The Fort Pitt Bedding Company sold all manner of bedding, and it had the Sealy franchise for the Pittsburgh area. But the company’s specialty seems to have been institutional bunks: it held patents on clever designs that allowed bunks to be stored absolutely flat and set up without tools.
The complex was built in stages, of which the section with arched windows seems to be the oldest.
Today the buildings are handsomely restored and filled with various businesses.
This assembly plant was built in 1915; the architect, according to a draft National Register nomination form, was John H. Graham, Sr. It has been restored to look more beautiful than it ever did when it was a grubby manufacturing facility.
The acute angle of the intersection of Baum Boulevard and Morewood Avenue is handled by blunting the corner a bit.
Here is a good example of how an old factory that’s too attractive to tear down can be refurbished and expanded to make a modern office building. The Edwin L. Wiegand Co. dealt in “electrical specialties,” and it must have been fairly successful to build this large plant in 1928. The building spent some time as a self-storage facility; but a large upward expansion was added in 2020, and the building was converted to high-class offices. We note with delight that the architect went back to an old idea in factory design: a “sawtooth” roof with northward-facing windows to pull in bright even lighting without direct sun.
According to a Sanborn Fire Insurance map from 1924, this warehouse was built in 1917 with fireproof construction, brick curtain walls, concrete floors and roof. It belonged to Swift & Co., a wholesale meat dealer; later it seems to have passed to a produce dealer, and that 1924 Sanborn map has “Produce W. Ho.” neatly pasted over whatever was marked on the outline of the building before.
The preservation of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie station complex as “Station Square” showed Pittsburgh that historic preservation could be good business. As “the Freight House Shops,” the freight house was a successful shopping arcade for many years. But all the shopping arcades, and many of the indoor shopping malls, have collapsed in the past decade or two as shopping habits changed. Now shoppers demand stores and restaurants with individual external entrances. But the shopping arcade saved the building; and now, though other uses have been found for most of the space (a large part of it has been turned into a rock-climbing gym, because where would you find rocks in the wild in Pittsburgh?), the building itself is in no danger of demolition.
The central warehouse for the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad’s freight depot, now converted to offices and other uses and known as Commerce Court. These two pictures were taken just about a year apart, but nothing significant changed during that time. While he was donating the newer one to Wikimedia Commons, old Pa Pitt ran across the older one and realized he had never published it here.
For most of its history, this pleasing façade with its ornamental brickwork was blocked off by taller additions in front. Now that those have been removed, we can enjoy the front of the building the way it was meant to be seen. Indovina Associates designed the renovation and adaptation for an Asian supermarket.
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. (Addendum: It was built in 1919, probably finished in 1920; the architect was Thomas Hannah.1) 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.
