Father Pitt

Tag: Classical Architecture

  • Three Houses by U. J. L. Peoples on Negley Avenue

    907–917 North Negley Avenue

    Three similar houses in a row, Pittsburgh Foursquares with dignified classical detailing, and all three in beautiful shape. Father Pitt has was told by the owner of one of them, an architect and community activist, that they were designed by Ulysses J. L. Peoples.

    909 North Negley Avenue

    Although the houses clearly go together, window placements and other details vary.

    917 North Negley Avenue
    Ionic capitals

    “Modern Ionic” capitals—the kind where the volutes (the spiral things) stick out at the four corners, as opposed to classical Ionic capitals, which are meant to be seen from the front and have pairs of volutes rolled up like a scroll.

    917 North Negley Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    Comments

  • Homer Apartments, Highland Park

    Homer apartments

    A trio of bay-fronted apartment buildings on Jackson Street. The design is not out of the ordinary, but it is a neat and elegant implementation of the ordinary. The bays, as Father Pitt likes to point out, are not mere decoration: they really do suck in the light, which is valuable for people who like natural light.

    Homer No. 2
    Entrance
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
    Comments

  • Silent-Era Theater in Carrick

    1732 Brownsville Road

    This building shows up as a theater on a 1916 map, and that is all Father Pitt knows about it.

    The intersection of Brownsville Road and Narrow Avenue (now Newett Street) in 1916.

    It is not documented at Cinema Treasures, where theater fanatics have catalogued 178 theaters in Pittsburgh, or at the expiring and impossible-to-navigate Carrick-Overbrook Wiki, so it may not have lasted very long as a theater. (And Father Pitt is only making the assumption that it was a movie theater rather than a live theater or vaudeville house, because the latter seems much less likely for the era and place.) If anyone from the neighborhood knows the story of this building, the information will be received with gratitude. The building is well kept: it has been updated just enough to be useful to its current tenant without destroying the original design of the exterior.

    Old theater in Carrick
    Perspective view

  • The Howard, the Delaware, and the Norfolk, Highland Park

    Howard, Norfolk, and Delaware from up the street

    When we last saw this triple building, it was getting a fresh coat of paint. The new color scheme looks much better, and old Pa Pitt offers his congratulations to the people with taste at Mozart Management.

    The Norfolk

    The three connected buildings were put up in 1901 as the Howard, the Delaware, and the Norfolk, and we can just barely make out the ghosts of the inscriptions above the entrances. The architect was William E. Snaman.1 The Norfolk, above, preserves the original appearance. In the other two, the balconies have been filled in to make closets, and they looked forbiddingly blank with the old paint scheme; the more artistic new scheme at least emphasizes the surviving trim.

    Eaglemoor Apartments
    Pediment of the Norfolk
    The Howard, the Delaware, and the Norfolk
    1. Source: Pittsburg Post, September 25, 1900. “It developed yesterday that ex-Mayor Bernard McKenna and a syndicate of local capitalists will be the owners of the three apartment houses now in course of erection in the Highland avenue residence district, particulars of which were announced in this column last week. They were designed by Architect William E. Snaman, and the contract for their erection has been let to L. E. Umstead, of Allegheny. Each will stand on a lot 40×100 feet each at Highland avenue and Bryant street, and will be of brick and stone, and three stories high. When completed and ready for occupancy the houses will represent an investment of over $100,000.” Thanks to David Schwing for finding the clipping. ↩︎
    Comments

  • Carrick Municipal Building

    Carrick Municipal Building

    Carrick became a borough in 1904, and for this little all-in-one borough building hired the big-deal architect Edward Stotz.1 It must have created an impression of prosperity when it was built in 1905, and it still looks solid and respectable today, one year short of a century after the people of Carrick voted for the borough to be annexed by the city of Pittsburgh in 1926. It has been converted into a retail store, and the huge second-floor window makes an excellent display for the current tenant.

    Inscription: “Erected 1905 / Borough of Carrick / Incorporated June 21, 1904”
    Carrick Municipal Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The building originally had an elaborate baroque crest that has been shorn off. We can see it in this picture, where the municipal building appears behind the Carrick Hotel:

    Found at the Carrick-Overbrook Wiki.
    Comments

  • Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co., Squirrel Hill

    Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co.

    You could count on architect Press C. Dowler for the bankiest-looking banks. The correct Ionic front of this one looks almost exactly the way he drew it, as we can see from the architect’s rendering that was published in the Press on February 8, 1931.

    Press C. Dowler’s rendering of the Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co.

    It seems to old Pa Pitt that the mark of a Dowler bank is correct classical detail combined with a lack of fussiness. There is never too much detail. But he takes the details seriously. In other buildings he was already adopting Art Deco and modernist styles, but a bank needed to look traditional and timeless—especially in the Depression. For other Dowler bank designs, see the Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company and the Braddock National Bank.

    Comments

  • Highland Building, East Liberty

    Highland Building, East Liberty
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    A long view down Baum Boulevard. This is the only remaining skyscraper in East Liberty. Another of about the same dimensions, designed by Frederick Osterling, used to stand next to it, but was torn down for a one-storey bank, which in turn was abandoned for years and then torn down for a six-storey apartment block with storefronts—East Liberty’s history as a neighborhood epitomized in one lot. The skyscraper apartment buildings designed by Tasso Katselas in the “urban renewal” years are also gone. This one, designed by Daniel Burnham, has Burnham’s usual elegant classicism. In some ways Burnham was one of the most adventurous architects the United States ever produced, but part of the secret to his success was his ability to use the most modern technology to please the most conservative taste.

    Comments

  • South Hills Trust Company, Mount Washington

    South Hills Trust Company Building

    Built as a bank and still operating as a bank, this is a little building that gets the message right. It did not have the budget for stone, but the blond Kittanning brick gives it the color of stone, and the simple classical arches convey the impression of a rich and substantial bank where your money will be safe.

    Note how the definition of “South Hills” has changed since this bank was built on Shiloh Street, just a block back from Grandview Avenue.

    Entrance
    Key Bank on Mount Washington
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    Comments

  • Presbyterian Hospital, Allegheny Center

    Presbyterian Hospital

    Built in 1906, this was the main building of Presbyterian Hospital until it moved to vastly larger facilities in Oakland in the 1930s. The building was later part of Providence Hospital, and now is used for offices.

    Presbyterian Hospital
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285.
    Comments

  • Arch Street, North Side

    Arch Street

    Arch Street, which is now included in the Mexican War Streets despite not bearing the name of a battle or a general, is a typical North Side combination of dense rowhouses, small apartment buildings, and backstreet stores. Here are just a few sights within one block of the street.

    1225 Arch Street

    An exceptionally elaborate Queen Anne house whose owner has used bright but well-chosen colors to emphasize the wealth of detail on the front.

    1300 and 1228

    Two modest houses from before the Civil War; the brick house at left is dated 1842.

    1301 Arch Street

    A small apartment building with a well-balanced classical front.

    1301
    Front door

    Some fine woodwork surrounds a front door.

    1320

    The colorful dormer steals the show, but enlarge the picture to appreciate the terra-cotta grotesques on the cornice.

    1322

    This little building looks as though it dates from the 1920s. Although it is quite different in style from its neighbors, it fits harmoniously by sharing the same setback and similar height.

    1327

    A backstreet grocery that is currently functioning as a backstreet grocery—an unusual phenomenon in city neighborhoods these days. The apartment building above it has some interesting and attractive brickwork.

    1327
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    Comments