Father Pitt

Tag: Hornbostel (Henry)

Joyce Kilmer Memorial, South Park

Joyce Kilmer was only 31 when he died in action in the First World War. But he had written one poem that made him immortal: “Trees,” which for two generations was inescapable at school recitations and equally inescapable set to music by Oscar Rasbach, in which form it was performed in every style from amateur opera to Benny Goodman’s swing.

The Joyce Kilmer Memorial in South Park, which sits in the middle of a circle at a prominent intersection, was designed by Henry Hornbostel, who donated his work on the project.

The monument is simple, designed to focus attention on the one thing visitors will really care about: the poem “Trees” itself, inscribed in a bronze book.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

The architectural part of the memorial is in good shape. However, the main part of Hornbostel’s design is missing, as we can see from his drawing published in the Sun-Telegraph.

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, April 8, 1934, page 31.

The memorial was meant to be ringed by trees, the only truly fitting tribute to Kilmer’s legacy. Hornbostel chose elms, and the Dutch elm disease has made merely keeping elms alive a difficult endeavor. The blighted trees were taken down in 1961, and the circle was left almost bare. Other trees have been planted more recently, but the effect will not be the same: his drawing shows that Hornbostel chose elms for their characteristic shape. But at least there will be trees again.

The local historian Jim Hanna has made a short video about the memorial.

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June 23, 2025
City-County Building

Edward B. Lee won the competition for the design of the City-County Building in “association” with Palmer & Hornbostel. Lee’s was the name in the headlines, and Lee was the only architect mentioned in the ordinance ratifying the results of the competition. But years later Lee explained that the design was Henry Hornbostel’s, with Lee just executing drawings from Hornbostel’s design. As flamboyant as he could be, Hornbostel was also generous and encouraging to his colleagues.

Front page of the Pittsburgh Post, January 20, 1914.

But old Pa Pitt has a suspicion that there might be more to the story than mere generosity.

In 1904, Hornbostel had won the competition for the Carnegie Tech campus, beating—among others—the famous Cass Gilbert.

In 1907, Hornbostel had won the competition for Soldiers and Sailors Hall, beating—among others—Cass Gilbert.

Now he was entering another really big competition, and the judge was Cass Gilbert, who had been selected to “prepare and conduct” the competition.¹ Perhaps Hornbostel calculated that his design would have a better chance with somebody else’s name on it.

Reliefs by sculptor Charles Keck depict the arms of the City of Pittsburgh (above) and the County of Allegheny (below). Keck also contributed sculptures for Soldiers and Sailors Hall.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

The three enormous arches are the most distinctive features of the building. Comparing the preliminary elevation above with the finished building, we can see that they were made even larger later on in the planning.

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June 18, 2025
Federal Reserve Bank

Now the Drury Plaza Hotel, this is a splendid example of the far Art Deco end of the style old Pa Pitt calls American Fascist. The original 1931 building, above, was designed by the Cleveland firm of Walker & Weeks, with Hornbostel & Wood as “consulting architects.” It is never clear in the career of Henry Hornbostel how far his “consulting” went: on the City-County Building, for example, “consulting” meant that Hornbostel actually came up with the design, but Edward Lee was given the credit for it; we would not know that Hornbostel drew the plans if Lee himself had not told us.

At any rate, the lively design almost seems like a rebuke to the sternly Fascist Federal Courthouse across the street, which was built at about the same time.

The aluminum sculpture and ornament is by Henry Hering.

An addition in a similar style looks cheap beside the original; perhaps it would have been better just to admit that the original could not be duplicated and to build the addition in a different style.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

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April 15, 2025
Rodef Shalom’s Downtown Temple

From The Builder, January, 1906.

This was the home of the Rodef Shalom congregation for a very short time. It was downtown on Eighth Street, a narrow one-block alley where its site today is a parking lot. In those days, however, Eighth Street was crowded with buildings and institutions, including the Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Christian Home for Working Girls, and the North Public School. Having outgrown their previous building, the Rodef Shalom congregation hired Charles Bickel, probably the most prolific architect Pittsburgh ever had, to design a magnificent temple that told the city its Jewish residents were proud to be part of the social fabric.

Building the new temple required tearing down the old one, but the people of the Second Presbyterian Church around the corner (not the Reformed Presbyterians next door) opened their doors to their Jewish neighbors, and for a year the two congregations shared the Second Presbyterian building, one worshiping on Saturday and the other on Sunday. A news story at the time tells us that, among the Rodef Shalom congregation, “there were many expressions of good feeling over this neighborly act on the part of the Presbyterian neighbors” when the agreement was announced.

The new temple opened in 1901. But the congregation was growing so quickly that, by 1904, it was already too small. Rodef Shalom had to find new quarters, with more land to spread out.

Rodef Shalom today worships in one of the most admired synagogue buildings in America, the magnificent temple on Fifth Avenue designed by Henry Hornbostel.

