This tidy little building in the back streets of the near South Side was built as the office for the Pittsburgh Foundry plant. The style brings a bit of Arts-and-Crafts to the usual industrial Romanesque. Note the patterned bricks.
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Pittsburgh Foundry Office, South Side
HDR images from a Kodak EasyShare Z1285 set to bracket three exposures at intervals of 1 EV. -
Ripley & Co. Glass Works, South Side
The best preserved of the old factories on the South Side, this was acquired, soon after the large corner building was built, by the United States Glass Co. It now belongs to the Salvation Army, which has kept the exterior beautifully.
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Stone Schwartz Building, Allegheny West
Sony Alpha 3000. This Romanesque warehouse appears from old maps to have been built around the turn of the twentieth century for the Allegheny Transfer Company. It later belonged to Donaldson Transfer, as a ghost sign at the top of the building testifies (enlarge the picture to examine it closely). It has been a few things since then, and it was for sale when old Pa Pitt visited it. If you want a distinctive commercial or even residential space in one of our most pleasant neighborhoods, here is your opportunity.
A few years ago, Father Pitt took a picture of this building in sunset light, but it looks as though he never published it. So here it is now.
Composite of three pictures from a Canon PowerShot A540. -
Pittsburgh Tag Co. Building, North Side
This building seems to have been put up for Allen Kirkpatrick & Co., but for years it was the home of the Pittsburgh Tag Co., as this ghost sign tells us. It has been vacant for some time.
Sony Alpha 3000. The Pittsburgh Tag Company was founded in 1927, as we find in the Paper Trade Journal, December 15, 1927:
Pittsburgh, Pa.—The Pittsburgh Tag Company, care of Charles F. C. Arensberg, 834 Amberson street, Pittsburgh, recently organized with a capital of $50,000, plans the operation of a local plant for the manufacture of paper tags and kindred specialties. Mr. Arensberg will be treasurer of the new company; James M. Graham and Jonathan S. Green will be directors.
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Allegheny Auto Spring Co., North Side
You might think this was a building that had been abandoned a century ago and somehow pickled in an unusually intact state (though a few bricks have crumbled off the top). But in fact the Allegheny Auto Spring Co. is still in business, still serving the people who need auto springs and need them done well. The painted signs are legible, so why replace them? Thus we have a glimpse of the Pittsburgh of the early automobile age surviving into the twenty-first century.
Sony Alpha 3000. The building itself predates the current business. It was probably built in the 1890s; in the early 1900s it appears on old maps marked “Wisconsin Granite Co. Lessee”; in 1910 it is marked “Paint Whs.”; and in 1923 “Thompson & Co.” Old Pa Pitt does not know when the Allegheny Auto Spring Co. moved in, but it has to have been a couple of generations ago at the latest.
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Birthplace of the Modern Battery: Hipwell Mfg. Co., Allegheny West
Is there a household in America that does not keep a stock of AA batteries? Or AAA, C, D? These are reliable power sources that we just drop into electrically powered devices without a moment’s thought.
You owe that convenience to the Hipwell Manufacturing Company of North Avenue. It was Hipwell that invented the unit-cell battery (see this ad-laden page and this PDF history), thus taming the demon electricity and even giving him a goofy smile.
Until a few years ago, this building still had old advertising posters in the windows, which luckily Father Pitt recorded before they disappeared.
This buff-brick building also belonged to the Hipwell Manufacturing Co, and it was featured as the Hipwell factory in company advertising—but in a form we can only call fictionalized.
Reproduced in the Allegheny City Society Reporter Dispatch (PDF). The distinctive alternating round and flattened arches are there, but there are twice as many of them. The building was never this size, nor was there ever a railroad siding where boxcars were stuffed with Hipco flashlights and batteries.
Sony Alpha 3000. The old Hipwell factory kept turning out flashlights until 2005, which accounts for its fortunate state of preservation. It is now an event venue called Hip at the Flashlight Factory.
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C. S. Hixson Candy Co., Manchester
Old Pa Pitt knew absolutely nothing earlier this morning about the C. S. Hixson Candy Company, but neither does the rest of the Internet. This article, therefore, immediately becomes the Internet’s leading and only source of information on the subject.
The building was put up in 1917, to judge by listings in the American Contractor. Excavations had begun by April 28:
Factory: $25,000. 4 sty. 59×96. Adams & Fulton sts, Priv. plans. Owner C. S. Hixson Candy Co., 1024 Vickroy st. Gen. Contr. C. E. Murphy & Sons, 516 Federal st. Carp. & conc. work by gen, contr. Brk. mas, to C. B. Lovatt, 1203 Federal st. Plmg, to Walter Gangloff, 2471 Perrysvilie av. Excav.
Brick work had started by June 9.
