This 1950s modernist apartment building was put up on what had been the Neeld estate in Beechview until after the Second World War. It has kept much of its original detail, including the windows. The one big change has been the addition of a hipped roof, which was probably the simplest and most economical way to solve persistent problems with the original flat roof. The colored sections give the building a cheery whimsy that most modernist boxes lack.
St. Joseph’s was an old German parish in Mount Oliver—the part of Mount Oliver that became a city neighborhood, not the adjacent borough of the same name. The land for the church was bought before the Civil War, but the war interrupted the plans, and instead of a church the hastily erected Fort Jones (named for B. F. Jones of Jones & Laughlin) went up on this hilltop to keep the Confederates out of Pittsburgh. Apparently it worked, because you hardly ever see Confederate cavalry riding through Mount Oliver. After the war, the cornerstone of the church was laid in 1868, and the church was dedicated in 1870.
In 1951, the old church burned down, which was a sad blow to the neighborhood—but it made way for this fine building, which was dedicated in 1953. The Catholic congregation left the building in 2005, but the current owners have kept it from falling down.1
Update: Once again, all it took was publishing the pictures, and the information came in. The architects of the rebuilding were Marlier & Johnstone,2 who at about the same time designed St. Henry’s nearby in Arlington. What is even more interesting is that the old church is not entirely gone. It appears that, in the picture above, the side wall and transept, where you see the arched windows, are from the burned-out original church—but with the new construction so skillfully worked around it that old Pa Pitt had not even realized that part of the church was 85 years older than the rest.
The most striking feature of the building is this broad-arched porte cochère, with a long drive making the otherwise steep ascent from Ormsby Street easy.
The rectory, built in 1889, is a well-preserved example of Second Empire architecture. Even the decorative ironwork railing on the tower is still intact.
The school is neglected. In 2011, the old school, part of which dated to the 1870s, burned in a spectacular fire. The part that is left probably dates from the 1920s, with a postwar addition in the 1950s or 1960s.
It occurred to old Pa Pitt this afternoon that he had never seen a complete picture of the front of this building. It took several photographs and some technical fussing to get the composite picture above, but here you are.
We also have pictures of the building from Mount Washington and from Gateway Center Park, as well as pictures of the base of the building.
The Tower at PNC Plaza will be ten years old this year. It occurred to Father Pitt that he had enough pictures in his collection to make up a visual story of the construction of the building, so here they are. Above, the progress as of February 18, 2014.
June 27, 2014, before the construction of the cap began.
August 29, 2014.
March 2, 2015.
March 10, 2015, with bonus bus coming toward you.
March 17, 2015.
June 13, 2015.
September 10, 2015, just a few weeks before opening.
The completed tower on November 12, 2020.
Three and Two Gateway Center seen from Gateway Center Park.
Three Gateway Center.
A wintry view with silhouettes of bare trees.
Three Gateway Center seen from Forbes Avenue near the Diamond.
The Westinghouse Building (now known by its street address, Eleven Stanwix) was designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, who completely changed Pittsburgh’s skyline in the years between the Second World War and the Postmodernist era of the 1980s.
Years ago old Pa Pitt said that the building reminded him of two Mies van der Rohe buildings stacked one on top of another. The building has a Miesian colonnaded porch, but there is an essential difference, and the difference is in favor of Mies.
In a Mies building, the porch creates a useful space that is a transition between outside and inside. You can set up tables on the porch if you like, and they will be out of the weather. People caught in a storm can run to the porch and be sheltered until security chases them back out into the rain. But here the porch is shallow and nearly useless. It does not provide shelter, and the space between the columns and the building is so tight that it eliminates the possibility of using the porch for much. The tables above are pleasant on a clear day, but they are exposed to the weather, and you would not want to sit there in the rain.
In fact, as insulting as it is to say this to a pair of distinguished modernists like Harrison & Abramovitz, this porch is merely decorative.
We also have pictures of the Westinghouse building from Mount Washington, and from the Monongahela River.
The “diagrid” construction of the United Steelworkers Building (originally the IBM Building) is unusual, both from an aesthetic and from an engineering standpoint. The grid is not just decorative: it holds up the building from the outside. The piers on which all that weight rests are dramatic from close up. The architects were Curtis and Davis of New Orleans; as far as old Pa Pitt knows, this is their only building in Pittsburgh.
More pictures of the United Steelworkers Building from Gateway Center Park, from the Boulevard of the Allies, and from across the river.
St. Henry Church has been abandoned for years, and it is slowly rotting away. Yet the neighborhood still remembers it as a point of pride: when Father Pitt was taking pictures along Arlington Avenue the other day, some locals stopped to talk and immediately asked, “Did you see our church?”
And, of course, our utility cables.
St. Henry was designed by Marlier & Johnstone and built in 1952, when the neighborhood was thriving.
Each of those squares had a symbolic relief at its center, with a big metal cross in the middle of the façade. Those have all been taken away, because when Catholics abandon a building, they generally preserve whatever is unique and valuable about it and place it in another parish if possible. It does leave the building looking stripped, but we can understand the impulse.
The entrance is sharply drawn in a style that flavors modern with just a bit of late Art Deco.
An abstract cross-topped cupola.
An exhibition of utility cables.
The rectory is older than the church; it is hard to guess the age of it, and it has been added to in various eras and various styles.
The school next to the church has been abandoned twice. It was a public primary school for a while after the parochial school closed, but the public school closed a few years ago.
Dowler & Dowler, father-and-son architects, designed this building for the Bell System’s western headquarters in Pennsylvania. We have seen the building from this angle before, but we have not seen it with a bus coming toward you, which is always an improvement.
The Stanwix Street front has a Miesian colonnaded porch, with a cheerful abstract mosaic ceiling.
Those cheerful square polka dots also show up in other parts of the building.
The cornerstone, with its late-Art-Deco lettering and date.
The Bell System emblem.
More pictures of the building, including the unique clock and globe (unfortunately out of order).
Edward J. Schulte was a master of the modern in ecclesiastical architecture. Wherever he went, all over the United States, he left churches that were uncompromisingly modern in their details, but also uncompromisingly traditional in their adaptation to Christian worship. St. Anne’s, which was finished in 1962, is a fine example of his work.
The details are modern, but the form of the church is perfectly adapted to the ancient Christian liturgy. Too many modern architects expected the liturgy to adapt to the building, but Mr. Schulte obviously knew Christian tradition.
We might point to the baptistery as an illustration of what we mean.
It’s a strikingly modern building, bang up to date for the Kennedy administration. But in its form and position it reminds us of…
…the Baptistery of Neon in Ravenna, seen here in a photograph from A History of Architecture in Italy by Charles A. Cummings (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1901). Built in the late 300s or early 400s, it was originally an extension of a large basilica, just like this baptistery. The one in Ravenna is one of the oldest Christian buildings still standing; Mr. Schulte reached right back to Roman imperial days to find his inspiration.
The most striking feature of the church is a detached bell tower more than a hundred feet high.
The tower was donated by the United Steelworkers of America in honor of Philip Murray, the union’s first president. St. Anne’s was his home parish, and he is buried in St. Anne’s Cemetery.
A relief of St. Anne and St. Mary is accompanied by a quotation from Psalm 44 in the Vulgate numbering (Psalm 45 in the numbering used in Protestant and newer Catholic Bibles).
The (liturgical) west front of the church1 is a balaced composition in geometry and symbolism.
Some roof work was going on when old Pa Pitt visited. (Update: A parishioner informs us that the work was in the basement, including an elevator, which is doubtless why we saw workers on the roof.)
The entrance to the convent.
