Father Pitt

Tag: Kaufmann’s

  • Kaufmann’s Warehouse, Uptown

    Kaufmann’s Warehouse

    Since we were looking at department-store warehouses a week ago, here is another one. This one was built in 1901 for Kaufmann’s department store, and as a work of architecture it is the most pleasing of the department-store warehouses we’ve seen. It is on the National Register of Historic Places, with the architect listed as D. H. Crisman; but old Pa Pitt, with all due deference to the experts, thinks that attribution is a mistake.1 Crisman was probably the contractor. He is listed in a 1900 city directory as a carpenter, and in 1902 we find him hiring an architect to design an apartment building, strongly suggesting that he was not an architect himself.

    If Father Pitt had to make a guess, he would guess that Charles Bickel was the architect. Bickel designed the store for the Kaufmanns downtown, so he would be an obvious choice. He was also our most prolific producer of warehouses, so he is the safest bet. The style of the building is similar to that of Bickel’s colossal Pittsburgh Terminal Warehouse & Transfer Company on the South Side.

    Kaufmann’s Warehouse
    Windows and cornice

    The architect gave the bricklayers a workout. The bricklayers were up to the challenge.

    View from the west
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Other department-store warehouses: Frank & Seder and Rosenbaum’s, Gimbels.

    1. The attribution is probably based on a listing like this one in the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide for May 29, 1901: “D. H. Crissman [sic], 727 Filbert street, has taken out a permit for the erection of a four story brick warehouse for Kaufman [sic] Bros., Fifth avenue and Smithfield street. The cost will be about $300,000.” The listing leaves it ambiguous whether Crisman/Crissman is the architect or the contractor. ↩︎
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  • First Methodist Protestant Church

    First M. P. Church

    From Closing Services, First Methodist Protestant Church, Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, some engravings of the old downtown church on Fifth Avenue, built in 1832. It was a sad day, of course, when the congregation moved out in 1892, but the consolation was that they were moving into a grand new Romanesque church designed for them by Frederick Osterling (still standing today as the Korean Central Church of Pittsburgh). They were probably also taking a pile of money for their church: the Kaufmann Brothers had leased the land on which the church stood, and soon a huge addition to their department store would rise there.

    The First M. P. congregation had succumbed to the forces that were changing Pittsburgh from a dense medium-sized city to an urban colossus. The “Introductory Note” to the commemorative book explains the circumstances very well.

    That those who worshipped together in the old church were strongly attached to it was a matter of course, and when at the close of the last service in it, Sabbath evening, May 15, the large congregation slowly retired, many went away with heavy hearts, sorrowing most of all because they should enter their old church home no more. If it is asked why did the church dispose of its home the answer is: The inexorable logic of events so decreed.

    When the church was built probably no better location could have been found. It was then almost in the centre of the city and was easily reached from every point in the town. The population was held within a comparatively small territory, but as the city grew the need for business property became more and more urgent, and consequently the people were gradually forced away from their homes in the business sections of the city and scattered into surrounding suburbs. Many of the churches located in what was Pittsburgh sixty years ago have found in these later years their membership steadily and inevitably diminishing in number, and the difficulty in recruiting their ranks has increased with almost every passing year; and the explanation of both facts is the plain one: That the people have moved away and built other churches convenient to their homes.

    Interior

    So the church was abandoned to the inexorable march of commerce—but the land was not. For many years thereafter, Kaufmann’s, the Big Store, stood partly on land that was owned by and paying good money to the First Methodist Protestant Church, now in the tony suburb of Shadyside.

    Lecture room and library
    Lecture room, front view
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  • Kaufmann’s Clock from Fifth Avenue

    The famous Kaufmann’s clock, seen from the east on Fifth Avenue.

  • The Kaufmann’s Clock

    For decades this clock, on the Kaufmann’s department store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Smithfield Street, marked the busiest corner of Pittsburgh’s retail district. “Under the clock” was the designated meeting-place downtown, and Kaufmann’s premier restaurant was called the Tic-Toc in its honor.

    The Kaufmann’s building (like everything else) is being redeveloped as condominium apartments, and the clock is featured prominently in the advertising art.