Father Pitt

Tag: Flatiron Buildings

  • Flatiron Building in Marshall-Shadeland

    2650 California Avenue

    Father Pitt was looking at Wikipedia’s list of flatiron buildings in the United States and thinking that he could multiply the number by ten or so just from buildings in Pittsburgh and the surrounding suburbs. So he has begun a collection of these flatiron buildings, meaning buildings that are triangular like a clothes iron. Here is one that he found especially attractive. The shape is dictated by the acute angle between California Avenue and Woodland Avenue, and of course it has the usual Pittsburgh problem of irregularity in three dimensions to deal with. The form of the building is typical of early-twentieth-century commercial architecture, but the Art Nouveau patterns picked out in light Kittanning brick set this building apart from others like it.

    Flatiron building
    Canon PowerShot S45.
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  • Old Mount Oliver Post Office

    Old Mount Oliver post office

    The post office in Mount Oliver has been peripatetic if we take a long-term view. It began a few doors north of here on Brownsville Road in a little brick building later replaced by a furniture store. In about 1905, this substantial “flatiron” building went up at the complicated intersection of Brownsville Road, Amanda Street/Avenue (the border between Mount Oliver, which calls it an avenue, and Pittsburgh, which calls it a street), Bausman Street, Sherman Avenue, and Hays Avenue.

    From a 1905 Hopkins plat map. Note the “P. O.” at the corner of Murry Alley, and this triangular building marked as “New P. O.,” suggesting that it was under construction when the map was drawn.

    Now the post office is in a much larger modernist building two blocks up Brownsville Road. But this building still stands in reasonably good condition.

    Old Mount Oliver post office
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Murphy Building, Sheraden

    Murphy Building

    William J. Shaw was the architect of the most prominent commercial block in Sheraden, built in 1904 or 1905 for Sheraden’s own self-made developer, contractor, and civic luminary John Murphy.1 The details are mostly Renaissance; but the heavily eyebrowed arches and weighty and elaborate cornice make the term “Rundbogenstil” appropriate, giving us another chance to say the word “Rundbogenstil.”

    Inscription: “MVRPHY”
    Acute angle of the Murphy Building

    This is a classic Pittsburgh “flatiron” building, with the classic Pittsburgh problem of three dimensions of irregularity in the lot. To the right the ground slopes precipitously down to the Sheraden station—a railroad station when it was built, a busway station now that the West Busway has duplicated the old Panhandle commuter route to the western suburbs.

    Corner of the Murphy Building

    We considered taking those utility cables out. After a couple of experiments, we realized it would require more hand-painting than we were willing to do.

    Pilaster base with egg-and-dart ornament

    A pilaster base on the sharp corner with oversized egg-and-dart ornamentation.

    False Balcony

    A Renaissance false balcony with egg-and-dart, dentils, and balusterasters in relief. Old Pa Pitt had to invent the term “balusteraster” to describe these false balusters, and now that he has invented it he will use it wherever appropriate. We can see that this building keeps a sharp eye on the complicated and confusing every-which-way intersection outside; possibly the most amusing videos are posted to some YouTube channel.

    Murphy Building
    Inscription
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    Inscription on the Hillsboro Street side.

    1. Pittsburgh Gazette, July 9, 1904, p. 11: “Plans are being prepared by Architect W. J. Shaw for a three-story store and office building to be erected in Railroad street, Sheraden, at a cost of $32,000 by John Murphy.” Also, Philadelphia Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide, July 27, 1904, p. 481: “Plans have been prepared by Architect W. J. Shaw, Smith Building, for a three-story store and office building to be erected on Railroad street, Sheraden, for Mr. John Murphy, at a cost of $32,000. It will be well finished throughout and provided with the usual modern conveniences.” ↩︎
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  • Modernist Bank in Sheraden

    Modernist bank

    Built as a branch bank, this tidy little modernistic building seems to be succeeding in its second life as a little neighborhood grocery. It is one of several “flatiron” buildings in Sheraden, and old Pa Pitt had to stand in the middle of a fairly busy intersection to get this picture of the sharp end:

    Sharp corner of the bank
    2827 Chartiers Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • First National Bank of Crafton

    First National Bank of Crafton

    One of several “flatiron” buildings produced by the irregular street layout of Crafton. This one is odd angles all around.

    First National Bank of Crafton
    First National Bank of Crafton
    First National Bank of Crafton
    Corner entrance to the First National Bank of Crafton

    The main entrance is on the sharp corner facing the intersection of Noble Avenue, Crafton Avenue, and Dinsmore Avenue (which is what we meant when we said Crafton had an irregular street layout).

    Segmental pediment

    A segmental pediment—that is, a pediment whose top is a segment of a circle, rather than the more usual triangle.

    First National Bank of Crafton

    The side entrance would have led into the upstairs offices: a bank putting up a building like this would expect to make extra income from office rentals, and bank buildings were usually prestigious addresses.

