Father Pitt

Tag: Modernist Architecture

  • Round Bank in Squirrel Hill

    Round bank on Murray Avenue

    From the “form follows function” era of the middle twentieth century comes this round bank. Round is probably the most impractical and anti-functional shape you could come up with for a bank, but modernism sacrificed function for a striking effect much more often than Victorian classicism did. This was built in 1965 for Mellon Bank.1 It now belongs to Citizens Bank, which bought Mellon’s retail branches when Mellon merged with Bank of New York and decided not to deal with grubby working-class people anymore.

    Addendum: The architect was Pittsburgh-based Harry Lefkowitz.2

    1. Our source for the date is this Post-Gazette article. ↩︎
    2. Source: “Mellon Bank Building Office,” Pittsburgh Press, July 26, 1964. “An elliptical structure of new and daring design by Pittsburgh architect Harry Lefkowitz…” ↩︎

  • U. S. Steel Tower

    Part of the U. S. Steel Tower

  • Mellon Hall, Duquesne University

    Mellon Hall

    It is surprising to discover, considering how many of his buildings sprouted in other cities, that this is the only building by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Pittsburgh. (The IBM Building in Allegheny Center was by his architectural firm, but the design was actually by one of his minions in his Chicago office.) It is an unusually long and low building by his standards, but it is otherwise a typical Miesian black box on stilts. Here we see it from across the river with a long lens.

    Mellon Hall

  • BNY Mellon Center

    Our second-tallest building opened in 1983 as One Mellon Center. It was actually meant to be the Dravo Building, but Dravo disappeared before the building was finished. There were plans to surround it with matching smaller buildings, but the 1980s boom went bust, and those buildings never happened.

    The architects were Welton Becket and Associates—clearly the Associates in this case, since Mr. Becket himself died in 1969. (He is, however, credited with this and nearly three dozen other posthumous buildings in his Wikipedia article.)

  • U. S. Steel Tower

    U. S. Steel Tower from South Side Slopes

  • Fifth Avenue Place Reflected in Four Gateway Center

  • Making Lemonade on the South Side

    “When life hands you lemons,” as the old saying goes, and here is an example of someone making pretty good lemonade out of some very unpromising lemons.

    Three years ago the old St. Adalbert’s Auditorium looked like this.

    Decaying St. Adalbert’s Auditorium

    Obviously it had been abandoned, and desultory attempts at maintenance had ground to a halt. This in spite of the fact that the church right next door was still active, and indeed still is today.

    A different angle

    But now the same developer who converted St. Casimir’s to condominiums has taken this building in hand, turning it into fairly expensive condominiums under the name “The Auditorium.”

    The Auditorium

    A sign in front tells us that nine out of fourteen units have already been sold. Considering that the building was a gymnasium, auditorium, and fallout shelter built in the most undistinguished modernist style, this is a very good outcome for a building that had been a festering eyesore in the neighborhood.

  • Old Engineering Hall, Oakland

    Old Engineering Hall

    Old Engineering Hall at the University of Pittsburgh is a fairly successful marriage of modernism and classicism. It is almost postmodern avant la lettre, with classically inspired details but a shape that owes nothing to the classical world. It was built in 1955, when it was still common for modernist buildings to apologize for themselves by including a few dentils and a suggestion of a Greek-key frieze. This was Engineering Hall for only about fifteen years; the School of Engineering moved out in 1971 (into the uncompromisingly modern Benedum Hall), and since then this building has been put to such miscellaneous uses that the university has never been able to come up with a better name for it than “that building that used to be Engineering Hall.”

    Old Engineering Hall

  • Litchfield Towers, Oakland

    Litchfield Towers

    These skyscraper dormitories were built in 1963 to designs by Dahlen Richey of Deeter & Richey. They were poetically named A, B, and C, but students immediately renamed them Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.

    The restored entrance looks like a scene from the modernist paradise that existed mostly in architects’ imaginations. But the original architect certainly did not specify the weirdly incongruous faux-antique lanterns.

    Entrance with stairs
    Entrance

  • Three Gateway Center

    Three Gateway Center

    Seen in 1999 from Equitable Plaza, which was in much better shape in those days.