Father Pitt

Tag: Clubs

  • Twentieth Century Club and Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Oakland

    Two great cultural institutions that vacated their landmark buildings for different reasons. The Twentieth Century Club, Pittsburgh’s premier women’s club, fell on hard times like most clubs in our antisocial twenty-first century. The Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, on the other hand, prospered and moved its collection to the Heinz History Center in the Strip. Old Pa Pitt is delighted to see that the old Historical Society building will soon be a Latin American Cultural Center, so that once again it will be a cultural landmark in Oakland.

    The Twentieth Century Club was designed by the prolific Benno Janssen.

    The Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania was by the firm of Ingham and Boyd.

  • Polish Falcons

    Polish Falcons hall

    It is now apartments, of course; the Polish Falcons have moved to more modest quarters just a few blocks away. A historical marker in front of the building recalls the visit of Paderewski, in his role as one of the founders of modern Poland (though he was probably in town to play at Carnegie Music Hall), to recruit for a Polish army to fight in the First World War and win independence for his long-oppressed country. A falcon still flies from the upper façade.

    Falcon

  • The Twentieth Century Club

    Like almost every other substantial building in this part of Oakland, the Twentieth Century Club—once Pittsburgh’s premiere women’s club—now belongs to the University of Pittsburgh. This picture was taken a little more than a year ago.


    Map

  • Pittsburgh Athletic Association

    The Pittsburgh Athletic Association, built in 1911, is Pittsburgh’s grandest clubhouse. (Not the richest, of course: that honor belongs to the Duquesne Club, the focus of all money and power in the city.) The architect was Benno Janssen, who was quite successful in Pittsburgh in the early 1900s. The club itself went bankrupt in 2017, but was able to make a deal to sell the building to investors who will allow them to occupy part of it. Now the building is getting a renovation.

  • Courtyard of the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club

    The Duquesne Club around the corner may be the center of power in Pittsburgh, but this more modest club also possesses some influence. The Alcoa Building (a bit of it is visible in the left background) actually has a notch cut out of it to avoid demolishing any of the club. The club seems to have been made from late-nineteenth-century rowhouses (back when there were still such things downtown), remodeled into a luxurious club in the 1930s.