Father Pitt

Tag: Moderne Architecture

  • Homestead Senior High School

    Entrance to the Homestead Senior High School

    This snappy-looking modernistic school was designed by Button & McLean (Lamont H. Button and Paul F. McLean), who were taking bids in November of 1938.1 It was later bought by the Steel Valley Council of Governments, an association of boroughs and cities in the Mon Valley, which has turned it into a shop where you can take your humans to have them serviced.

    Homestead Senior High School

    When old Pa Pitt took these pictures, there was a band rehearsing somewhere in the building that included a pretty good vibraphone player.

    Homestead Senior High School
    Fukifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
    1. Proposals, Pittsburgh Press, November 30, 1938, p. 32. “Copies of plans, specifications and other contract documents will be on file and open to public inspection at the offices of the Architects, 119 East Montgomery Avenue, North Side, Pittsburgh, Pa.…” From many other listings we know that 119 East Montgomery Avenue—a street that no longer exists—was the office of Button & McLean. ↩︎
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  • Ohringer Building, Braddock

    Ohringer building

    Pittsburgh’s own Harry H. Lefkowitz was the architect of this futuristic tower of furniture, which was built in 1941. The building is one of the chief landmarks of the moderne style in the Pittsburgh area, and by sheer luck it has not been too much damaged over its eighty-five years of existence. It is an astonishing thing to come across while walking or driving through the almost deserted business district of Braddock. Now, at last, it is appreciated: it has been restored, complete with its spectacular sign, as artist residences, and as much of the original modernistic appeal as possible has been kept intact.

    Ohringer Home Furniture sign
    Ohringer building
    Ohringer building
    Ohringer Building
    Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    Old Pa Pitt has been wandering in Braddock, and we’ll see many pictures in the next few weeks. Some of what we’ll see is sad, so we begin with good news to show that there are people who love Braddock and have hope for its future.

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  • Dickson Public School, Swissvale

    Dickson Public School

    Now the Dickson Preparatory STEAM Academy, which sounds like a prep school for future boilermakers, this handsome modernistic school was designed by Rober McCartney and built in 1929. Updates have been done with a real appreciation of what makes the building work.

    Dickson Public School
    Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • Moderne Apartment Building in Shadyside

    Apartment building with Moderne details
    Composite of two photographs from a Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Probably built in about 1940, this was the science-fiction apartment building of the future. Except for newer windows, it has not changed much.

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  • Moderne Apartment Building in North Point Breeze

    Moderne apartments

    Streamlined modernity invades Point Breeze! Although this building has been muddled a little, enough of its distinctive details are intact that it still creates a striking impression as we walk down Thomas Boulevard. Father Pitt loves the rounded corners from the outside, though he might curse them if he lived in those corner apartments.

    Front of the apartment building

  • C. H. Fingeret Building, Coraopolis

    C. H. Fingeret building

    Father Pitt knows nothing about this building besides what you see here. It was probably a striking Moderne design when it went up in 1943; paint has obscured the patterned brickwork and different materials.

    Inscription: C. H. Fingeret, 1943
    C. H. Fingeret building
    C. H. Fingeret Building

  • Moderne Terrace in West Park

    610–614 Woodward Avenue

    We have seen many answers to the question of how to make a cheap row of small houses attractive. This streamlined terrace is certainly one of the more interesting answers. It would have been even more striking with the original windows and doors and without the aluminum awnings.

    Geometric patterns in the bricks
    Porch and doors
    Moderne terrace
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • The President Apartments, Shadyside

    The President Apartments at night

    This phone-camera picture is soupy with noise reduction if you enlarge it, but it gives us a good idea of how the Flash Gordon glass-block window in the stairwell looks at night.

  • Modern Cafe, Allegheny West

    Modern Cafe sign

    The Modern Cafe is a startling outbreak of almost cartoonish modernism in Allegheny West, as if the owners had decided on a name for the place first and then designed a building to go with the name. Its neon sign is one of our chief cultural treasures.

    Modern Cafe
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • Two Moderne Apartment Buildings in Mount Lebanon

    666 Florida Avenue

    On Florida Avenue, a street that runs behind the Uptown business district in Mount Lebanon, two apartment buildings in a toned-down version of Moderne streamlining face each other. The most striking feature of number 666 is the stairwell set into a tall groove with a two-floor window of glass blocks.

    666 Florida Avenue

    The decorative brickwork at the corners suggests quoins, but in a modernistic manner.

    Entrance to 666
    667 Florida Avenue

    Across the street is a pair of identical buildings with less streamlining and no abstract quoins.

    Entrance to 667

    Both buildings would probably have had windows with more character when they were new.

    667

    Cameras: Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.