Father Pitt

Tag: Hornbostel (Henry)

  • Allegheny County Airport

    Allegheny County Airport terminal with fountain

    It is almost impossible to take an ugly picture of the terminal at Allegheny County Airport. It was designed by Stanley Roush, the king of public works in Allegheny County. The airport engineer was G. Brooks Ross, shown here hard at work on his plans.

    G. Brooks Ross with ruler at desk
    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 28, 1929.

    When it opened in 1931, the Allegheny County Municipal Airport was at least arguably the largest and most sophisticated airport in the world. When we consider that 1931 was only four years after Lindbergh’s flight, and that the site and general size of the airport had been decided on in 1928, we realize what a huge gamble this airport was: the future of air travel was unknown, and it required far-sighted faith to believe that an airport of this size would be required in years to come. (Even now a 737 can land here if it’s necessary.) It also required quite a bit of complicated financial trickery from the Republican majority on County Council and their allies, as Post-Gazette cartoonist Cy Hungerford points out.

    Cartoon showing many kinds of aircraft spending the tax-payer’s dough
    From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 12, 1931.

    Under the old county charter, County Council had two members from the majority party and one from the minority party. Everything was done behind the sputtering Democrat’s back, and he found out about it in the papers like the rest of us as the cost of the Municipal Airport went up and up. This, by the way, was one of the last great projects of the Allegheny County Republican machine, before the Democratic tide swept in with Franklin Roosevelt.

    Tower and inscription: Allegheny County Airport

    The faith was more than justified. By the end of the Second World War, air traffic had increased to such an extent that an even larger airport was needed; and County Airport had already filled its site to the practical limit. Thus Greater Pitt was built out in the western suburbs, and all the scheduled commercial flights moved there. But County Airport, much closer to downtown, remained the favorite airport for private and corporate planes. Today it is still the fifth-busiest airport in Pennsylvania, with about 160 flights a day.

    Terminal

    And that is the almost unique combination of needs that pickled this airport in the 1930s. (We say almost unique because Cincinnati’s municipal airport of the same era has survived for the same reasons.) Greater Pitt has been rebuilt twice since it opened in 1952, because the needs of commercial air traffic keep changing. But this airport has remained exactly the right size for the traffic it handles. The striking Art Deco terminal is such a perfect period piece that it often plays The Airport in movies set in the 1930s; except for covering the inscription with a suitable city name (and carefully framing to cut out the more recent control tower), the building is ready for filming.

    No current pictures can convey how carefully this airport was designed to make its impression from the air, but fortunately we have this 1941 postcard. Not only was the air traveler supposed to be impressed by the magnificent portal to Pittsburgh, but the design was also—in the days when all air navigation was visual—extraordinarily helpful to pilots. The broad boulevard that leads to the terminal was a fat arrow pointing due north toward the airport. The directions were immediately obvious. For pure decoration, the zigzag patterns of the terminal were echoed in a semicircle of pavement behind the building—now, alas, plain asphalt. Today, the view from above is a cluttered mess, because the airport grew more buildings and the area around it suburbanized. But when it opened in 1931, the airport was a beautiful abstract design from the air, complete with a huge identifying label in the airfield.

    Waiting Room entrance

    Now let’s step inside the terminal and wander around for a bit.

    We have dozens of pictures to show you, so to avoid weighing down the front page too much, we’ll put the rest behind this link.

  • Webster Hall, Oakland

    Webster Hall from Fifth & Craig
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Seen here from up the street at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Craig Street.

    We have more pictures of Webster Hall, including some of the decorative details.

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  • Ledge House, Schenley Farms

    Ledge House

    Henry Hornbostel had designed the campus of Carnegie Tech, and he taught architecture there, so he was the natural choice when the institution’s first president, Arthur A. Hamerschlag, decided to build a house nearby in Schenley Farms. The result, as you might expect from Hornbostel, was something unique—modern but not modernistic, picturesque but not gaudy, eclectic but harmonious. It sits on a ledge, following the terrain with its unusual obtuse angle, and therefore was known as Ledge House.

    Entrance to Ledge House
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Two Aluminum Firsts

    Spire of the German Evangelical Protestant Church
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    The spire of the German Evangelical Protestant Church (now Smithfield United Church of Christ), designed by Henry Hornbostel and finished in 1926, was the first structural use of aluminum. Behind it, the Alcoa Building, designed by Harrison & Abramovitz and finished in 1953, was the first skyscraper entirely clad in aluminum.

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  • Spire of the German Evangelical Church

    Spire of the German Evangelical Church
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    Now the Smithfield United Church of Christ, and it has had several other names. This lacy spire has an honored place in history as the first structural use of aluminum. (The aluminum point on the Washington Monument was just a lump of aluminum set on top, not a structure.) The architect Henry Hornbostel’s other experiment in this building, the use of decorative concrete panels on the exterior walls, has not held up as well; for years the rest of the building has been shrouded in netting to prevent bits of concrete from raining on pedestrians. Below is a picture Father Pitt took of the tower in 2000, before the shrouds went up.

    Tower of Smithfield United Church in 2000
    Lomo Smena 8M.

  • Hamerschlag Hall from a Distance

    Across the rooftops to Hamerschlag Hall

    The lantern of Hamerschlag Hall seen across the rooftops from the other end of Oakland.

    Hamerschlag Hall rotunda
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Joyce Kilmer Memorial, South Park

    Plaque with portrait of Joyce Kilmer

    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.

    Memorial to Joyce Kilmer, soldier, poet
    Joyce Kilmer memorial

    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.

    Plaque: “The design for this memorial was a gift to Allegheny County from Major Henry Hornbostel, one of Pittsburgh’s foremost architects, May, 30, 1934.”

    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.

    “Trees,” by Joyce Kilmer

    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.

    Circle with Joyce Kilmer memorial
    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.

    Map.

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  • City-County Building

    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.

    Newspaper clipping with architects’ elevation of winning design for City-County Building
    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.

    Arms of the City of Pittsburgh

    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.

    Arms of Allegheny County
    Arch of the City-County Building
    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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  • Federal Reserve Bank

    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.

    Federal Reserve Bank with addition
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
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  • Rodef Shalom’s Downtown Temple

    Eighth Street Temple, Rodef Shalom
    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.

    Rodef Shalom on Fifth Avenue

    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.