Father Pitt

Tag: Kiehnel and Elliott

  • Grace United Evangelical Church, Wilkinsburg

    Grace United Evangelical Church

    Kiehnel & Elliott were one of the few Pittsburgh firms to adopt early modern styles at the turn of the twentieth century. When they took on a church, however, they turned completely traditional, and it would be hard to point out anything about this neat little church that sets it apart from the work of other good but conventional architects of the time. This one was built in 1915, and it is a typical Pittsburgh corner-tower Protestant church. Today it is one of our dwindling number of black stone churches, and the soot of the decades gives it a kind of evening-dress dignity it would not have had when it was young.

    Entrance

    The church us beautifully kept by its current occupants, Victory Global Ministries, whose pastor disdains the pompous title “bishop” favored by many nondenominational ministers in favor of the original workaday meaning of the Greek ἐπίσκοπος: “Overseer.”

    Grace United Evangelical Church
    Tower
    Grace United Evangelical Church

    The vanishing of an early addition in the rear shows us something of the original color of the stone.

    Grace United Evangelical Church
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Engine Company No. 38, Lincoln–Lemington–Belmar

    Engine Company No. 38

    Kiehnel & Elliott, one of the few Pittsburgh firms to pick up German-style Art Nouveau and run with it, designed this firehouse, which was built in 1908. The decorations are full of the elegant Jugendstil whimsy that was Richard Kiehnel’s specialty.

    Engine Company No. 38
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Tower
    Tower
    Front elevation
    Engine Company No. 38
    Engine Company No. 38
    Side of the firehouse
    Sony Alpha 3000; Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Swissvale Presbyterian Church

    Swissvale Presbyterian Church

    Kiehnel & Elliott were the architects of this church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1909. It certainly isn’t typical of the modernistic Art Nouveau designs we associate with Kiehnel & Elliott; but their few churches tended to be more conservative, and here they were probably commissioned by a congregation with conservative tastes. They came through with a typical Pittsburgh corner-tower auditorium church, and the fact that almost nothing has changed since the church was built tells us that the congregation had no reason to regret its choice of architects.

    Cornerstone
    Postcard of First Presbyterian, Swissvale

    A postcard of unknown date from the Presbyterian Historical Society. Father Pitt is grateful for the volunteer work that made nearly a thousand old postcards of churches freely available, so that we can compare them to the standing buildings, and remember the buildings that have vanished. In this case, the comparison shows us that almost nothing has changed.

    Swissvale Presbyterian Church

    You think we have utility cables now, but imagine what it was like when the streetcars ran on Monongahela Avenue.

    Entrance
    Tower
    Side porch

    This side porch feels mysterious and ancient, which is probably a good thing for a church. Wouldn’t you like to come in and discover the ancient mysteries?

    Side porch
    Cupola
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR; Sony Alpha 3000.

    It’s easy to miss this small cupola or big finial at the peak of the roof, so old Pa Pitt went after it with a long lens so you can admire it up close.

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  • Godfrey Stengel House, Schenley Farms

    Godfrey Stengel house at 4136 Bigelow Boulevard

    Built in 1913, this house is a minor landmark of early modernism in Pittsburgh. Kiehnel & Elliott were the architects, and Richard Kiehnel had a thoroughly German architectural education. He applied the latest Jugendstil ideas of decoration, with a little Prairie Style thrown in, to the forms that were popular in Pittsburgh—like the standard three-storey Renaissance palace that is the basis of this house. The combination was a winner: clients got something that looked bracingly up to date, but didn’t make their neighbors hate them.

    Godfrey Stengel house at 4136 Bigelow Boulevard
    Art-glass window
    Godfrey Stengel house at 4136 Bigelow Boulevard
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Lillian Henius House, Highland Park

    Lillian Henius house

    Built in 1918, this very artistic house was designed for an artist by Kiehnel & Elliott, who applied everything Richard Kiehnel had learned from the German Jugendstil masters and made a kind of modernist Bavarian peasant cottage. Kiehnel & Elliott were among our most interesting early modernists; they would go on to make architectural history by introducing Art Deco to Miami.

