Utility companies that wanted to infect neighborhoods with their frightful new technologies learned to turn to architects to send a message of polite respectability. The Duquesne Light Company still uses this little substation off Craig Street.
Homestead Park was originally a suburb of Homestead in Mifflin Township; it later became the upper part of Munhall Borough. This school (now just called Park Elementary School) has been built in multiple stages. The largest part, built in 1928, was designed by Adam G. Wickerham of Homestead,1 who combined enough traditional decoration to please conservative tastes with some interestingly modern ideas, like the stark second-floor cutout above the Cambria Street entrance.
A blank wall is enlivened by a bit of decorative brickery that must have been fun to plan, perhaps with the aid of children’s blocks.
The Main Street end of the school is earlier; it is probably the “addition” designed by Ulysses J. Lincoln Peoples in 1919.2
There is also a modernist section of the school, probably built in the 1960s, that old Pa Pitt didn’t capture, because he was stopping very briefly on his way from here to there. Maybe next time.
In spite of the ever-growing number of additions that obscure more and more of it, the original Presbyterian Hospital building is still a commanding presence in Oakland. It was built in 1926; the architect was E. P. Mellon, who flourished with his family connections: Presbyterian Hospital had strong ties to the Mellon family.
“The Kaufmann & Baer department store is an enormous shiny white terra cotta building, filled with windows and probably good for its purpose.” So the architect Aymar Embury II (did ever an architect have such an architecty name?) dismissed this building in his article about Pittsburgh architecture in 1915,1 when the building was new. It was put up for Kaufmann & Baer—the Kaufmanns being members of the same family as Morris Kaufmann, who ran that other department store with a similar name on Smithfield Street. Most older Pittsburghers remember it affectionately as the Gimbels Building, because Gimbels bought Kaufmann & Baer in 1925 and this building was Gimbels for most of its life as a department store. Starrett & Van Vleck, New York specialists in department stores, were the architects.
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.
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.
We have more pictures of the Penn Water Company from a year ago, before the doorway got its coat of fluorescent aqua.
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.
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.
We have more pictures of the Park Place School in the winter, including a complete front elevation.
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.
Milkweeds for our butterfly friends.
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.
