Father Pitt

Tag: MacClure & Spahr

  • Some Houses on Bigelow Boulevard, Schenley Farms

    4307 Bigelow Boulevard

    Snow and icicles make every house more picturesque, and Schenley Farms is a neighborhood full of picturesque houses in any weather. Old Pa Pitt is willing to trudge through the snowdrifts so you can enjoy the beauty while sitting in front of a warm screen. Because of the hard work of an anonymous Google Maps user who gave us a map of Architects of Schenley Farms Residences, we can tell you who designed most of these houses.

    We begin with one of the first houses built in the Schenley Farms plan, designed for the developers by MacClure & Spahr to attract upscale buyers to the new development. (It is also sometimes attributed to Vrydaugh & Wolfe, but our source tells us that was an error.)

    4305

    This one, built in 1907, was designed by Edward Stotz.

    4305

    Mr. Stotz was comfortable in many styles, but seems to have loved the classical style most of all. In this house, he uses very traditional classical ornaments—Greek key around the window and egg-and-dart along the cornice—to create a surprisingly modernistic effect.

    4301

    This is one of the few mysteries in Schenley Farms: it was built by developer John H. Elder for himself, but we have not yet found the name of an architect. It is possible that Mr. Elder designed the house himself. It is a fine house, but to Father Pitt’s eyes there is something unattractively artificial-looking about the stonework.

    4154

    Built in 1912; the architects were D. Simpson & Co.

    4154
    4150

    Here is another one, built in 1920, whose architect we have not yet found.

    4150
    4147

    Paul W. Irwin designed this Georgian mansion, built in 1921.

    Entrance to 4147
    4142

    The firm of Alden & Harlow designed this one, built in 1922. Alden was dead by that time, but his name remained at the head of the firm. Much of the design work in the 1920s was done by Howard K. Jones.

    4142
    4135

    This house was designed for Dr. A. Aiello by Casimir Pellegrini, who would go on to be one of the more important local architects of the middle twentieth century.

    4131

    Another MacClure & Spahr house designed for the Schenley Farms Company early in the development of the plan.

    4131
    4116

    Designed by Alden & Harlow and built in 1913.

    4114
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    This interestingly eclectic design from 1913 was by Thorsten E. Billquist, whose best-known work is the Allegheny Observatory.

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  • Entrance to the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building

    Entrance to the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building
    Samsung Digimax V4.

    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.

    Entrance to the John P. Robin Civic Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    More pictures of the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building: front of the building, from the southeast, and the construction of the second stage of the building.

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  • Oliver Bathhouse, South Side

    The Oliver Bathhouse

    The Oliver Bathhouse, built as the South Side Baths but soon renamed for its donor (who had died in the long delay between the donation and the construction), has been getting a thorough restoration and renovation. The outside of the building looks almost brand new.

    Old photo of the South Side Baths

    This picture from Preservation Pittsburgh’s collection is dated January 31, 1913, at Wikimedia Commons, but that is an error. In the Construction Record for May 30, 1914, we read, “Architects MacClure & Spahr, Keystone building, will lake bids until June 1 on the erection of a brick, stone and terra cotta fireproof bath house on Tenth and Bingham streets, for the Henry W. Oliver Estate. Cost $100,000.” The building might have been finished by January of 1915 if the construction got started right away. Wikipedia concurs that the building was finished in 1915. Since this picture was taken from a printed source, we suspect that a poorly-scanned “1918” might have been misread as “1913.”

    Inscription over the entrance: “South Side Baths presented to the City of Pittsburgh by Henry W. Oliver.”
    “South Side Baths, presented to the City of Pittsburgh by Henry W. Oliver.”

    Oliver’s steel mills nearby employed many of the workmen who would benefit from these baths. He might not pay them enough to afford more than squalid tenements with inadequate bathing facilities, but he was willing to spend enough to make them smell better on Saturday nights.

    Cartouche
    Oliver Bathhouse
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    The Oliver Bathhouse survives as a bathhouse, uniquely among the public baths in Pittsburgh, because the more upscale denizens of today’s South Side appreciate its large indoor swimming pool, the only city pool open in the winter.

    More pictures of the Oliver Bathhouse.

    Map.

