This little library was the second of Carnegie’s branch libraries, after the one in Lawrenceville; like all the original branch libraries, it was designed by Alden & Harlow.
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Carnegie Library, West End Branch
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How to Improve a Design by Alden & Harlow
Here is how the Land Trust Company building (later the Commercial National Bank) looked in 1905:
From Palmer’s Pictorial Pittsburgh. And here is how it looks today:
Much better, isn’t it?
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Six Stories Addition to House Building
From The Builder, April 1904. The design of the House Building, with its unusual middle section, is explained by the fact that the upper six floors were added some time after the lower seven were put up. This rendering shows the cornice and parapet at the top, without which the building looks a little too casual.
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Soldiers and Sailors Hall with Memorial Dog Tags
Each of the 7,053 dog tags represents one soldier fallen in the War on Terrorism, defined as all the battles since September 11, 2001.
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Completing Plans for Hebrew Institute
From The Construction Record, September 26, 1914. The building was put up the next year, and still stands almost exactly as Mr. Cohen designed it.
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Highland Building in Evening Sun
The Highland Building looms behind the tiny shops of Ellsworth Avenue.
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Stevenson Building, East Liberty
Update: More recent research finds that the architect O. M. Topp was hired for a building at this site in 1927, but Father Pitt does not yet know whether it was a complete replacement of the Proctor building or merely some renovations. The article as originally written follows.
This classical building was designed (in 1896) by architect William Ross Proctor to preside over this corner as if it owned both streets. By placing the entrance at the corner, Mr. Proctor refuses to decide whether the building is on Centre or Highland. “Both,” says that entrance.
Look up as you pass to appreciate the elaborate detail of the cornice.
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East Liberty YMCA
This glorious Renaissance palace was built in 1910; the architect was Thomas Hannah, who also gave us the Keenan Building. It is now a hotel.
Addendum: Here is a picture of the building when it was freshly built, from the June 1914 issue of The Builder, which is devoted to works of Thomas Hannah. The long side faced open space in those days.
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Peoples Trust Company of Pittsburgh at Twilight
This rich little Beaux-Arts bank on Carson Street at 18th Street was built in 1902. We have a daylight picture of the Peoples Trust Company of Pittsburgh building from the same angle.
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St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral
Built in 1904 as the First Congregational Church, this building had a surprisingly short life with its original congregation; the Congregationalists left in 1921, and the Greek Orthodox congregation bought it in 1923. The church became a cathedral when Pittsburgh was elevated to a diocese. The architect was Thomas Hannah, who was at home in both classical and Gothic idioms. Here he went all in for classical, producing an ostentatiously Ionic front that looks like a Greek temple—which, oddly, is a style a Greek Orthodox congregation would never choose for its church if it were building one from scratch.