The company, however, did not prosper long. Its charter as a Delaware corporation was repealed in 1921 for failure to pay taxes. In 1926, The International Confectioner reported that “There will be a meeting of the stockholders of the C. S. Hixson Candy Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., Jan. 17, to consider the question of selling or leasing the business, or to liquidate it and close up.”
And there you have everything Father Pitt was able to find out in twenty minutes, which is twenty minutes more than anyone else on the Internet has ever devoted to the subject.
This old industrial building is tumbling to bits, and if the neighborhood were more valuable it would have been gone years ago. It is not a work of outstanding architecture; the construction listings specified “private plans,” which probably means “We can do without an architect.” The borders of the Manchester Historic District were carefully drawn to exclude it while including the modest Italianate houses next to it. The work going on at the top may be part of a demolition; at any rate, the cornice was intact a few years ago. But it is an interesting little bit of history, and it preserves a record of its original owner on the eastern face of the building.
The old painted sign is still visible, and nearly legible with the help of some heavy manipulation. This is what it appears to say:
C. S. HIXSON
CANDY CO.
MANUFACTURES [sic] OF
HIGH GRADE
CHOCOLATES
Kodak EasyShare Z981. -
Carnegie Steel Company Office, Stowe Township
A simple and tasteful little office built for the Carnegie Steel Company, whose steel-wheel plant was across the street, in the part of Stowe Township that is just across the line from the McKees Rocks Bottoms. Though some of the windows have been blocked in, it doesn’t take too much imagination to visualize the building in its pristine simplicity.
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Carnegie Steel Company Gatehouse, Stowe Township
The Pressed Steel Car Company had a huge plant in Stowe Township, just across the line from the McKees Rocks Bottoms. That company had a very cozy deal with the Carnegie Steel Company: Carnegie would not make railroad cars, and Pressed Steel Car would buy all its steel from Carnegie. Right next to the car works was the Carnegie Steel Company’s Schoen Rolled Steel Wheel Works, devoted to making wheels and axles. This elegant little building was the gatehouse and office for that plant.
That plant is still in the same business, now under the name Standard Forged Products, still supplying railroad-car makers with “freight car, passenger car, subway or locomotive axles.”
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McKinney Manufacturing Company Warehouse, Chateau
The Hunting-Davis Company was a versatile firm, but its specialty was industrial architecture. The McKinney Manufacturing Company warehouse was noted as an innovation in reinforced-concrete construction when it went up in 1914, and it still stands in very close to its original form, giving us a good look at the ultra-modern industrial architecture of the early twentieth century. We note that even such a utilitarian structure as a warehouse was not allowed to go up without some elegant Art Nouveau ornamentation:
Here is the architects’ Liverpool Street elevation as it appeared in an article in the Construction Record for February 7, 1914:
And here is the same building today:
This is the Preble Avenue side, which is shorter by one bay but otherwise similar. Old Pa Pitt would have preferred to duplicate the architects’ drawing as closely as possible, but Liverpool Street no longer exists in that block: it has been filled in with lower buildings.
Here is the text of the article, which will be of interest to students of architecture and construction:
Last week the contract for building the warehouse for the McKinney Manufacturing Company, Northside, Pittsburgh, was placed with the Henry Shenk Company, Pittsburgh. The building as designed by the Hunting-Davis Company, Century building, Pittsburgh, will be approximately 105×120 feet, six stories high with basement. It will be of reinforced concrete throughout. There will be no steel beams or girders used in the construction work except those for the outside lintels and elevator framing.
In order that the reinforced concrete work may be properly constructed, thus eliminating any possibility of poor workmanship and accidents, it is agreed that superintendent of five years experience on reinforced concrete building must remain on the work at all times. The mixture of the concrete will be one part cement, two parts sand and four parts gravel. All columns will have a one to two cement and sand mortar placed to a depth of three inches before the concrete is placed. The columns will be cast a day ahead of the beams and slabs. Care is to be exercised in removing the forms so that no board marks or imperfections on the exterior of the building are noticeable.
The building will be one of the heaviest loaded flat slab buildings ever designed in the country. A four-way diagonal reinforcement will be used in the slab construction. The columns will have hoop-reinforced concrete. All ceilings will be flat. The floor loads per square foot will be as follows: First floor, 800 pounds; second floor, 1,200 pounds; third floor, 650 pounds; fourth floor, 450 pounds; fifth and sixth floors, 300 pounds. The basement floor and walls will be reinforced to take care of flood water pressure with flood gates on basement windows.
The design carries with the proposed work the building of a tunnel to connect with the present plant and the construction of a bridge to connect up with the second floor. Solid steel sash will be used on all windows. A sprinkler system will be installed. All floors in the basement tunnel and pent houses will have a granolithic finish.
For the connecting bridge the walls and roof will be constructed of self-centering material plastered with cement mortar. The walls will be two inches thick and finished smooth on both sides. The roof will be two and one-half inches thick and finished with a smooth under coat. Composition roofing will be used throughout all the work.