  • House by Kiehnel & Elliott in Schenley Farms

    Godfrey Stengel house

    For their client Godfrey Stengel, Kiehnel & Elliott took the basic form of a typical Pittsburgh Renaissance palace, which gave them a box to work with—Richard Kiehnel’s favorite shape. To that canvas the architects applied their trademark Jugendstil-infiltrated-by-Prairie-school decorations. The house was built in 1913, and it must have looked very modern—yet it fits perfectly in Schenley Farms, where other more traditional Renaissance palaces have almost the same shape without the Jugendstil.

    Window on the second floor
    Frieze
    Pillar
    Pillar
    Godfrey Stengel house

  • Graham–Teufel House, Allegheny West

    840 Lincoln Avenue

    This house has an unusual history, which we take from Carol Peterson’s detailed research at the Allegheny West site. It was built in the early 1860s as a typical modest Pittsburgh rowhouse. In 1918, new owners decided they wanted something less embarrassingly old-fashioned, so they hired the most modern and up-to-date architects—Kiehnel & Elliott—to remodel the house in the most modern and up-to-date style—Spanish Mission. The result is something that would have been right at home in Florida, where Kiehnel and Elliott were beginning a flourishing practice that would persuade them to move to Miami in 1922. It would also have matched the neighborhood aesthetic in many of the new Pittsburgh streetcar suburbs like Carrick or Beechview. It seems a little out of place on Lincoln Avenue in Allegheny West.

    Graham–Teufel House

  • Kiehnel and Elliott on the Bluff

    It is a general principle of research that you can find anything as long as you’re not looking for it. Old Pa Pitt was leafing through a magazine from 1915 called The Construction Record, which has already given him dozens of entries for the Great Big List of Buildings and Architects, when he came across this little item:

    Architects Kiehnel & Elliott, Keenan building, have plans for a three-story brick and hollow tile apartment building, to be built on Van Braam and Tustin streets for a private party.

    Kiehnel and Elliott were among our most interesting early modernists, but Father Pitt had never heard this building mentioned. Surely it must be long gone—the Bluff has had some tough times. But still, one might take a look, especially since modern technology makes it possible to look at that intersection without leaving one’s comfortable chair. And there it was. Father Pitt leaped out of his chair and ran to the Bluff to get pictures:

    Apartment building on the Bluff

    Not only is it there and well preserved (except for the cornice, of course), but it has just recently been cleaned up and made to look almost like new. The Kiehnel-and-Elliott style is unmistakable. Look at the pilaster capitals at the entrance:

    Pilaster capital

    How much more Kiehnel-and-Elliott can you get?

    Entrance
    Vertical design in the center

    Kiehnel and Elliott would later move to Florida and become the Art Deco kings of Miami, but in their Pittsburgh years they were heavily influenced by the Jugendstil architecture of Germany, where Richard Kiehnel grew up and studied. Ornamentation and decorative brickwork like this can be found in all the German architectural magazines of the early twentieth century.

    From the north
    From the south

  • Decorations on the Central Turnverein

    Lintel

    Now the Gardner Steel Conference Center, the Central Turnverein was German Pittsburgh’s most elegant athletic club. The building is an extraordinary early-modern design by Kiehnel and Elliott, and they trimmed it with geometric decorations inspired by the latest Jugendstil architecture overseas.

    Central Turnverein
    Bracket
    Rectangle
    Window frames
    Another rectangle

  • Central Turnverein, Oakland

    Central Turnverein

    A Turnverein (German for “gymnastics association”) was a German athletic club, many of which were scattered through the city. This was doubtless the most luxurious of the lot. It is now the Gardner Steel Conference Center of the University of Pittsburgh.

    Art Nouveau is rare in Pittsburgh, but here is a building that crosses Jugendstil with Prairie Style to produce a distinctive classical modernism. (The picture above is big: enlarge it to appreciate the delightful abstract decorative details.) It was finished in 1912, when Jugendstil was perhaps past its peak in Germany but was still adventurously modern here. The architects were Kiehnel and Elliott, who were more experimental in spirit than most Pittsburgh architects of the time. Richard Kiehnel was born in Germany and had absorbed Jugendstil at the source. The firm is actually more famous for its buildings in Florida; Kiehnel designed a Miami mansion for the president of Pittsburgh Steel, and it apparently made such an impression down there that Kiehnel and Elliott moved to Miami in 1922.

    Gardner Steel Conference Center