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  • Monongahela Incline

    Nonongahela Incline

    The Monongahela Incline on a rainy day. The incline opened in 1870, but the ornate lower station was built in 1904; it was designed by MacClure & Spahr.

    Lower station
    Lower station with car approaching
    Incline cars passing
    Incline car
    Incline car arriving at upper station
    Lower station with two cars on incline
    Lower station
    Lower station
    Lower station
    Monongahela Incline
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

  • Chapel, Office, and Gatehouse at the Homewood Cemetery

    Tower of Homewood Cemetery Chapel

    Albert Spahr of MacClure & Spahr designed the chapel, the administration building, and the gatehouse for the Homewood Cemetery in a Perpendicular Gothic style. (Mr. MacClure had already died, but his name remained at the head of the firm.) The effect is to make us think of our ideal image of an English village.

    Office and chapel
    Chapel
    Chapel
    Chapel with trees
    Tower entrance to the chapel
    Inscription: Anno Domini MCMXXII
    Lantern
    Flower and foliage
    Hinge

    The doors have impressive iron hinges and pulls.

    Door pull
    Tower clock

    Here is an extraordinarily rare thing: a tower clock that is keeping accurate time.

    Office

    The administration building.

    Office
    Office entrance
    Gatehouse

    The gatehouse appears to have been expanded by a third on the right; the seam is only just visible in the front, but much more obvious in the rear.

    Rear of the gatehouse
    Rear of the gatehouse

    Cameras: Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • Coraopolis YMCA

    Coraopolis YMCA

    Now the Historic State Avenue Apartments, this old YMCA was designed by MacClure & Spahr and built in 1910. The style is a rich Georgian that makes the place look like a high-class resort hotel.

    Composite view of the front
    Entrance
    Alcove

    Even the alcoves for trash and utility equipment have a rich Colonial look.

    Coraopolis YMCA

    Cameras: Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Acheson House, Shadyside

    Acheson House

    An elegant Tudor or Jacobean mansion designed by MacClure & Spahr and built in 1903, as the dormer tells us. This Post-Gazette story (reprinted in a Greenville, North Carolina, paper that does not keep it behind a paywall) tells us that a 1925 addition was designed by Benno Janssen, who had worked in the MacClure & Spahr office and may have had some responsibility for the original design. The article also tells us how vandals masquerading as interior designers rampaged through the house and painted all the interior woodwork white or pale grey to “banish dark wood,” but at least the exterior is in good shape.

    Dormer with the date 1903
    Perspective view of the house
    Side of the house

    Cameras: Nikon COOLPIX P100; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

  • Some Houses on Bigelow Boulevard, Schenley Farms

    Ledge House

    As we mentioned before, we are attempting to photograph every house in the residential part of Schenley Farms. Here is a big album of houses on Bigelow Boulevard, which becomes a residential street as it winds through the neighborhood. Above, Ledge House, the strikingly different home of A. A. Hamerschlag, the first director of Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University). It was designed by Henry Hornbostel, who designed the Carnegie Tech campus and taught at Carnegie Tech. It has recently been cleaned of a century’s worth of industrial soot and restored to its original appearance.

    Ledge House
    4107 Bigelow Boulevard

    Above and below, the D. Herbert Hostetter, Jr., house, architects Janssen and Abbott. Benno Janssen and his partner abstracted the salient details of the Tudor or “English half-timber” style and reduced it to the essentials, creating a richly Tudory design with no wasted lines.

    4107 Bigelow Boulevard

    Because we have so many pictures, we’ll put the rest below the metaphorical fold to avoid weighing down the front page here.

    (more…)

  • Top of the Diamond Bank Building

    Lion on the Diamond Bank Building

    Banks and lions go together all over Pittsburgh, and the top of the Diamond Bank Building, an early skyscraper designed by MacClure & Spahr, has a copper cornice bristling with lion heads.

    Top of the Diamond Bank Building

  • Langley High School, Sheraden

    Langley High School

    This school began in 1923 as Sheraden High School, then was renamed Langley. It is now an elementary and junior high school. The architects were MacClure & Spahr, whose instinct for late English Gothic made it a memorable Tudor palace.

    Long wall
    Another entrance