Above, the First Avenue subway station (which is an elevated station, but it’s on the part of the line we call the “subway”) from First Avenue. Below, a CAF 4300-series Blue Line car comes in from the Panhandle Bridge.
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First Avenue Station
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414 First Avenue
There is almost nothing distinctive about this building, but Father Pitt would be very sorry to lose it. It is a very good example of a simple commercial building of the early twentieth century. The subtle decorative details are tasteful without ostentation. The ghost sign preserves some of the building’s commercial history. The ground floor has been unsympathetically altered, but the alterations are superficial and could be reverted without too much expense.
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Demmler Bros. Building
Demmler Bros. (now Demmler Machinery) built its headquarters in the Romanesque style that was very popular for warehouses and industrial buildings; for other examples, see the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company Warehouse and the B. M. Kramer & Company Building. The company has moved to the suburbs, but ghost signs still betray the origin of the building.
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228 First Avenue
Does anyone know the architect or the history of this building? Father Pitt put in almost fifteen minutes of work trying to find out something about it, but nothing came up in his searches. It is a particularly elegant little façade, and right now you can buy it and preserve it for future generations.
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Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company Warehouse
A particularly elegant Romanesque warehouse built for the company that made bathroom plumbing fashion-conscious. Standard later merged with American Radiator to form American-Standard, still a leader in toilet technology today. The building is now luxurious offices under the name “Fort Pitt Commons.” According to the boundary-increase application for the Firstside Historic district, it was built 1900–1905; the architect is unknown, which is a pity, because it was obviously someone with a real sense of rhythm in architecture. (If you backed old Pa Pitt into a corner and asked him to guess the architect, he might say Charles Bickel, whose Reymer Brothers candy factory Uptown is very similar in many details, including the treatment of the arches.) Above, the side that faces Fort Pitt Boulevard and the Mon; below, the First Avenue side.
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1st Ave Lofts
A dwarf skyscraper with the regulation base-shaft-cap formula, this elegantly simple commercial building was designed by Joseph F. Kuntz and finished in 1907. It used to be known as the Graphic Arts Building before it was turned into luxury apartments. Soon every building downtown will be luxury apartments, and all the commercial offices will have to move to the suburbs.
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Subway Crossing First Avenue
A Silver Line car crosses First Avenue on its way toward Steel Plaza. In the background, One Oxford Centre, the Grant Building, and the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building.
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First Avenue Station
The distinctive undulating platform roofs of the First Avenue subway station, seen from across First Avenue.
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Try Street Terminal
The First Avenue face of the Try Street Terminal (now called Terminal 21 and filled with loft apartments and offices).
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101 Smithfield Street
In the little corner of downtown Pittsburgh near First Avenue there are still some half-blocks that never entered the skyscraper age. Here we can see some of the humbler pre-skyscraper commercial architecture of Pittsburgh. The first floor of the front of this building has been heavily altered, probably by someone who wanted to make it look more Victorian and ended up making it look more 1978. But the rest of the building is a typical small Italianate structure of the 1870s.
