Update: This church was demolished shortly after this article appeared. It seems the misunderstanding we mentioned below was not so easy to clear up.
This modernist church was dedicated by Cardinal Wright in 1960. The architects were Belli & Belli of Chicago. The stained glass was by Pittsburgh’s Hunt Studios; the scribbly outlines visible from the outside are typical of their postwar work. The church was abandoned by the diocese, but the last old Pa Pitt heard it was being worked on for another use. (In fact there was a stop-work order pasted on the window when Father Pitt walked by in February, but he assumes that is just a minor misunderstanding that will be cleared up.)
Built in the 1950s as the Duquesne University Hall of Law and Finance, this building was featured in the Alcoa advertisement “How Many of These Pittsburgh Skyscrapers Can You Name?” as an example of the new ultra-modern sort of aluminum-clad skyscraper.
To old Pa Pitt’s eye, this is the most charming part of the Alcoa Building, famous for introducing aluminum as a material for the shell of a skyscraper. The rest of the building still looks like a stack of 1950s television sets to him, but this projection, with its angled glass and staggered panes and weird little space-age hoop, is what he wishes the whole building looked like.
Our newest skyscraper, with a bonus bus coming toward you and a reflection of the Gulf Building. Opened just last year in 2024, this is the sixteenth-tallest skyscraper in Pittsburgh and the second-tallest outside downtown, after the Cathedral of Learning. It was designed by Gensler, the world’s largest architecture factory, which was also responsible for the Tower at PNC Plaza. Old Pa Pitt cannot help feeling that the Tower at PNC Plaza got the A unit at Gensler, whereas this one got the C unit. But it is an attempt, after sixty years, to fulfill the promises of redevelopment that were made when the Lower Hill was cleared.
Also known as the Mellon–U. S. Steel Building (it was the headquarters of U. S. Steel before the bigger U. S. Steel Building was put up) and now by its street address, 525 William Penn Place.
Harrison & Abramovitz, who did more than any other single firm to shape the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh, were the architects of this slab of metal and glass. It was their first project here; construction started in 1949, and the building opened in 1951. In “The Stones of Pittsburgh,” James D. Van Trump describes it with effective economy: “Large cage-slab with stainless steel sheathing. Envelope characterized by a kind of elegant monotony.”
There is a little blurring in the middle of this composite picture, which old Pa Pitt was not patient enough to try to correct when it came out of the automatic stitcher that way.
Designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow very early in their practice, this house was built in 1888. For a long time it served as the parsonage for Trinity Lutheran Church next door, which created the odd spectacle of a church whose parsonage was taller and grander than the sanctuary.
If you look for downspouts on this house, you won’t find them. Oral tradition says that Mr. Boggs, one of the founders of the Boggs & Buhl department store, hated gutters; at any rate, his architects devised a system of internal drainage that, when it works, carries runoff through channels in the walls. When it doesn’t work, the grand staircase is a waterfall on a rainy day. When the church sold the house, the buyers had to spend a million dollars refurbishing it, and making the drainage system work again was where a lot of the money went. The house is now a boutique hotel under the name Boggs Mansion.
From The Pittsburgh Bicentennial in 1958, an advertisement for Alcoa aluminum as the new wonder material in construction. All these buildings are still standing, though the Heinz Food Research Center badly needs a rescue.
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.
