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Skyscrapers in the Mist
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Between the Skyscrapers
A view from Fifth Avenue between Three and One PNC Plaza toward Two PNC Plaza and the K&L Gates Center.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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Fifth Avenue Place from Fifth Avenue
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Remodeling the May Building Annex
When Tasso Katselas designed the annex to the May Building (which was designed by Charles Bickel), modernism was not just fashion—it was dogma. Fashions have changed and dogmas have relaxed, and the annex is being remodeled to be less aggressively different from the original building. We’ll have more pictures as the remodeling takes shape.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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Webster Hall, Oakland
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. Seen here from up the street at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Craig Street.
We have more pictures of Webster Hall, including some of the decorative details.
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St. Paul’s Cathedral, Oakland
These are far from the first pictures of this cathedral that old Pa Pitt has published, and they certainly will not be the last. A cathedral is too big a deal to take in all at once.
The west front (liturgically speaking1) is a towering Gothic fantasy whose scale is hard to convey in a photograph. Here the human figures on the steps give us some context.
The main doors turn on the mightiest hinges in Pittsburgh.
This would be a magnificent main front for any church; here it is just the façade of the south transept.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. The south-transept entrance.
We have many more pictures of St. Paul’s from many years of passing by with a camera.
- In describing church architecture, the altar is always considered “east,” which makes the entrance opposite the altar “west,” and so on, regardless of what your lying compass says. ↩︎
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University Square, Oakland
This huge complex was built in two stages, one opening in 1955 and the other in 1957. It was designed by Arthur E. Tennyson, who was responsible for dozens of modernist apartment blocks in Pittsburgh and suburbs. Tennyson seems to have been a get-the-job-done kind of architect; his designs seldom strike old Pa Pitt as remarkable aesthetically, but he must have been a master at managing large projects and bringing them in on budget.
The complex was newsworthy as the first cooperative apartments built in Pittsburgh in a long time. The first stage included 126 apartments, with 88 more planned for the second stage, according to a Press article that appeared when the first stage opened.1
The swank Shadyside co-operative was dedicated formally this week. It is composed of two and three-bedroom apartments, all of which have a living room, a separate dining room and a foyer. Most have two baths and some have a balcony. Standard equipment in all kitchens is a dishwasher and garbage disposal unit. All have maximum closet space. A master television antenna guarantees each apartment owner five channels.
Special provisions for inside air conditioning allow each tenant to control his own weather. Beneath the eight-story building are two floors for inside parking.
The lobby, designed by Robert Janisse, features a fountain set in a bed of plants and flowers. Lobby and hallways are completely carpeted. Entrances, framed in cut stone, give access to exterior walks which traverse a spacious lawn, complete with shrubs and trees.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Romanesque Carvings on the Holland Mansion, Oakland
Father Pitt began this article by writing, “This house, built in 1884…”
And then he stopped.
The common wisdom says that this house, now the Music Building of the University of Pittsburgh, was designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow and built in 1884. That is the information in the Wikipedia article and in the city architectural survey and the National Register form for Schenley Farms and in the University of Pittsburgh Civic Center Conservation Plan.
But the date is obviously wrong: the firm of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow was founded when H. H. Richardson died in 1886, and an 1890 plat map shows the lot still vacant. (It is possible, therefore, that the universally accepted date “1884” originated as a misprint for “1894.”) As for the architects, the building does not appear on Margaret Henderson Floyd’s catalogue of their works in Architecture After Richardson, though we know that Floyd’s vast research missed a few buildings that have since been identified.
So here we have an example of a perfectly good and universally accepted fact that completely unravels when old Pa Pitt pulls at a loose thread. He has nothing yet to offer in its place except the pictures of the whimsical decorations that he originally intended to show you.
This much we know: the house was built for William J. Holland, pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church across the street (designed by Frederick Osterling in a similar Romanesque style), and chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania (later the University of Pittsburgh), and then Director of the Carnegie Institute. He was also perhaps the world’s leading lepidopterist, a teacher of ancient languages, an accomplished paleontologist, and a speaker of Japanese, in case he needed any more accomplishments to impress you.
When the house was built and who designed it will have to remain open questions for the moment.
The house is decorated with Romanesque carvings that have eroded into a medieval softness in Pittsburgh’s harsh atmosphere.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Regal Shoe Company Building
Designed by Alden & Harlow and built in 1908, this deliberately quaint little store has held up well.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Corner Building on Fifth Avenue
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. Father Pitt does not know the story of this building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and McMasters Way. The great G. C. Murphy downtown empire, “the world’s largest variety store,” slopped into it as it expanded, and by bad luck and misunderstanding the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation plaque for the main Art Deco Murphy’s building (designed by Harold E. Crosby in 1930) ended up on the front of this building instead. Whatever this building was originally, it’s obviously much older than 1930. Updates to the ground floor have been handled with good taste, and the entrance is still on the corner. Old Pa Pitt approves of corner entrances.
