Father Pitt

Tag: Fairy-Tale Style

  • St. Mark’s School, McKees Rocks Bottoms

    St. Mark’s School

    This is a Catholic school with more than the usual touch of whimsy. Old Pa Pitt does not yet know the architect, but whoever it was decided to make a school that would strike its pupils as something out of a fairy tale. [Update: We have found that the architects were the well-known Link, Weber & Bowers, “Link” being A. F. Link and “Weber” being Edward Weber.1] It is sadly vacant and decaying right now, although at least the grounds are kept. The cornerstone tells us that the building was begun in 1928:

    Cornerstone

    Since old Pa Pitt considers this school endangered, he has many pictures to show you, so the rest will be behind a “read more” link to avoid cluttering the front page for a week.

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  • Frick Park Gatehouse

    Frick Park gatehouse

    This looks exactly like the gateway to a world of sylvan rest and rustic pleasure that it was meant to be. In passing we note that the gatehouse is actually a building, with a room on either side of the gate: we used to have staff to sit here and tend to park visitors’ needs.

    Front of the gatehouse

    The architect was a big deal for such a small structure: John Russell Pope. He had some famous commissions in Washington (that’s Big Worshington to residents of the South Hills): the Jefferson Memorial, the National Gallery of Art, Constitution Hall, and the National Archives, among other buildings. In Pittsburgh he is best known for the colossal Winter mausoleum at Allegheny Cemetery.

    Map showing the location of this gatehouse.

  • Hampton Hall, Oakland

    Hampton Hall from the front

    According to a city architectural inventory (PDF), Hampton Hall was built in 1928, and the architect was H. G. Hodgkins, who seems to have been based in Chicago, to judge by listings in Chicago trade magazines that show up in a Google Books search.

    The interior includes quite a bit of Nemadji tile, and old Pa Pitt had never heard of Nemadji tile until he found this page on Hampton Hall from a site of Historic U. S. Tile Installations. The exterior is fairy-tale Tudor, designed to make apartment dwellers feel as though they were great lords of Queen Elizabeth’s time.

    A bear

    The entrance is flanked by bears holding shields, as bears are wont to do.

    An equal and opposite bear
    Inscription
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ornament and tile
    Oblique view

  • Apartment Building in Carrick

    Carrick apartment building

    A fine example of the fairy-tale fantasy style that was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. The roof would probably have been green tile originally.

    The same building with a different camera