Father Pitt

Tag: Industrial Architecture

  • A Handsome Warehouse in the Strip

    1649 Penn Avenue

    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.

    Decorative tile

    The utilitarian square front (whose proportions are already dignified) is livened up by brightly colored tile decorations.

    1649 Penn Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Pittsburgh Electric & Manufacturing Co., North Point Breeze

    Pittsburgh Electric & Manufacturing Co.

    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.

    Pittsburgh Electric & Manufacturing Co.
    Pittsburgh Electric & Manufacturing Co.
    Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • East End Electric Light Company, East Liberty

    1899 in the gable of the 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.

    Power substation
    Power substation
    Window
    End of the building
    Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • International Harvester Building, North Side

    International Harvester Building

    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.

    Logo of the International Harvester Corporation
    International Harvester building
    International Harvester building
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    Map.

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  • United Baking Company, South Side

    United Baking Company, South Side
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    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.

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  • Keystone Laundry Company, Bluff

    Keystone Laundry Company
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10

    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.

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  • Reymer Brothers Candy Factory, Uptown

    Reymer Brothers Candy Factory

    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.

    Reymer Brothers Candy Factory

    More pictures of the Reymer Brothers Candy Factory.

  • Two Department-Store Warehouses by William E. Snaman

    Frank & Seder Warehouse
    These pictures are from a year and a half ago, but old Pa Pitt just ran across them. You never know what you’ll find if you look behind the sofa.

    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.

    A different angle
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    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.

    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. Source: The American Contractor, February 3, 1923: “Warehouse & Garage: $200,000. 7 sty. & bas. 88×200. 1819–23 Bluff st. Archt. & Engr. W. E. Snaman, Empire bldg. Owner The Frank & Weder [sic] Co., Isaac Sedar [sic], pres., Fifth av. & Smithfield st. Brk. Drawing prelim. Plans.” The building as it stands is five storeys. ↩︎
    2. Source: The American Contractor, November 10, 1923: “Warehouse (add.): $500,000. 4 sty. & bas. 159×291. Brk. Beaver av. & Fayette st. Archt. & Bldr. W. E. Snaman, Empire bldg. Owner The Rosenbaum Co., Max Rothschild, pres., 6th & Penn avs. Revising plans.” The “addition” in this listing is most of the building, except for the three-storey section in front. It seems likely that Snaman was responsible for that, too. ↩︎
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  • Eberhardt & Ober Brewery, Dutchtown

    Eberhardt & Ober brewery

    These pictures were taken in 1999 with a Lubitel twin-lens-reflex camera, and old Pa Pitt just happened to run across them a while ago. Very little has changed, and we could probably pass these off as current pictures without remark. The main building is one of the relatively few remaining substantial works of Joseph Stillburg, who for a while was one of the major architectural forces in Pittsburgh. His buildings occupied prominent locations, and most of them were therefore replaced later by even bigger buildings.

    Eberhardt & Ober Brewery

  • Pittsburgh Brass M’f’g Co., Strip

    Pittsburgh Brass M’f’g Co.

    Now known as the Brass Building, this is a well-preserved example of high-class industrial architecture from the turn of the twentieth century.

    Perspective view
    Left side of the building
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    By good luck, space was available when the building was converted for an addition to house elevators and stairwells.

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