Father Pitt

Tag: Classical Architecture

  • Kinder Building, Allegheny West

    Kinder building

    Thomas Scott, who lived around the corner and designed some of the neighborhood’s best houses, was the architect of this Beaux Arts gem in the heart of the Allegheny West business district.1

    Entrance to the Kinder Building

    Scott was also the architect of the Benedum-Trees Building, and we can see the same extravagant but tasteful elaboration of ornament here on a smaller scale.

    Inscription: “Kinder”
    Kinder building, perspective view
    Canon PowerShot SX 150 IS.
    1. Source: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, January 27, 1904. “Mr. Joseph Kinder will erect a brick store and apartment house on Western avenue and Grant avenue, Allegheny, from plans prepared by Thomas H. Scott, Empire Building.” Grant Avenue is now Galveston Avenue. ↩︎

  • Old Coraopolis Municipal Building

    Inscription: Municipal Building

    Shoved against the hillside in Coraopolis, the old borough municipal building gains a floor’s worth of height from back to front. It had all the borough government services under one roof, including the police and fire departments. It now belongs to “Fabricator’s Forge,” a hobby and gaming emporium.

    Old Coraopolis Municipal Building
    Entrance
    Scallop frieze
    Roof ornament
    Entrance decorations from the side
    Perspective view
    Ghost sign: “Police Dept.”
    Fire-department end
    Coraopolis Fire Department
    Fire lantern
    Coraopolis Fire Department
    Fire tower on the old Coraopolis Municipal Building

    The Art Deco tiles on the fire tower make us suspect it was built or rebuilt later than the rest of the building.

    Fire tower

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm PinePix HS10.

  • House Building

    House Building

    This building was put up in two stages. It was built in 1902 as a seven-story building; two years later six more floors were added. Originally it had a cornice and a Renaissance-style parapet at the top, without which it looks a little unfinished.

    Six stories addition to House Building

    From The Builder, April 1904. The architect, as we see in the caption, was James T. Steen, who had a thriving practice designing all sorts of buildings, including many prominent commercial blocks downtown. This was probably his largest project.

    House Building (Four Smithfield Street)
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Ohio Valley Trust Company, Coraopolis

    Ohio Valley Trust Company

    A small but very rich classical bank still in use as a bank.

    Corner entrance
    Clock with zodiac

    The clock suggests that the bankers will consult an astrologer before investing your money.

    Ionic capital
    Trust

    Stock-photo sites will charge you good money for patently metaphorical pictures like these. Yet old Pa Pitt gives them to you for free, released with a CC0 public-domain donation, so there are no restrictions on what you can do with them.

    Trust
    Ohio Valley Trust Company

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285 (HDR stacks of three photographs); Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • Rear of the Federal Building

    Rear of the Federal Courthouse
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    A look behind the Post Office and Courts building, now the Joseph F. Weis U. S. Courthouse, shows how the building (originally designed by Trowbridge & Livingston, who also designed the Gulf Building across the street) was expanded in the early 2000s by filling in the light courts with surprisingly unobtrusive glass additions.

  • National Bank of Western Pennsylvania

    National Bank of Western Pennsylvania

    The Penn Avenue front is now a restaurant, but it would not be hard to guess from the Ninth Street side that this used to be a bank: the National Bank of Western Pennsylvania. Addendum: The architects were George S. Orth & Brother; the bank was built in about 1897.1

    National Bank of Western Pennsylvania
    1. Source: Pittsburg Post, May 22, 1896, p. 9. “D. H. Wallace yesterday broke ground at Sheridan, Center and Highland avenues for a $50,000 building. George S. Orth is the architect. The building will be three-storied, and on the first floor will be storerooms, with flats on the other floors.” ↩︎

  • Bell Telephone Building

    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    At the corner of Seventh Avenue and William Penn Place is a complicated and confused nest of buildings that belonged to the Bell Telephone Company. They are the product of a series of constructions and expansions supervised by different architects. This is the biggest of the lot, currently the 25th-tallest skyscraper in Pittsburgh, counting the nearly completed FNB Financial Center in the list.

    The group started with the original Telephone Building, designed by Frederick Osterling in Romanesque style. Behind that, and now visible only from a tiny narrow alley, is an addition, probably larger than the original building, designed by Alden & Harlow. Last came this building, which wraps around the other two in an L shape; it was built in 1923 and designed by James T. Windrim, Bell of Pennsylvania’s court architect at the time, and the probable designer of all those Renaissance-palace telephone exchanges you see in city neighborhoods. The style is straightforward classicism that looks back to the Beaux Arts skyscrapers of the previous generation and forward to the streamlined towers that would soon sprout nearby.

    Hidden from most people’s view is a charming arcade along Strawberry Way behind the building.

  • Niches on the College of Fine Arts Building, Carnegie Mellon University

    Henry Hornbostel designed the front of the Fine Arts Building with niches that display all styles of architectural decoration, and more practically give students a place to sit between classes. The niches have continued to accumulate sculpture in styles from all over the world. The whimsical figures in the Gothic niche may have been done by Achille Giammartini.

    Figure in first niche
    Figure in first niche
    Foliage with critters in first niche
    Lion eating an unfortunate Gothic figure
    Figure in first niche
    Figure in first niche
    Second niche

    In the classical niche, the three orders of Greek architecture: Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, demonstrated with correct proportions.

    Third niche
    Fourth niche
    Sculpture in Indian style, with Egyptian column

  • Penn Station

    Penn Station

    A Daniel Burnham masterpiece, fortunately preserved as luxury apartments (you have to go out back by the Dumpsters to catch a train). It was officially Union Station, but usually called Penn Station, since the railroads that were not owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad had their own separate stations.

    Union Station, Pittsburgh
    Penn Station
    Directly from the front
    Perspective view
    East Busway in front of Penn Station
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The East Busway runs right past the building on part of the original railroad right-of-way.

    We also have some close-up pictures of the terra-cotta decorations on Penn Station.

  • Mellon National Bank Building

    Mellon National Bank Building
    This picture has been manipulated on two planes to give the building a more natural perspective than is really possible in Pittsburgh’s narrow streets, at the cost of distorting a few other things.

    The Mellons ordered a bank that would convey the impression of rock-solid stability. It was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston, who would later design the even more imposing Federal Building and the Gulf Building, both also Mellon projects. (We call the Federal Building a Mellon project because Andrew W. Mellon was the Secretary of the Treasury who specified it and wrote his name on it in bronze.) It was a Lord & Taylor department store for about four years in the early 2000s, for which the splendid interior was mostly destroyed. Later, PNC took it over as a call center, and restored some of the bits of interior that were left.

    Inscription: Founded MDCCCLXIX—Chartered MDCCCCII; this building erected MDCCCCXXIII
    Entrance
    Copper cornice
    Light fixture
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.