    First National Bank of Crafton

    The side of the building not meant to be seen is finished more cheaply.

    First National Bank of Crafton
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20 EXR.
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  • Thompson Building, Carnegie

    Thompson Building, Carnegie

    Since we were talking about acute angles, here is a “flatiron” building at the acute angle of the intersection of Main Street and Washington Avenue in Carnegie. Pittsburgh and its surroundings are full of these triangular buildings, because Pittsburgh topography makes it very difficult to lay streets out in a simple grid.

    Thompson Building
    Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • 700 Fifth Avenue: The Sharpest Corner in Pittsburgh?

    700 Fifth Avenue

    If it isn’t the sharpest, it must at least be close. Father Pitt remembers when the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art was going up in Washington (Big Worshington, that is): it was boasted that I. M. Pei’s design included the most acute angle in any American building. This angle is nearly congruent with Pei’s, except that here the point has been slightly blunted. The architect has made sensible use of that sharp corner by putting the stairwell there, with a column of windows to light it.

    700 Fifth Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Three Buildings from the 1880s on Shiloh Street, Mount Washington

    131 Shiloh Street

    Some day some clever inventor will patent a way to match mortar colors in brickwork and make a fortune. (That was sarcasm, by the way: it can be done, but first you have to realize that it ought to be done.) Nevertheless, this building looks much better than it did a few years ago, when the front was covered with aluminum, fake stone, and asphalt shingles. Was it absolutely necessary to brick in all the side windows? Well, probably. Otherwise light might leak in. The original building comes from the 1880s, and the basic outline of it remains Victorian Gothic.

    Gordo’s
    200 Shiloh Street

    This building also seems to have been put up in the 1880s, or possibly as early as the 1870s. It has been so thoroughly remodeled so often that it would be hard to guess what it looked like originally; Father Pitt’s best guess would be that it had a Second Empire mansard roof and details, replaced in the 1970s by the parody of a Second Empire roof we see today. In the past two decades, the ground floor has been completely redesigned twice; the current incarnation is better than the way it looked twenty years ago.

    203 Shiloh Street
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Here is a Second Empire building that retains much of its original detail, in spite of the complete remodeling of the ground floor (the original design probably let in far too much natural light) and the artificial siding on the dormers.

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  • Independent Hose Co. No. 5, Stowe Township

    Independent Hose Co. No. 5 inscription

    The border between McKees Rocks and Stowe Township is whimsical. It cuts diagonally across the Bottoms, bisecting several buildings, so that this firehouse in the shadow of the McKees Rocks Bridge is actually in Stowe Township. In fact, the hypotenuse of this triangular building is the McKees Rocks border.

    Rounded corner

    The architect, whoever it was, responded to an odd-shaped site with an Art Deco building that emphasizes its own triangularity. Since, as old Pa Pitt has remarked before, firehouses are basically men’s clubs, and men’s clubs always block in their windows, this building has lost several of its ground-floor windows. Otherwise it appears to be in close to original shape. It is still in use as a firehouse; it appears on Google Maps both as “Preston Volunteer Fire Department,” which is marked as a fire station, and “Independent Hose Co #5,” which is marked as a bar.

    Full side view
    Wing ornament
    Doorway

  • Triangular Apartment Building in Beechview

    Apartment building on Broadway, Beechview

    From Broadway this looks like an ordinary apartment building. But the architect, John A. Long,1 had an interestingly Pittsburghish problem to solve. The building is on a triangular lot with a very sharp angle—but that is only the two-dimensional aspect of the problem. In Beechview, there are always three dimensions.

    Corner of the triangle

    The third dimension is up.

    Oblique view

    The building was probably given green tiles on that projecting roofline, since Spanish Mission was a very popular style in Beechview and Dormont. The stonework is picked out in blue since a few years ago, which makes the building look cheerful. That long blue stripe on the ground floor probably marks the top of a storefront that was later converted to an apartment.

    Three buildings together

    Next door was a red-brick building that appears as “I. O. O. M.” on the 1923 map; perhaps it meant “L. O. O. M.,” and this was the original Beechview Moose lodge. The Moose now have their lodge a block down Broadway in a smaller building.

    At some time after 1923, the two buildings were connected by a very narrow filler building, which probably made three more rent-paying apartments possible:

    Filler building

    The arched doorway, with its abstract-Romanesque receding arches, adds interest to what is otherwise a plain building.

    Apartment buildings
    1. We take this information from the Construction Record, September 26, 1914. “Architect John A. Long, Machesney building, has plans for a three-story brick store and apartment building, for A. Gravaut, to be built on Baltimore and Realty avenue, at a cost of $12,000.” This would mean the building was put up in 1915 or so. Although the name doesn’t appear on any of the layers of the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, there are enough references here and there to make it clear that Broadway was briefly called Baltimore Avenue before reverting to Broadway. The history of street names in Beechview is complicated by at least two wholesale changes just a few years apart. ↩︎