buildings really are unusual in Pittsburgh and ought to be preserved.
Source: The Construction Record, September 11, 1915: “Bids are in for the erection of three two-story brick veneered and hollow tile double duplex residences, on Murtland avenue and Idlewild street, for Mrs. W . J. Burkhard, Mrs. Josephine Friday and Mrs. Mary A. Saupp, Blackadore Avenue Extension. Cost $45,000. Plans by Architect Crarles [sic] Bier, Pittsburgh Life building.” ↩︎
The original school was designed by Samuel T. McClaren (or McClarren; we see it spelled both ways) in 1895. Over the decades it was encrusted with annexes and additions, until much of the original building was hidden behind later growths.
This is a small section of the original building peeking out between later additions. Note the tapestry brick on the second floor.
The care that went into designing and assembling this chimney ought to make us denizens of the twenty-first century ashamed of ourselves.
Annex No. 1 was built after 1903 but before 1910, obscuring the whole eastern side of the original building. This addition was probably also designed by McClaren, and matches the original very closely.
What is that little rectangular block of wood below the small central windows on the first floor?
It’s a sign, probably almost as old as the building to judge by the style of the lettering, and with some effort we can read almost all of it:
$10.00 REWARD. FOR THE ARREST AND CONVICTION OF ANY PERSON OR PERSONS FOUND GUILTY OF DESTROYING OR COMMITTING A NUISANCE ON THIS PROPERTY
Old Pa Pitt has not succeeded in deciphering the very last line, which probably tells us where to apply for our ten bucks.
In 1922, Annex No. 2 was built, obscuring the west side of the original building. Insofar as Pittsburgh topography allows, it is identical to Annex No. 1, but this time it is dated:
The difference in brickwork indicates that there were probably windows here originally.
What this town needs is more utility cables.
In 1958, the school got its last major addition, which covered most of the Davis Avenue front of the original building. By that time it was simply impossible to match the architecture of the original, but the architect made some attempt to echo it with similar Roman brick and three Rundbogenstil arched windows on the front. The brickwork here looks the same as the brick infilling of the windows in the annex above, which probably dates that work.
The school is still in use as Morrow Elementary School.
Here is another example of the odd whimsies that sometimes pop up as small apartment buildings. This is the storybook-cottage style that was popular for single-family houses in the 1920s and 1930s built up into a storybook castle. But the most remarkable thing about it is the deliberately random decorative brickwork. It reminds old Pa Pitt of something Frank Gehry would do.
This extreme randomness would probably not hold up the whole wall, so it is used only in the sort-of-half-timbered section above the entrance. But the rest of the brickwork was made as cartoonishly irregular as possible.
Some bricklayer had a lot of fun—or a lot of under-his-breath cursing—with this assignment. We note, however, that the balcony railings have been repaired. Perhaps they were originally wood, or perhaps the irregular brickwork proved less than sound.
