Father Pitt

Tag: Ionic

  • Larimer School

    Larimer School

    For forty years this school stood abandoned and rotting. The main building, put up in 1896, was designed by Ulysses J. Lincoln Peoples, who also designed an addition in 1904 for the rapidly growing neighborhood. An auditorium-gymnasium addition was designed by George M. Rowland in 1931. The school closed in 1980, and then it just sat while the neighborhood crumbled around it.

    Photo by Lee Paxton, 2011
    Photo by Leepaxton at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    This is how the school looked in 2011, when the indefatigable Lee Paxton, who photographed nearly every Pittsburgh landmark for Wikipedia, stopped to snap its picture. But look at that same Larimer Avenue façade today:

    Larimer Avenue façade

    Doesn’t that make you happy?

    Sign for Ora Lee Carroll House at Cornerstone Village

    The restoration was done as part of the huge Cornerstone Village housing development, a mixed-housing community that has brought attractive new housing to long-neglected Larimer. All the beautiful details that Mr. Peoples, Mr. Rowland, and dozens of nameless craftsmen left for us have been scrupulously preserved, cleaned, and made to look almost new.

    Larimer Avenue end

    This is the Larimer Avenue end of the building, which has a grand entrance—but not the grandest entrance.

    Larimer Avenue entrance
    Larimer Avenue entrance
    Larimer Avenue façade

    Around the corner on Winslow Street is the original main entrance to the 1896 building.

    Winslow Street entrance
    Winslow Street entrance

    But even this is not the grandest entrance.

    1904 addition

    In 1904, an addition was built to the southeast of the main building. A new entrance was built linking the main building to the addition, and this is the grandest entrance.

    Entrance
    Entrance
    Balcony above the entrance

    When he was heading for Larimer, old Pa Pitt somehow walked out of the house without any long lenses. He will have to return soon to pick out those very amusing bracket heads, which he suspects were done by the same sculptor who did the whimsical decorations for the Western Theological Seminary. But the picture above is 20 megapixels, so if you enlarge it you will see a fair amount of detail. You will also see raindrops, because it was raining by the time Father Pitt got to the school, but he was not going to let mere weather deter him.

    Tympanum

    The child on the right is regrettably not the first or last to have lost his head when he went to school.

    Auditorium

    In 1931, an auditorium and gymnasium addition was designed by George M. Rowland. By that time styles had changed considerably. Rowland stuck to the classical idiom, but chose the simpler Doric order rather than the more florid Ionic and Corinthian of the original school and addition, and flavored the front with a dash of Art Deco.

    Front of the auditorium
    Sony Alpha 3000, Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S9.
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  • Ingram Public School

    Ingram Public School

    Press C. Dowler, who designed several other schools and public buildings in the Chartiers Valley, was the architect of this school, which was built in 1914. It is no longer in use, but the building is in good shape.

    Ingram Public School
    Date stone with date 1914
    Ingram Public School
    Bricks in a woven pattern

    Throughout his long career, which went from Romanesque through classical through Art Deco to modernism, Dowler used simple materials to weave interesting geometric decorations.

    Ingram Public School
    Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Three Houses by U. J. L. Peoples on Negley Avenue

    907–917 North Negley Avenue

    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.

    909 North Negley Avenue

    Although the houses clearly go together, window placements and other details vary.

    917 North Negley Avenue
    Ionic capitals

    “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.

    917 North Negley Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co., Squirrel Hill

    Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co.

    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.

    Press C. Dowler’s rendering of the Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co.

    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.

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  • Emich Apartments, Mexican War Streets

    Emich Apartments

    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.

    Front of the building

    Addendum: We are fairly sure that the architect was William Wolfshafer (sometimes spelled Wolfschaffer). Source: Record & Guide, November 8, 1899, p. 727. “William Wolfshafer, 6717 Kelly street, has prepared plans for a large apartment house, which will be erected on North Avenue Allegheny, for William A. Emrick [sic], 326 Fourth avenue. It will be handsomely finished, all modern improvements and cost about $75,000.”

    Entrance
    Ionic capital
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • Ohio Valley Trust Company, Coraopolis

    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.

    We also have pictures of the Ohio Valley Trust Company building in color.

  • Ohio Valley Trust Company, Coraopolis

    Ohio Valley Trust Company

    A small but very rich classical bank still in use as a bank.

    Corner entrance
    Clock with zodiac

    The clock suggests that the bankers will consult an astrologer before investing your money.

    Ionic capital
    Trust

    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.

    Trust
    Ohio Valley Trust Company

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285 (HDR stacks of three photographs); Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • Colonial Trust Company

    Colonial Trust Company Building

    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.

    Lion’s head

    What would a bank be without its lions?

    Cartouche

    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:

    Fourth Avenue entrance
    Lion

    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.

    Wood Street entrance

    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.

  • Georgian House in Schenley Farms

    Georgian house

    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.

    From across the street
    Front door
    Ionic capitals
    Side porch
    From the east

  • Another Renaissance Palace in Squirrel Hill

    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.