The intersection of Maryland and Ellsworth Avenues in Shadyside is flanked by apartment buildings with distinctive rounded corners. Above, the Panama. Below, a building that must have looked very modern when it was put up (probably around 1920); it seems to have no name but its addresses.
A small but substantial Gothic church that could easily pass for a church from any other denomination.
We looked at the Church of the Ascension a little while ago. Here is a view of the entire south side of it that took twelve individual photographs to capture. That is the kind of effort old Pa Pitt is willing to put into documenting his city’s architecture for you, his beloved readers. The whole picture is nearly 11 megabytes, so don’t click or tap on it if you’re on a metered connection.
The Church of the Ascension was designed by William Halsey Wood, a master of Gothic architecture who died very young, at 41, but nevertheless left a substantial body of work. Here he seems to have concentrated his efforts on the massive tower.
Compare these recent pictures to the Father Pitt’s pictures of the same church in 2013.
This exceptionally fine country house on Ellsworth Avenue has been absorbed by the city, but maintains its rural dignity. It was built just after the Civil War in about 1870, and all the best features of the era are represented—generous porch, huge tall windows, and a dignified but not monotonous simplicity of form.
A simple modernist brick box is given an Art Deco flair by distinctively patterned brickwork.
This would be a fairly ordinary building, in what we might perhaps call Renaissance style, except for its curious Art Nouveau ornamentation.
