This annex to the Demmler Brothers warehouse was put up at some time in the 1920s. In every way it is different from its neighbor, but the two have to make do with one address between them—100 Ross Street.
The main structure is reinforced concrete, with brick filling in the walls.
While looking at old plat maps for information about some of the buildings he had photographed in Allentown, Father Pitt noticed a commercial bakery in the narrow back streets. In the satellite view, it was still there, so naturally old Pa Pitt had to see it the next time he was in Allentown. It is now inhabited by a real-estate company and a maker of hand-crafted candles.
A century ago, if we read our old maps right, this building was a garage—and probably warehouse—for the Pennsylvania Motor Sales Corp. The ground floor now houses a large Asian market full of delicious things; the upper floors still seem to be used for storage. The original windows are still in the upper floors, making this an unusually well-preserved example of commercial architecture of the First World War period.
The utilitarian square front (whose proportions are already dignified) is livened up by brightly colored tile decorations.
A splendid industrial building on Penn Avenue. The offices and showrooms were placed in a single row in the front, making an impressive and ornamental face for what would otherwise be a drab factory building.
Here is a relic of the genesis of the Electric Age. In the early days of electric light, the East End Electric Light Company supplied the rich East Enders with current to light their mansions. In 1899 it built this large substation, which is still in use by Duquesne Light today. Although it is clearly industrial, the building was put up at a time when an industrial building had to be ornamental as well as useful. It was therefore built in the style the ancient Romans might have used it they had built electric substations in their cities.
International Harvester was a big maker of farm equipment, but also of trucks and sport utility vehicles before anyone knew that they were sport utility vehicles. This was the company’s facility in Pittsburgh, built right on the railroad near the North Side yards.
Fortunately the building was never abandoned—it later became the headquarters of the Harry Guckert Company—so that it was in good structural shape when it was converted to loft apartments about two years ago, as we read in this article at Next Pittsburgh. The building is now on the National Register of Historic Places. According to a draft of the nomination, the architect was August C. Wildmanns.
Map.
A former bakery, now called “Birmingham Place,” between 23rd and 24th Streets on Carson Street. The adaptation was handled with good taste, preserving the attractive proportions of the building, including the huge windows that flood the place with natural light. According to the date at the top of the building, the main section was built in 1919; the section to the left was added after 1924, to judge by a Sanborn Fire Insurance map from that year on which the left wing does not appear.
Back in the days when busy middle-class city-dwellers expected to send their laundry out to be done and have it brought back to them pressed and folded, large laundries used to be more ubiquitous and bigger than they are now. Many of the old laundry buildings have been torn down or severely altered; this one, which is now part of the Duquesne University campus, has found another use as the university’s Public Safety Building without extensive exterior changes.
Charles Bickel was the architect of this factory and warehouse, which, like many industrial buildings of the time, takes its inspiration from the Marshall Field’s Wholesale Store by H. H. Richardson. Bickel, however, added his own sensibilities, and made it an impressive and distinctive building. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Frank & Seder was never our biggest department store, but it was a pretty big store. Like all the other department stores downtown, it needed a big warehouse to hold the merchandise until it was ready to delight downtown shoppers. This colossus on the Bluff was designed in 1923 by William E. Snaman,1 an architect who had already had a long and prosperous career and by this time in his life was specializing in large warehouses and other industrial buildings. The Boulevard of the Allies runs past on a course that is not perpendicular to the side streets, so that the front of the building is at an odd angle to the rest of the building.
Just a little later, Snaman was designing another warehouse on the North Side for Rosenbaum’s, another big downtown department store.2 This is a slightly blurred picture from the window of a car stopped in traffic on the approach to the West End Bridge, but it will have to do for now.
