The Hotel Henry was on Fifth Avenue; it was replaced in 1951 by the Mellon Bank Building (525 Fifth Avenue). Here we see a huge banquet for the newspapermen of Pittsburgh in 1904, which incidentally gives us a look at the posh appointments of the banquet hall.
One of the chief attractions of the main Carnegie Library is the Reference Department, a huge room with a vaulted ceiling where you can walk in and ask a librarian for help on any topic, and then have librarians scurrying back into the stacks looking for obscure volumes to aid you in your research. Think of it this way: at no cost to you, simply by walking into this room, you can have the experience of being a supervillain with an army of minions.
The coffered ceiling was originally full of skylights—a maintenance headache rendered less necessary by bright modern lighting.
Mural decorations—lost for years behind paint, found accidentally in 1995, and carefully restored—pay tribute to famous printers of the Renaissance. A report by Marilyn Holt (PDF) describes the murals in detail. Above, the mark of Aldus Manutius, perhaps the greatest of them all.
Reginaldus Chalderius (or Regnault Chaudière, as he would have been called at home), French printer at the sign of L’homme sauvage.
Balthasar Moretus, Antwerp printer of the middle 1600s.
Thielman Kerver, Parisian printer at the sign of the Unicorn.
Noli altum sapere—“Do not be proud”—say the Estiennes, Parisian printers.
Jean de la Caille reminds us that prudence beats force—Vincit prudentia vires.
Simon Vostre, early French printer.
Many of the details in the decorations are picked out in gold leaf.
From The Brickbuilder in 1913, two views showing how interior spaces in the Allegheny County Soldiers’ Memorial were illuminated.
An interesting note on the auditorium: In 1960, Syria Mosque across the street was the usual venue for Pittsburgh Symphony performances. But when the Symphony made some high-tech ultra-high-fidelity recordings for Everest that year, conductor William Steinberg insisted on using the auditorium in Soldiers and Sailors Hall instead. He thought the acoustics were much better. Those Everest recordings are still regarded by connoisseurs as some of the most real-sounding symphonic recordings ever made.
A beautifully composed picture of the interior of Emmanuel’s taken in February of 1958 by an unknown wedding photographer. The church is now a nondenominational church called Christ the King (which sounds like a very Lutheran name), and the congregation keeps it up beautifully, as we can see in the rest of these pictures. Old Pa Pitt must apologize for the lighting: the sun was from exactly the wrong direction.
This church is obviously the work of an architect of no little skill, and Father Pitt would be delighted if someone could identify who it was. —Update: Father Pitt identifies Allison & Allison as the architects. Source: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, April 22, 1908: “At Pittsburg, architects Allison & Allison, Westinghouse Building, are receiving bids for the erection of a Lutheran church at Bellevue, Pa. The cost will be $15,000. Rev. Hankey is in charge.”
Here is a map with a pointer at the church.
The interior of the P&LE terminal, now Pittsburgh’s most spectacular restaurant.
Addendum: According to the Inland Architect, the “quite elaborate” waiting room and stair hall were designed by Crossman & Sturdy, decorators, of Chicago. The architect of the building was William G. Burns, or possibly George W. Burns, depending on the source.
Andrew Mellon’s summer home is now one of several millionaires’ mansions that belong to Chatham University. It is open for students who want a quiet place to study. Mr. Mellon, in addition to being absurdly rich himself, was also Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s, and widely considered the most powerful man in Washington: they used to say that three presidents served under him (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover). He was one of the few competent and relatively honest members of Warren G. Harding’s administration, and for most of the 1920s he was often called the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton. Then came the Great Depression, and he was not as popular as he had been.
The house was built in 1897 for the Laughlins of Jones and Laughlin; Mellon bought it in 1917 and set about remaking it to his tastes, adding, among other things, an indoor swimming pool, supposedly the first private one in Pittsburgh.
A mantel decoration.
The sun room.
The back of the house.
The swimming pool was adapted in 2008 for use as the Board Room, with a new handicap-accessible entrance that combined new construction with as much of the existing architecture as could be reused. The architects of the project were Rothschild Doyno Collaborative.
The lobby of the Koppers Building is one of our richest Art Deco interiors, and here it is decorated for Christmas.
The brass letterbox in the lobby of the Koppers Building (now called Koppers Tower, because every Building became a Tower while you weren’t looking) is a stylized model of the Koppers Building itself.
First Baptist Church, built in 1912, was designed by Bertram Goodhue, one of America’s greatest Gothic architects, and also the designer of the Cheltenham typeface, familiar today as the headline face of the New York Times. The Perpendicular Gothic interior includes one of the most visually beautiful sets of organ pipes in the city. At night everything takes on an added air of ancient mystery.
