Seen here from up the street at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Craig Street.
We have more pictures of Webster Hall, including some of the decorative details.
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Webster Hall, Oakland
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Penn Water Company Building, Wilkinsburg
J. H. Giesy was the architect of this little utility-company palace, built in 1916.1
The relief in the shield is so shallow that it has eroded to near invisibility. It looks to old Pa Pitt like an allegorical figure pouring out water, but he is happy to be corrected by someone with a better eye or more accurate information.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. We have more pictures of the Penn Water Company from a year ago, before the doorway got its coat of fluorescent aqua.
- American Contractor, October 16, 1915, p. 58. “Office Bldg.: 2 sty. & bas. 50×100. $20M. Wilkinsburg, Pa. Archt. J. H. Giesey, Mellon Bank bldg., Pittsburgh. Owner Penn Water Co., Oliver bldg., Wilkinsburg. Bids in; will soon let contr. Brk.” ↩︎
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Apartment Building by Frederick Scheibler, Park Place
Before he fell under the spell of the European modernists, Frederick Scheibler had already developed his own distinct version of the classical style. Even if he had never progressed beyond the early style we see in this building from 1903, we would still think he was one of our more interesting minor architects.
The two-storey porch with a balcony dangling between the colossal columns is unusual—but not unprecedented. The Ruskin Villa apartment building in Wilkinsburg uses exactly the same idea, and in many other ways is similar to this building. In construction listings, L. A. Raisig was named as the architect of that building, which went up just a few months before Raisig took on young Frederick Scheibler as a partner. Father Pitt’s probably unprovable hypothesis is that Scheibler was already working for Raisig, and Raisig assigned the Ruskin Villa to him. This building in Park Place, then, would be a case of Scheibler adapting and refining ideas he had already worked out three years earlier.
Sony Alpha 3000.
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Park Place School
Ellsworth Dean designed this school, built in 1903. The rich cinnamon brick—actually made of several related colors of brick—still looks dignified today. The school is now the primary school for the Environmental Charter School.
This year’s garden emphasizes native American crops, including corn and Echinacea purpurea.
Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. We have more pictures of the Park Place School in the winter, including a complete front elevation.
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Sterrett School, Point Breeze
Edward J. Carlisle designed this school, built in 1898, when it was in the vanguard of the new White City classical style for schools in Pittsburgh.
At first you might take it for a stone building, but the walls are actually of stone-colored brick. At some point in the 1960s, the big front windows were partly filled in, but otherwise the school is in good shape.
Lush plantings of trees make it impossible to see the whole front at once, but make for very pleasant grounds.
A plaque commemorates World War I soldiers from the community. The names will all be legible if you enlarge the picture.
The side entrances are near-duplicates of the front entrance.
The school has always kept a public garden, which is delightfully crowded with a wide variety of plants from native to tropical.
From the tropics, we have an Alocasia; behind it, the very native Joe-Pye-Weed.
Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. Milkweeds for our butterfly friends.
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Werner Building, East Liberty
Frederick Sauer was the architect of this ornate commercial palace, built in 1908. It is covered in white enameled terra-cotta ornaments that give it a sense of opulence above its budget.
We also have some earlier pictures of the Werner Building and some remarks on its history.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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First National Bank, Indiana
A fine classical bank adapted as the headquarters of the Indiana County Tourist Bureau. The interior is well preserved, except for a partition behind the teller counters that obscures some of the intended symmetry of the design.
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Midtown Building, Indiana
With five floors in a base-shaft-cap formula, this imposing classical building is the closest thing downtown Indiana has to a traditional skyscraper.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Carl Building (Shields Building), Wilkinsburg
Designed in 1902 by the Beezer Brothers, this was Wilkinsburg’s contribution to the early skyscraper age. It was put up for Leopold Vilsack, a real-estate investor who was also one of the founders of the Iron City brewery. He named it for his son Carl; later it became known as the Shields Building.
Pittsburgh Gazette, April 12, 1902, p. 8. When it was announced, the building was to have eight floors. One floor fell away between initial design and construction.
The building is now apartments. The base has been refurbished with a simpler and more abstract design that hardly registers as different from the original until we look at it closely.
The cap is festooned with elaborate Baroque terra-cotta ornaments.
Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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Horner School, Wilkinsburg
Alden & Harlow were the architects of this classically symmetrical school, which was built in 1926. Alden had died in 1908, and Harlow had only another year to live (he died in 1927); it seems that by this time much of the design work in the firm was done by Howard K. Jones. The school now is kept in good shape as the home of various community services.
The 1920s were in the middle of the golden age of terra-cotta ornament.
The architects had a typically Pittsburghish lot to deal with, so the school has four floors above ground on the Wallace Avenue front and two in the rear on North Avenue.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. The North Avenue entrance is reached by a bridge over a sort of trench that exposes the windows of the floor below.
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