Father Pitt

Tag: Classical Architecture

  • Larimer School

    Larimer School

    For forty years this school stood abandoned and rotting. The main building, put up in 1896, was designed by Ulysses J. Lincoln Peoples, who also designed an addition in 1904 for the rapidly growing neighborhood. An auditorium-gymnasium addition was designed by George M. Rowland in 1931. The school closed in 1980, and then it just sat while the neighborhood crumbled around it.

    Photo by Lee Paxton, 2011
    Photo by Leepaxton at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    This is how the school looked in 2011, when the indefatigable Lee Paxton, who photographed nearly every Pittsburgh landmark for Wikipedia, stopped to snap its picture. But look at that same Larimer Avenue façade today:

    Larimer Avenue façade

    Doesn’t that make you happy?

    Sign for Ora Lee Carroll House at Cornerstone Village

    The restoration was done as part of the huge Cornerstone Village housing development, a mixed-housing community that has brought attractive new housing to long-neglected Larimer. All the beautiful details that Mr. Peoples, Mr. Rowland, and dozens of nameless craftsmen left for us have been scrupulously preserved, cleaned, and made to look almost new.

    Larimer Avenue end

    This is the Larimer Avenue end of the building, which has a grand entrance—but not the grandest entrance.

    Larimer Avenue entrance
    Larimer Avenue entrance
    Larimer Avenue façade

    Around the corner on Winslow Street is the original main entrance to the 1896 building.

    Winslow Street entrance
    Winslow Street entrance

    But even this is not the grandest entrance.

    1904 addition

    In 1904, an addition was built to the southeast of the main building. A new entrance was built linking the main building to the addition, and this is the grandest entrance.

    Entrance
    Entrance
    Balcony above the entrance

    When he was heading for Larimer, old Pa Pitt somehow walked out of the house without any long lenses. He will have to return soon to pick out those very amusing bracket heads, which he suspects were done by the same sculptor who did the whimsical decorations for the Western Theological Seminary. But the picture above is 20 megapixels, so if you enlarge it you will see a fair amount of detail. You will also see raindrops, because it was raining by the time Father Pitt got to the school, but he was not going to let mere weather deter him.

    Tympanum

    The child on the right is regrettably not the first or last to have lost his head when he went to school.

    Auditorium

    In 1931, an auditorium and gymnasium addition was designed by George M. Rowland. By that time styles had changed considerably. Rowland stuck to the classical idiom, but chose the simpler Doric order rather than the more florid Ionic and Corinthian of the original school and addition, and flavored the front with a dash of Art Deco.

    Front of the auditorium
    Sony Alpha 3000, Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S9.
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  • Old St. Joseph’s School and Convent, Manchester

    St. Joseph’s School and Convent

    The newer Saint Joseph School was built just after the Second World War; this one, however, predates St. Joseph’s Church. Old maps show a frame building here in 1882, and a brick one of the same dimensions in 1890; either this building replaced an older one at some point in the 1880s, or the frame building was shrouded in brick. The restrained classicism is unusual for the era; old Pa Pitt does not know how much the building has changed from its original state.

    Entrance
    St. Joseph’s School
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Alpha Apartments, Homewood

    Alpha Apartments

    This apartment building with Renaissance details was built in about 1905. The architect was A. E. Linkenheimer,1 about whom old Pa Pitt knows very little so far.

    Alpha Apartments

    The name of the building is interesting, because it is the name of a project that was planned at about the same time nearby at the intersection of Penn and East End Avenues, where Titus de Bobula was to supervise an immense $600,000 Alpha Apartment Hotel. That project fell through; at the moment Father Pitt does not know that the name was anything more than coincidence.

    Alpha Apartments
    Front entrance

    This building is under sentence of condemnation, but it does not appear to be in such bad shape that it could not be rescued. Homewood is not rich, but there has been some renovation going on in nearby streets.

    Alpha Apartments

    The Braddock Avenue side has its own neatly symmetrical façade.

    Rear section
    Side entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • First National Bank Building, Wilkinsburg

    First National Bank Building

    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.

    Front elevation
    First National Bank Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20 EXR.
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  • Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women, Lincoln–Lemington–Belmar

    Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women

    Dedicated in 1901, this was an institution created by and for Black women, though it had financial support from some of Pittsburgh’s wealthy White families. After the Home closed, it was a Baptist church for a while; but now it is vacant and slowly decaying. We hope something can be done to rescue it, because it has a fascinating story to tell—in fact, many fascinating stories.

    Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women

    The home was a comfortable place for women who had no family to support them: it had beautiful appointments inside and spacious grounds outside. A long article in the Pittsburg Post for August 25, 1901, described the institution and its new home, and introduced us to some of the ladies who would be living there. We’ll transcribe the whole article down below the pictures.

    Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women
    Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women
    The article from the Post follows.

  • Ross Pumping Station at the Waterworks

    Ross Pumping Station with decorations

    Thomas Scott designed this palatial waterworks, which stands in a little enclave of the city of Pittsburgh on the north shore of the Allegheny just outside Aspinwall. As he did with the Mission Pumping Station on the South Side Slopes, he decorated this one with elaborate grotesque heads and other classical effusions.

    Ross Pumping Station
    Ross Pumping Station
    Pediment
    Terra-cotta head
    Lion brackets
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ross pumping station
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Entrance to the Oliver Building

    Entrance to the Oliver Building

    Impressive fat columns tell us that this is a colossal building even if we’re too close to see how colossal it really is. The architect was Daniel “Make No Little Plans” Burnham.

    Perspective view
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
    Comments

  • Corinthian Capitals on the Benedum-Trees Building

    Three Corinthian capitals
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Oliver Building from Mellon Square

    Oliver Building with fountains of Mellon Square in foreground
    Composite of two photos from the Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

  • SS. Peter and Paul Greek Catholic Church, Braddock

    SS. Peter and Paul Church

    This grand Byzantine church, built in 1923, is set on a steep slope on an implausibly tiny street. Its congregation is still going: for cultural and administrative reasons, Eastern churches tend to continue long after their Western neighbors have thrown in the towel. The church itself was modeled after the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, which also served as the model for St. John the Baptist in Munhall; but the architect of this one, W. Ward Williams,1 took his model more literally than Titus de Bobula did. Curiously enough the church in Ukraine has the same kind of slope to deal with, as we see in this picture by Raimond Spekking:

    Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, by Raimond Spekking
    © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
    Cornerstone with dates of 1896 and 1923
    Pediment

    The pediment is strictly classical, Doric rather than the Corinthian of its model, with the inscription “Russian Greek Catholic Church of SS. Peter and Paul.”

    Tower
    SS. Peter and Paul Church
    1. Source: Proposals, Pittsburg Press, May 26, 1922, p. 38. “Proposals are invited from building contractors for the erection of a fireproof church building to be erected for SS. Peter and Paul Greek Catholic church. George st., Braddock, Pa. Bids are to be made on forms as furnished by the Architect, W. Ward Williams…” In the original version of the article, we did not know the architect, but a lucky item buried in a correspondence from David Schwing sent us on a long chase, and we finally cornered Mr. Williams. ↩︎