George H. Schwan was the architect of this parish house,1 built in 1906 for Christ Episcopal Church. Like the First United Presbyterian Community House next door, it somehow survived when its church was demolished for “urban renewal” in Allegheny Center.
Record & Guide, September 27, 1905, p. 629. “Architect George Schwan, 326 Fourth avenue, has prepared plans for a brick parish house to be erected on Union avenue, Allegheny, for Christ Episcopal congregation, at a cost of about $30,000.” Ultimately the building was faced with stone and probably cost a good bit more. ↩︎
J. H. Giesy was the architect of this little utility-company palace, built in 1916.1
The relief in the shield is so shallow that it has eroded to near invisibility. It looks to old Pa Pitt like an allegorical figure pouring out water, but he is happy to be corrected by someone with a better eye or more accurate information.
American Contractor, October 16, 1915, p. 58. “Office Bldg.: 2 sty. & bas. 50×100. $20M. Wilkinsburg, Pa. Archt. J. H. Giesey, Mellon Bank bldg., Pittsburgh. Owner Penn Water Co., Oliver bldg., Wilkinsburg. Bids in; will soon let contr. Brk.” ↩︎
The Sarah Heinz House was a settlement house built in 1915 by H. J. Heinz in memory of his wife Sarah. The idea of a settlement house was that it would become a center of cultural uplift in a poor neighborhood: educated people would settle in the neighborhood and bring educational and recreational opportunities to the people around them. This is one of the few such institutions still operating: the Sarah Heinz House is still doing good work today, and still in the same building. The architect was R. Maurice Trimble, and if you compare this building to the Allegheny YMCA and the First U. P. Community House, you will see that Mr. Trimble had a very distinct idea of what a public building should look like. Of all his large buildings, this may be old Pa Pitt’s favorite.
These pictures were taken from quite a long distance: we stood at the base of Troy Hill across the street from the Eberhardt & Ober brewery in order to get a good view of the whole building. The Kodak Z990 camera has a lens that extends to the equivalent of 840mm in full-frame terms, so we could even pick out the terra-cotta eagle at the top of the building (the picture below is uncropped, by the way). This is about the practical distance limit for photography on most days: the intervening atmosphere softens the details enough that contrast had to be boosted quite a bit, which introduces more grain to an already grainy sensor. But for most purposes the picture is quite usable.
At least fifteen churches were destroyed to make way for the redevelopment of Allegheny Center. It was one of the most audacious applications of the ideas of Le Corbusier ever attempted: an entire city center destroyed and rebuilt to modern taste, with only a few isolated landmarks left as museum pieces. The fact that only one of them (St. Peter’s) was a church may tell us something about the assumptions of twentieth-century urban planners.
Oddly, this building, which originally belonged to the First United Presbyterian Church of Allegheny, was one of the few buildings the demolishers left, even though the church next to it was destroyed. It was built in 1916; the architect was R. Maurice Trimble. It now belongs to the Allegheny Center Alliance Church.
The parapet with a rounded crest at the top of the building is a favorite Trimble detail; we see a similar treatment, for example, on the Allegheny YMCA, built ten years later.
In 1915 the city of Pittsburgh was on a school-building binge and could hardly find architects to keep up with the demand. Thus there are schools from that era in widely different styles. Here we have a fine example of Collegiate Gothic with just a touch of Art Nouveau. The architects were Vrydaugh & Wolfe, otherwise best known for churches and millionaires’ mansions.
In 1916, when the school was a year old, the architects showed their design and this photograph at the Pittsburgh Architectural Club’s annual exhibition, so we can see that very little has changed about the exterior of the school. The most obvious change is to the windows, which have been replaced with modern windows, the same size as the originals but without the multiple small panes. (The very dark shade of the brick is the result of the film stock of the era, which was not very sensitive to red light.)
You may have noticed this old school if you looked out the window while your chauffeur drove you down the Ohio River Boulevard. It was built in 1922 for St. Gabriel’s, a Slovak parish, whose church stood across California Avenue from the school. In the late 1960s, when the expressway portion of the Ohio River Boulevard was built, the church was demolished; the congregation moved into the school while it built a big new modern church on the hill above. (We may see that building later: it still stands, though not in use as a church.)
To get this picture of the front, Father Pitt had to stand on the narrow, sloping Belgian-block median between California Avenue and the ramp to the Ohio River Boulevard while cars whizzed by on both sides. Since he lived to bring the camera back, you have this picture.
The school has been closed for years, but the building is kept standing. It seems to be in use as a warehouse.
Charles J. Palmgreen was the architect of this fine Jacobean structure, which looks so much like a school that old Pa Pitt spent an hour trying to figure out which school it was before finally finding a picture of it in the Pittsburgh Press for March 23, 1927, which identified the building.
“The office of the Universal Steel Co. on Station st., the most impressive office building in Bridgeville.”
The terra-cotta decorations were supplied by the Corning Terra Cotta Company of Corning, New York, which we know from a booklet published by the company that listed dozens of buildings, including their architects, which is where we got the attribution to Mr. Palmgreen.
THE GLADSTONE SCHOOL O. M. Topp, Architect, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [1916]VIEW SHOWING PORTION NOW FINISHED THE GLADSTONE SCHOOL O. M. Topp, Architect, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [1916]PLAN SHOWING THE COMPLETED BUILDING THE GLADSTONE SCHOOL O. M. Topp, Architect, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [1916]
After sitting vacant for two decades, the main part of the school has been restored as apartments, much to the delight of nearby residents. One neighbor on the same street told old Pa Pitt he had been a student at the school, and was very happy to see the building taken care of once again—and happy to see someone documenting it with a camera.
If you visit, don’t forget to look up at the downspouts.
The population of the neighborhood rapidly grew, and an annex was added in 1926, connected to the main school by a pedestrian bridge. Restoration of the annex is still in progress.
When the thriving borough of Wilkinsburg needed a magnificent new high school to accommodate its mushrooming population, the borough government decided to get the best building possible by inviting an all-star cast of architects to a competition. From the Pittsburg Press, July 8, 1908, p. 17:
Plans for a high school building to cost over $200,000 will be received by the school board of Wilkinsburg. The architects in the competition are Thomas H. Scott, M. G. Wilkins Company, DeBobula & Hazeltine, Milligan & Miller, S. E. Schrieber and E. J. Carlise. M. F. Henning is chairman of the building committee. The competing architects will be given about a month to submit plans.
The winner was Thomas H. Scott, whose name was among the few correctly spelled in the article. He beat some big names, including Wilkinsburg’s own Milligan & Miller, E. J. Carlisle (who already had many schools to his credit), the W. G. Wilkins Company (specialists in large industrial buildings and warehouses, including the one that is now the Andy Warhol Museum), the wildly eccentric and self-aggrandizing genius Titus de Bobula (with an otherwise unknown partner), and probably Frederick Scheibler, if we are correct in guessing that “F. G. Scheibler” was misheard over the telephone as “S. E. Schrieber.” Scott, of course, was a big name himself, and the borough could have had no reason to regret its choice.
The school, which is an interconnected complex of buildings that also included the junior high school, is no longer in use as a school: Wilkinsburg students go to Westinghouse in Pittsburgh from the seventh grade on. But the building is well maintained.
MacClure & Spahr designed the headquarters for Jones & Laughlin, which is now the John P. Robin Civic Building. The entrance is lavishly decorated. The angle below shows off two of the most impressive lanterns in the city.
