This would be an ordinary brick box, except that the main entrance has been grandified with two floors’ worth of Doric columns and an elaborate classical entrance, making the building look like a modernist apartment block that collided with a plantation house.
It seems that every few years old Pa Pitt points his camera at this building again (more pictures here and here). Its gaudy modernism appeals to him the way a colorful toy appeals to a five-year-old.
John A. Butz, the brother of the more productive Edward M. Butz, designed this apartment building, which was put up in 1912.1 Here we see it in the last rays of evening sun.
Addendum: Our correspondent David Schwing sends us this photograph of the Ellsworth that appeared in the Pittsburgh Post for September 28, 1915, before the building was obscured by trees and later buildings.
This building immediately struck old Pa Pitt as a Geisler & Smithyman sort of building, and in this case his instinct was correct. It was built in 1929, and Geisler & Smithyman were indeed the architects. The Geisler of the firm was the venerable Charles R. Geisler, who lived in Beechview and scattered medium-sized apartment buildings all over the Pittsburgh area.
The postwar boom was a very busy time for architects of apartment buildings, and Philip Friedman was probably the busiest of them all. Friedman seems to have owed his success to his willingness to make compromises when the client asked for them. Here we have Friedman at his most purely modernistic, borrowing the very practical cruciform plan from Le Corbusier—a plan that was getting a lot of publicity from its use in the Gateway Center development. But even here…
…the froufrou grapevine-pattern metalwork that holds up the porch roof, which seems quite out of character for the modern-to-the-max building, was probably the client’s idea.
Neal & Rowland (Joseph Ladd Neal and George M. Rowland) designed this church in the Norman Gothic style, as they described it, and it succeeds in creating the impression of a medieval parish church that grew organically out of the soil.
A sketch of the design was published in the Pittsburgh Gazette for September 22, 1902, and the church as it stands today is just about the same, except for a few small details that seem to have changed before construction began.
As the Gazette article explains, the Gothic design was a change of heart on the part of the congregation—an about-face that must have caused the architects no little consternation, and one that makes their accomplishment all the more praiseworthy.
The congregation of the First Unitarian church, now worshiping in the frame chapel in Craig street, opposite the Duquesne garden, will soon lay the cornerstone of their new church at the southeast corner of Ellsworth and Morewood avenues. This site was bought for $35,000 shortly after the present church property was sold as an addition to the new Catholic cathedral site. The new site faces 170 feet in Morewood avenue and 181 feet in Ellsworth avenue. It is opposite the Shadyside academy and adjoins the costly residence properties of Attorney General P. C. Knox and of Col. J. M. Schoonmaker.
The original plan of the trustees was to build a church of white Georgia marble after the Greek Doric Temple style, a decided innovation in Pittsburgh architecture. Later this plan was abandoned and the architects, Neal & Rowland, were instructed to make the design after the Norman Gothic model. The walls of the church will be of stone. It will have four gables and the conventional Norman tower at the corner. The audience room will sent 400 and the Sunday school rooms, which are separated from it by folding doors, will accommodate 150 more. The interior of the church is to be handsomely finished in hard wood with stained and art glass windows. On the outside an elaborate scheme of landscape work will make the site very attractive. The church will be set back 44 feet from Ellsworth avenue and the carriage entrance will be from Morewood avenue.
The First Unitarian congregation was organized in 1889 by the Rev. J. G. Townsend and was under the charge of the Rev. Charles E. St. John from 1891 to 1900. The Rev. L. Walter Mason, the present pastor, came to the charge in November, 1900, since which time the number of communicants has increased to 460. The congregation will continue to hold services in the present building until June 1, when it is expected the new edifice will be completed, at a cost of about $35,000.
In spite of the overoptimistic estimate in the article that the building would be completed in June of 1903, there were some delays: the cornerstone was laid in 1904.
Construction of the new addition was still finishing up when old Pa Pitt last visited. Here is a pile of stones.
More pictures of the Church of the Ascension, and some pictures of the church in 2013, when it still wore a coat of black.
The Church of the Ascension, an obviously prosperous Anglican congregation in Shadyside, has just finished a new narthex and several other improvements. The architects were Rothschild Doyno Collaborative.
No lights are hid under bushels here.
The new entrance was meant to be “welcoming and transparent.” It does not attempt to imitate the style of William Halsey Wood’s original design for the church, but it does use similar stone, so that it seems to belong to the church.
The cornerstone is the only direct imitation: it is patterned after the original cornerstone of the church.
Many of the apartment buildings in the East End sold a kind of architectural fantasy to prospective residents. The Georgian went the obvious step further and named itself after its own architectural style. It adapts Georgian elements with some success to the configuration of a large city apartment house, arranged around a pleasant garden court. The needs of the automobile, however, mean that the dominant impression as we read the name of the building in front is of a blank metal door. Father Pitt decided to crop out the garage door for the picture of the court below.
Colonial Place is one of those tiny enclaves all built at once in which Shadyside abounds. This one was built in 1898, and it is unique in that the entrance is flanked by two grand mansions.
George S. Orth was the architect of almost all the houses in Colonial Place. (See if you can guess which house old Pa Pitt thinks was not part of the original plan.) Mr. Orth had a prosperous career designing mansions for the wealthy, as well as some large institutions like the School for Blind Children. But he seems to have been forgotten faster than most Pittsburgh architects. He died in 1918; ten years later, when the architect George Schwan died at 55, his obituary in the Charette had to remind readers who Orth was: “He [Schwan] was trained in the office of George S. Orth, old time architect of Pittsburgh…” That is all the more remarkable because the Charette was the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, of all groups the one that would be most likely to remember George S. Orth.
At any rate, Colonial Place is still a remarkably pleasant little street. The landscaping was done by E. H. Bachman, and the sycamores he planted still shade the street in summer and make a striking avenue in the winter with their stark white branches and trunks.
This mansion is currently the residence of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Pittsburgh.
This one is currently for sale, and you can tour the interior on Google Street View (push the “Browse Street View images” standing-figure button to reveal little blue dots all over the house).
