Though the post office moved a few blocks away to an undistinguished modern building, this extravagant Beaux-Arts palace has fortunately been preserved.
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Old Braddock Post Office
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Telephone Exchange, Allegheny Center
Not only is this elegant palace of switching one of the few buildings left in Allegheny Center from before the great urban renewal of the 1960s, but it also preserves a memory of the extinct street layout of old Allegheny.
The architect was probably James Windrim of Philadelphia, who did most of the work for Bell of Pennsylvania in the first quarter of the twentieth century. His mission was to make these necessary industrial buildings ornaments to their neighborhoods, so that the telephone company would not face too much opposition. In the nineteenth century, it had been usual to put street signs on the corners of buildings; it was already a bit old-fashioned by the time this exchange was built, but several of the old Bell Telephone exchanges have them, and we suppose it was another way of making them seem like good neighborhood citizens. These streets no longer exist; the quarter-loop drive that turns around this corner is known as Montgomery Place.
Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Park Place School
For some reason, Park Place is one of those neighborhoods that have no official existence on city planning maps. It is counted as part of Point Breeze South, but there is a considerable gap between the rest of Point Breeze South and Park Place, which slops over into Wilkinsburg, thus becoming one of the rare neighborhoods that ignore city boundaries. In fact the border goes through a number of buildings and houses.
Ellsworth Dean was the architect of this Renaissance palace of education, which was built in 1903. It is now an “Environmental Charter School.” We assume that means children can have the unique experience of learning in an environment. (Actually, old Pa Pitt just looked up the school’s Web site, and now he is wishing there had been such things as Environmental Charter Schools when he was a tot back in pre-Revolutionary days.)
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Sony Alpha 3000.
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Garden Theater, North Side, at Night
The restoration of the Garden Theater, built in 1914 from a design by Thomas Scott, is nearly complete. The storefronts on North Avenue will be filled again for the first time in decades. Old Pa Pitt will try to get back when the rubbish bin is gone from the front, but these pictures give a good impression of how carefully the external appearance has been maintained and refreshed.
We also have pictures of the Garden Theater in the daylight.
Sony Alpha 3000.
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Old Allegheny Post Office
The Allegheny Post Office was built in 1897 under the reign of William Martin Aiken as Supervising Architect of the United States Treasury. In 1967, the post office moved out, and the building was scheduled for demolition to complete the modernist paradise of Allegheny Center. However, the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation scraped up the money and rescued it, using it as a Landmarks Museum for a while. Later, when the PHLF moved to Station Square, the building became the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, which has since gradually expanded to take over all three of the historic buildings left from the old center of Allegheny—the Post Office, Buhl Planetarium, and the Carnegie Free Library.
“Blue-hour” pictures are very fashionable these days. Old Pa Pitt can do them, too, but only a few at a time, because twilight refuses to stand still and have its picture taken for hours on end.
Sony Alpha 3000.
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Ira Bixler House, Schenley Farms
This Renaissance palace, built in 1919 for coal baron Ira Bixler, was designed by Alden & Harlow.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Metal Awning on the Oliver Building
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. It could use a lick of paint—which is odd on an otherwise beautifully maintained building—but this elaborate metal awning still makes a sight worth stopping to admire on Oliver Avenue.
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Terra-Cotta Front on Smithfield Street
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. The ground-floor storefront was replaced at some time in the modernist era, but the upper two floors preserve two-thirds of a fine terra-cotta front.
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Mellon National Bank Building
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. Trowbridge & Livingston, Andrew Mellon’s favorite architects, designed this block-long palace of finance. The legendary interior was destroyed in the 1990s for a blink-and-you-missed-it department store, but the exterior is almost completely unchanged from the day the building opened in 1925.
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Fifth Wood Building
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. George Schwan was the architect of this building, according to a city architectural survey. Its modernistic classicism makes it a good neighbor to a wide variety of architectural styles. From a distance, it gives us the impression of an all-stone building, but in fact the effect is achieved with a carefully balanced mixture of terra-cotta tiles and stone-colored brick.
More pictures of the Fifth Wood Building.
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