Father Pitt

Tag: Fifth Avenue

  • Tower of Bellefield Presbyterian Church

    Tower of Bellefield Presbyterian Church and Bellefield Towers

    The church was pulled down to make way for an office block, but the tower was left to preside over its old corner.

  • Fifth Avenue, Oakland

    A picture taken back in February, but held in reserve (or forgotten about) till now: looking west on Fifth Avenue in the Oakland monument district. On this side is the Fifth Avenue bus lane, soon to be integrated into the new Oakland BRT line; across the street is a corner of the Masonic Temple (now Alumni Hall) and the Pittsburgh Athletic Association under renovation.

  • Kaufmann’s Clock from Fifth Avenue

    The famous Kaufmann’s clock, seen from the east on Fifth Avenue.

  • Regal Shoe Company

    This oddly domestic-looking storefront is made for a high-class tenant, and has found the perfect match in Heinz Healey’s haberdashery. The building was designed by Alden & Harlow, whose usual good taste is apparent.

  • Fifth Wood Building

    This is classicism walking the knife edge between Art Deco on the one side and modernism on the other. The architect was George H. Schwan, a Pittsburgher who was a much-employed designer of attractive smaller houses as well as churches, school, and commercial buildings: his most famous commission was designing practically all the original buildings in the model Akron suburb of Goodyear Heights.

    Addendum: The article has been rewritten because Father Pitt knows of many more works by Schwan than he did when he wrote the original article. See the Great Big List of Buildings and Architects for old Pa Pitt’s latest research.

  • Warner Theatre Sign

    The Warner was one of the great silent-movie palaces downtown, but it had the misfortune to be placed far from the theater district along Penn Avenue. In the 1980s most of it was demolished for a shopping arcade, leaving the classical façade on Fifth Avenue and the distinctive lighted sign, with the word “Theatre” replaced by “Centre,” because the shopping-arcade and movie-theater industries share an assumption that British spellings attract more customers. The shopping arcade, like most arcades downtown, gradually transitioned to mostly offices. But the sign still dominates the view down Fifth Avenue.

  • A Very Tall Building for 1888

    The Hamilton Building stood at 91 and 93 Fifth Avenue, which, if the addresses are the same, would put it right about where the May Building is now. The owner, a dealer in pianos and cottage organs, was obviously very proud of its astounding height. But the skyscraper age was about to begin, and in a few years this would be just another inconsiderable storefront downtown, soon to be replaced by a skyscraper itself.

    Source: Allegheny County: Its Early History and Subsequent Development, 1888.

  • 242 Fifth Avenue

    The Fifth Avenue front of the Donahoe’s building, which has a much broader front on Forbes Avenue. The architect was W. E. Snaman. This ostentatious building is in need of some restoration. Something could be done with the ground floor to make it more in sympathy with the upper storeys without spending the immense fortune it would probably take to recreate the original classical front. Even a simple modernist glass front would be more harmonious.

  • Cast-Iron Front on Fifth Avenue

    Restored a few years ago, this is a fine example of a Victorian cast-iron façade.

  • Grotesque Face on Fifth Avenue

    This small piece of the old façade sticks up over the undistinguished tiles that cover the rest of this Fifth Avenue building. It must have been quite a façade when we could see the rest of it.