Three similar houses in a row, Pittsburgh Foursquares with dignified classical detailing, and all three in beautiful shape. Father Pitt has was told by the owner of one of them, an architect and community activist, that they were designed by Ulysses J. L. Peoples.
Although the houses clearly go together, window placements and other details vary.
“Modern Ionic” capitals—the kind where the volutes (the spiral things) stick out at the four corners, as opposed to classical Ionic capitals, which are meant to be seen from the front and have pairs of volutes rolled up like a scroll.
You could count on architect Press C. Dowler for the bankiest-looking banks. The correct Ionic front of this one looks almost exactly the way he drew it, as we can see from the architect’s rendering that was published in the Press on February 8, 1931.
It seems to old Pa Pitt that the mark of a Dowler bank is correct classical detail combined with a lack of fussiness. There is never too much detail. But he takes the details seriously. In other buildings he was already adopting Art Deco and modernist styles, but a bank needed to look traditional and timeless—especially in the Depression. For other Dowler bank designs, see the Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company and the Braddock National Bank.
A grand apartment house that would have been grander before it lost its cornice in front. Another “Emich Apartments,” taller and grander, stood where Allegheny General Hospital is today; both were named for developer W. A. Emich. This one was built on the site of the old Second Ward School in the city of Allegheny.
As seen by a Kodak Pony 135 camera with Efke KB 25 film. The film expired years ago—or rather the printed expiration date was years ago, but the film lives on. Once this roll (which started at 30.5 meters) is gone, however, there is no more. The creaky old Efke factory in Croatia closed down in 2012 on account of “a fatal breakdown in machinery.” The current incarnation of ADOX picked up the formula for Efke’s ISO 100 film, but not this slower film. It’s a pity, because this film produced negatives with fine grain and a wide range of tones, and it was also cheap.
A small but very rich classical bank still in use as a bank.
The clock suggests that the bankers will consult an astrologer before investing your money.
Stock-photo sites will charge you good money for patently metaphorical pictures like these. Yet old Pa Pitt gives them to you for free, released with a CC0 public-domain donation, so there are no restrictions on what you can do with them.
Fourth Avenue, the second-biggest American financial center after Wall Street, was famous for its bank towers. But one bank decided to go long instead of high. The Colonial Trust Company built a magnificent banking hall that ran right through from Forbes Avenue to Fourth Avenue, skylit all the way. Pittsburghers passing between Fourth and Forbes, especially in cold weather, would take the route through the bank so regularly that the hall became known as Colonial Avenue.
Frederick Osterling was the architect, and he designed this magnificent Corinthian face for the Forbes Avenue side.
What would a bank be without its lions?
Home-repair tip: if your pediment is broken, you can fill the gap with a baroque cartouche.
Two years ago, old Pa Pitt got pictures of the other entrances as well, so the rest of the pictures are reruns.
The Fourth Avenue side is in the same style, but narrower:
This side also has its lions.
In 1926, the bank decided to expand by building another equally magnificent hall perpendicular to the first, with an entrance on Wood Street. Osterling was the architect again—but fashions, and Osterling’s own taste, had changed.
Instead of florid Corinthian, this side is in a simpler Ionic style. The outlines are cleaner, and the wall of rectangular panes of glass and the shallow arch at the top seem almost modernistic. It is still a bravura performance, but perhaps a more perfectly controlled one.
Fortunately the whole building has been adapted as Point Park’s University Center, so it is not going anywhere, for the near future at any rate.
A splendid example of the Georgian revival, which is not a very common style in Schenley Farms. This is one of those domestic masterpieces that make Schenley Farms “a museum of early twentieth century domestic architecture,” in the words of the historical marker put up by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in 1978.
Gilding the capitals of your Ionic porch columns is a subtle way to tell the world, “I have more money than I know what to do with.” Note the half-round extrusion in the shadows on the right-hand side.
Probably built in the 1890s, this grand house on Wightman Street has its very Victorian trim picked out in cheerful colors. Note the thoroughness of the decoration: even the dormers are given little pilasters with Ionic capitals.
A little bedraggled and somewhat muddled by renovations, the former Hill-Top Branch Young Men’s Christian Association is still a grand building. Old Pa Pitt has not been able to determine the architect, but according to the city’s Hilltop architectural inventory it was built in 1911. The same document says elsewhere that the land for it was donated in 1912, and Father Pitt is imagining an amusing scene in which the projectors of the YMCA are trying to explain to the landowner why they thought it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Above, the Zara Street front of the building.
One of the ornate “modern Ionic” capitals on the front porch.
Source: The Construction Record, May 13, 1911: “The Ley Construction Company, Curry building, have started excavations for a four-story brick building to be constructed on Zara street and Virginia avenue, Knoxville, for the Y. M. C. A., to cost $75,000. Plans by Architect E. V. Denick, 1212 House building.” Certainly this building has lost its top; it is possible that it was once four floors, but more likely that the specifications were changed, or that the magazine (which was sloppily edited) printed the wrong number. ↩︎
