This building is about the same size as the houses on Glenmore Avenue, and it could easily pass for one of them. But a second glance makes it look a little less domestic and a little more institutional. And it has a cornerstone dating it to 1931, which is a very unusual detail for a private house.
Old Pa Pitt has walked past this building many times, and always meant to look into its history. His first guess was that it was a church, but in fact it was a high-toned women’s club where the female half of the cream of South Hills society met to plan schemes for the betterment of their community. A century ago we were a social nation of clubs and lodges and churches; today, almost all the clubs and lodges have disappeared, and the churches are struggling. But we have social media.
The building is now a training center for the Chartiers Center, an organization that helps adults with behavioral-health difficulties and intellectual and developmental disorders.
On 57th Street in Lawrenceville was a tight little community of Slovenians, known to their neighbors as Kreiners (from the German name of the Austrian province that is now Slovenia), who built a church, a school, and this Baroque clubhouse. Both this building and the parish school (now gone) were put up in 1911. We have not found an architect for this club yet, but the school was designed by Frederick Sauer; and, in a close ethnic community like this one, it is quite likely that the same people would hire the same architect—a guess made even more plausible by the buff Kittanning brick, Sauer’s favorite color.
The building suffered the usual fate of men’s clubs in Pittsburgh: all the windows were filled in with glass block. But in about 2017, after a period of abandonment, the building was renovated, and the windows were opened up again.
A photograph of the building just before its dedication appeared in the Press for May 28, 1911.
The dedication was a big deal, with a parade, speeches, and music by the city’s only Slovenian singing society. Here is how it was reported in the Kreiners section of the Pittsburg Press:
Tomorrow, May 29, will take place the dedication and opening of the Kreiner Slovenian Home erected at Butler and Fifty-seventh street, Pittsburg.
The home has been built at an expense of $30,000. The dedication of the Slovenic home will be attended by all the local Slovenic societies of Pittsburg and neighboring towns. A parade will start at 9:30 a. m. from the Slovenic hall on Fifty-seventh street, then go down Butler street to Fiftieth street, to Hatfield street then to Fortieth street as far as Arsenal park, whence the parade will return up Butler street to the Kreiner-Slovenic home on Fifty-seventh street.
The formal opening of the home then will take place. The first speaker will be Ferdinand Volk, the president of the Kreiner Slovenic Home, and several prominent Slovenians will follow him. The Slovenic singing society “Precern” will sing several Slovenic songs. The Fifty-seventh street, Pittsburg. The religious part of the dedication will be looked after by the Rev. J. C. Mertl, of the Slovenic Catholic Church of St. Mary, near Butler. The Kreiner-Slovenic Home is the largest Slovenic hall yet built in the United States. More than 1,000 visitors are expected to come to Pittsburg for the dedication of this building, which will be the meeting place of the Slovenians (Kreiners) in Pittsburg and neighboring towns.
It is very difficult to get a good look at this building, even in the winter, on account of the lush growth of woods that doubtless makes it a very pleasant place inside. Nevertheless, old Pa Pitt felt obliged to try, since it was one of the dwindling number of landmarks with no picture on Wikipedia’s List of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks. It was put up for a women’s club in 1940; the architects were Ingham & Boyd, who also designed Mount Lebanon High School around the corner (as well as all the other schools in Mount Lebanon). For this small clubhouse, they adopted a simplified Georgian style that made it a good neighbor on an otherwise residential street—and indeed it is now a private home.
Though it was later converted to other uses, this building began as an Odd Fellows lodge built in 1910, as we can see from the inscription at the top and the date on the cornerstone.
“I.O.O.F.” for “International Order of Odd Fellows.”
The honest Depression-era simplicity of this building, dated 1931 by the stone beside the front steps, is very attractive. The windows have been replaced; but they have not been blocked in, which sets this apart from almost every other men’s club in southwestern Pennsylvania. Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that there is a large and mostly windowless basement with separate entrances.
The former College Club, designed in 1931 by Lamont Button, now in use as Whitfield Hall of Carnegie Mellon University. This is a phone picture from a few weeks ago, with the usual exaggerated colors that come from using the default Samsung camera app. In fact old Pa Pitt toned down the radioactive greens considerably, but the picture still looks a bit clownish. However, the colors of the trees and bushes were at least almost as bright as they appear, and you might as well have the picture, clown makeup and all.
One of the first commissions for the new firm of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow in Pittsburgh was the Duquesne Club, which is still Pittsburgh’s most prestigious club. The brownstone Renaissance palace was put up in 1887–1889 and expanded later. Above, a composite picture made from six individual photographs.
The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was one of the most popular organizations in the golden age of lodges; this particular lodge seems to have been influential enough to have the street renamed for it. The same social forces that have diminished our other clubs and our churches have caused many of the Elks Lodges to close, and this building now belongs to a law firm.
Addendum: The architect was John H. Phillips of McKees Rocks, a prolific designer of schools and other public buildings in suburban boroughs. The lodge was built in 1911 to replace an earlier Elks Temple destroyed by fire. Source: “Proposed Temple of Carnegie Elks,” Gazette, June 18, 1911, where the architect’s rendering is printed.
Lamont Button, who made a specialty of high-class houses for the higher classes, designed this club for university women, which opened in about 1932. “It is planned to provide rooms on the second and third floors for college girls working in the city,” the Press reported. “The first floor will have a large social hall and tearoom. In the basement will be a main dining room and several smaller dining rooms. An auditorium seating 470 will be included in the plans.”
Today the building belongs to Pitt, but on the outside it has hardly changed from Button’s elegant design—a simplified, modernized Georgian that could hardly look out of place anywhere, and fits perfectly in the wildly diverse Craig Street streetscape.
If you had asked Pittsburghers a century ago what kind of neighborhood Bloomfield was, they would have told you it was a very German neighborhood, with a few Irish mixed in, and a little pocket of Italians starting to move in back near the tracks. Go back a bit further, into the late 1800s, and hardly an Italian name is to be seen among the property owners.
Here is a uniquely well-preserved relic of German Bloomfield, whose date stone tells is that it was built in 1882 as the Baum German Evangelical Protestant Congregation. It now belongs to a charity called Shepherd Wellness Community that keeps it in beautiful shape.
Now, if we turn around and look up the street, we’ll find something else uniquely well preserved in a different way.
This building has seen layers and layers of renovations and alterations, but it goes back to the 1880s, if we read our old maps right. It appears on an 1890 map as the Bloomfield Liedr. S. Society, and on a map from a decade later under the fuller name Bloomfield Lieder-Tafel Singing Society. And if you look on Google Maps, you will find that it still appears as the Bloomfield Liedertafel Singing Society. It is still a private club devoted to music—a social relic of German Bloomfield, still in its original building.