When we look at the two buildings, designed less than a decade apart, it’s striking how different they are in style. Bickel’s design looks old-fashioned; Hornbostel’s looks forward to the future, and it has stood the test of more than a century’s radical changes in taste.

But a comparison of the two buildings also reveals how much they have in common. Almost all the same design elements are in both buildings (with the prominent exception of the turbaned towers on the Bickel building); it almost looks as though the congregation had told Hornbostel, “We want the same thing we have downtown, but bigger.” (Though it’s not visible in either picture, another feature both buildings share is a large central dome.)

The Bickel building had several decades of life after Rodef Shalom moved out. The congregation sold it to their good friends at the Second Presbyterian Church, who moved into the relatively new building, and were thus able to sell their valuable corner location at Penn and Seventh, where Katz Plaza is today. For many years, the Second Presbyterians and the Reformed Presbyterians coexisted side by side on Eighth Street. The old Bickel building was still there in 1957, according to aerial photos; by 1967 it was replaced by parking lot, which is what has been there ever since.

December 14, 2024
Hornbostel Goes Maya in South Park

The Maya produced some of the great architectural geniuses of the ancient world. In 1907, the architect Henry Hornbostel made a trip to Yucatan, where he was one of the first people to photograph the ancient Maya structures. In 1938, when he was director of parks for Allegheny County, Hornbostel produced this startling corbeled arch—a distinctive feature of Maya architecture—for the golf clubhouse in South Park.

Reliefs cleverly assembled from bricks show men and women having fun on the golf course. When old Pa Pitt visited, the men playing golf outnumbered women by at least ten to one, but in these reliefs the sexes come in equal numbers. In half the men swing and the women watch, and in the other half vice versa.

The interior decorations continue the abstract-Maya theme.

In his much-quoted talk on “American Style,” the eccentric genius and flimflam artist Titus de Bobula advised his fellow architects, “Go back to our own archeological excavations of Yucatan and Mexico,” where they would find inspiration for a truly American style. He earned some applause, but only a very few American architects followed that advice, producing a small treasury of “Mayan Revival” architecture. This may be the only unambiguous example in Pittsburgh. It took Hornbostel three decades from the time he visited Yucatan to the time he drew this Maya-inspired building, and it was at the end of his career. Perhaps the Maya style was too adventurous for Pittsburgh. But it gave us this one memorable clubhouse, and we can be thankful for that.

Sony Alpha 3000.

October 14, 2024
Niches on the College of Fine Arts Building, Carnegie Mellon University

Henry Hornbostel designed the front of the Fine Arts Building with niches that display all styles of architectural decoration, and more practically give students a place to sit between classes. The niches have continued to accumulate sculpture in styles from all over the world. The whimsical figures in the Gothic niche may have been done by Achille Giammartini.

In the classical niche, the three orders of Greek architecture: Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, demonstrated with correct proportions.

June 13, 2024
College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University

The front of the College of Fine Arts in sunset light. Above, the word CREARE (“to create”) inscribed above the entrance by decorative sculptor Achille Giammartini.

Reason.

Design.

May 30, 2024
Some Houses on Bigelow Boulevard, Schenley Farms

As we mentioned before, we are attempting to photograph every house in the residential part of Schenley Farms. Here is a big album of houses on Bigelow Boulevard, which becomes a residential street as it winds through the neighborhood. Above, Ledge House, the strikingly different home of A. A. Hamerschlag, the first director of Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University). It was designed by Henry Hornbostel, who designed the Carnegie Tech campus and taught at Carnegie Tech. It has recently been cleaned of a century’s worth of industrial soot and restored to its original appearance.

Above and below, the D. Herbert Hostetter, Jr., house, architects Janssen and Abbott. Benno Janssen and his partner abstracted the salient details of the Tudor or “English half-timber” style and reduced it to the essentials, creating a richly Tudory design with no wasted lines.

Because we have so many pictures, we’ll put the rest below the metaphorical fold to avoid weighing down the front page here.
(more…)

March 2, 2024
Reliefs by Henry Hering on the Federal Reserve Bank Building
This building, put up in 1930–1931, was a branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and the Clevelanders Walker & Weeks were the architects—but with Henry Hornbostel and Eric Fisher Wood as “consulting architects.”¹ Old Pa Pitt doesn’t know exactly how far the consulting went. At any rate, the architects chose sculptor Henry Hering, who had done several prominent decorations in Cleveland, to create the cast-aluminum reliefs for this building. The picture below is from 2015, but it will serve to show the placement of the reliefs:

The three main figures are obviously allegorical; they seem to represent industry, agriculture, and the professions.
1. Source: Walter Kidney, Henry Hornbostel: An Architect’s Master Touch, where this building is no. 137 in the List of Works. ↩︎
December 28, 2023
Stairway in Baker Hall, Carnegie Mellon University

Stairways can be good opportunities for architects to show off, and here is a stairway designed by Henry Hornbostel that defies imitation.

December 21, 2023