Frederick Osterling, one of Pittsburgh’s most interesting architects, designed the Armstrong Cork Company buildings, a masterpiece of functional yet attractive industrial architecture. They have now been turned into expensive loft apartments. You can see the buildings from a different angle here.
Frederick Osterling built this charming little building in 1917 to be his office and studio. From it he had a fine view of the Pittsburgh skyline that he was helping shape—a view now blocked by the new Alcoa building.
Now converted to loft apartments and known as “The Cork Factory,” this landmark of industrial architecture was designed by Frederick Osterling. Here we see it from Washington’s Landing on a grey day. Since the weather was mopey, Father Pitt decided to make this picture look as much as possible as though it could have been made in 1901, when the buildings were new; but in fact it was taken just this afternoon.
This splendid palace, officially the Westinghouse Air Brake Company General Office Building, presides benevolently over the pleasant company town of Wilmerding. The architect of the main part was Frederick Osterling, one of the great names in Pittsburgh architecture; the section at the left end was added later.
As a kind commenter notes, this is a bit of a white elephant for the little borough: it needs restoration work, but its out-of-the-way location makes it hard to sell. For a while it was operated as a museum of things Westinghouse, but the small nonprofit group that owned it could not afford the major renovations necessary to keep it open. One plan that has been fermenting for some time is to turn it into a boutique hotel.
This is the building as it looked in about 1905, before the addition.
Frederick Osterling designed this atmospherically Romanesque morgue to match Richardson’s courthouse and jail a block away. Generations of Pittsburgh teenagers made a tradition of visiting the morgue after the prom. This curious memento mori is one of those Pittsburgh customs that old Pa Pitt must simply file away as unaccountable, not even attampting an explanation; unless it be that the visit to the morgue, by a direct appeal to all the senses at once, was intended to achieve what Mr. Andrew Marvell attempted to achieve by verse alone.
The morgue is a short walk from the First Avenue subway station.
