The splendid terra-cotta facing of the Maul Building is covered with ornaments that may have been standard catalogue items, but nevertheless show considerable artistic talent.
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Terra-Cotta Ornaments on the Maul Building
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Splendidly Victorian
Even on a splendidly Victorian street like Carson Street on the South Side, this building stands out as unusually ornate.
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Polithania State Bank
If you look up the word “Polithania” in your favorite search engine, you will find this building and nothing else. It was a bank and land office for Polish and Lithuanian immigrants (Poland and Lithuania have a long history of interconnection). Now it cleans teeth, but the original signs are still over the doors.
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Second Empire
The Second Empire style is named after the Second French Empire of Napoleon III. Its most obvious characteristic is the mansard roof with dormers, which supposedly arose in France because, in buildings that were taxed by their interior space, attics were not taxed, and the space under the roof counted as an attic no matter how accommodating it was. The building here at the corner of Carson and 18th Streets is a splendid example of the Pittsburgh implementation of the style.
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Storm Clouds Over the South Side
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First Ruthenian Church, South Side
This church was built as the First Ruthenian Church (a Presbyterian church for Ruthenian immigrants), and later became a Byzantine Rite church. Now, like many other things on the South Side, it’s a bar.
Addendum: The architect was Chauncey W. Hodgdon, whose churches were usually in the Gothic style, but who adopted a mixture of classical and Byzantine for this very unusual congregation.1
- Source: “More Work for Builders Made by the Architects,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, September 15, 1912, p. 36: “Bids will close early in the week on the erection of a one-story brick and stone church building, to be built on the Southside for the Ruthenian Church, of the Presbytery of Pittsburgh. Architect C. W. Hodgdon prepared the plans for the structure, which will be 32×66 feet, costing $25,000.” ↩︎
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House on Carson Street
Carson Street is the commercial spine of the South Side, but occasionally we run across a house left over from the time before Carson was almost exclusively commercial. Most of them have small offices on the ground floors now, but they retain their domestic external appearance. This house strikes Father Pitt as a halfway point between Second Empire and Italianate styles in local rowhouses; it’s notable for its prickly decorative ironwork on the roof.
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The Maul Building
The Maul Building at Carson and Seventeenth is noted for its ornate terra-cotta exterior. Unfortunately the cornice has been lost, but the rest of the building, which dates from 1910, is still one of Carson Street’s commercial treasures.
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Carnegie Library, South Side Branch
Alden and Harlow, Andrew Carnegie’s favorite architects, designed this branch library, as they did many others. This one opened in 1909.
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The History Behind the Façade
For years this building has been hidden behind a garish modernist façade. Renovation work shows us a modest mid-nineteenth-century building typical of old Birmingham, the narrow-streeted section of the South Side up to 17th Street.
Update: The building has been restored to something more like its original appearance.
