Father Pitt

Tag: Penn Avenue

  • Old Franklin Savings & Trust Co., Strip

    Franklin Savings & Trust Co.

    Vrydaugh & Wolfe, famous for churches and millionaires’ mansions, were the architects of this tiny bank, built in 1904. Newspaper stories of the time seem to tell a tale of contracted ambition, and it is probable that the building as it stands was meant to have more floors added as the bank prospered. (Instead, in the late 1920s, the bank built a much larger building across the street and down the block a bit, and then shortly after that failed in the great bank massacre of the early Depression.)

    In January of 1904, we read that the Franklin Savings and Trust Company was planning a $30,000 four-story building on its newly purchased lot1. But just four and a half months later, in the middle of May, we read that the bank had occupied its new building, which had cost $20,000 and had only one floor.2 It was fairly common in those days to plan a building so that it would support additional floors when they were needed, and old Pa Pitt suspects that is what happened here: the bank decided it would be prudent to save some money for the moment. Perhaps the luxurious interior appointments of mahogany and marble had cost more than the directors had anticipated.

    Art’s Tavern
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    The result was a little bank that looks almost as if it could be towed away by a large truck. But the pediment over the entrance and the arched windows (now filled in and muraled over, except for the shrunken one in front) would have given it a prosperously bankish look.

    1. “Eastern Men to Build Apartments,” Gazette, January 16, 1904, p. 13: “Through the Commonwealth Real Estate and Trust Company the Franklin Savings and Trust Company has purchased the J. W. Roberts property at the southwest corner of Penn avenue and Twenty-first streets for $13,000. The lot measures 24×57 feet and is improved with a two-story brick building. As this is the first sale in this immediate locality since the boom last spring, it is interesting to note the price paid, $541 a front foot or $9.50 a square foot. The purchasing company has had plans prepared by Architects Vrydaugh & Wolfe for a four-story brick and terra cotta building to be erected in the spring at a cost of $30,000.” ↩︎
    2. “Trust Company at Home,” Press, May 5, 1904, p. 8: “The new building of the Franklin Savings & Trust Co., at 2850 Penn avenue, was occupied for the first time this morning. It is a one-story buff brick and stone structure and was erected at a cost of $20,000. The interior of the new bank is finished in mahogany and marble.” ↩︎
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  • Columbia Hospital, Wilkinsburg

    Columbia Hospital

    Columbia Hospital merged with Pittsburgh Hospital and East Suburban General in Monroeville to form Forbes Health System. The location in Wilkinsburg closed some years ago, but unlike some other large buildings in Wilkinsburg, this complex found new uses. The largest part is a nursing home, and several other businesses and services occupy smaller sections.

    Older section

    The original hospital buildings were designed by John Lewis Beatty, whom we have met before mostly as a designer of Protestant churches. They are faced with a very attractive cinnamon brick that is actually made up of randomly assorted but related shades.

    Brick on the face of Columbia Hospital
    Columbia Hospital, West Street face
    West Street entrance
    Entrance
    Vincent Way entrance

    If we walk around to the forgotten back alley behind the hospital, we discover the old abandoned emergency entrance. We can also see some more of the older buildings in the complex.

    Emergency entrance
    Emergency entrance and old buildings
    Emergency entrance
    Rear of the hospital
    Addition of 1957
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    In 1956, the hospital announced a big new addition and planned to raise a million and a half to pay for it. The architects were Prack & Prack, longtime specialists in large industrial and institutional buildings.

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  • First National Bank Building, Wilkinsburg

    First National Bank Building

    A banking palace from the 1890s, with the ground floor still in use as a bank. The style is classical on the ground floor but Romanesque above; we suspect the ground floor may be a later alteration. Father Pitt does not know the architect yet. L. A. Raisig, a successful architect and builder who designed many buildings in Wilkinsburg, kept his office here, so it is possible that he designed the building.

    Front elevation
    First National Bank Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20 EXR.
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  • Penn Building, Wilkinsburg

    Penn Building, Wilkinsburg

    A commercial building on Penn Avenue with a well-preserved terra-cotta front whose distinctive Art Deco decorations were worth picking out with a long lens.

    Terra cotta
    Terra-cotta frieze
    Terra-cotta frieze
    Ornament
    Entrance
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR
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  • McNally Building

    McNally Building
    The perspective of this picture has been adjusted on two planes to make a more natural view of the building, at the cost of distorting some of the other things in the picture.

    Thomas D. Evans was the architect of this towering warehouse, built just as the age of skyscrapers was dawning in 1896. It has kept its Romanesque decorative details, and the ground floor has been restored and lightly modernized with sympathy for the original lines of the building.

    Ground floor of the McNally Building
    Capital
    Foliage ornament
    Entrance to the McNally Building
    McNally Building
    Sony Alpha 3000; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    The picture above was taken in September of 2023; we append it to show the strong impression the building makes from half a block away.

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  • The Sauer Building

    Sauer Building

    The front of green terra cotta is unique in Pittsburgh. Frederick C. Sauer designed this building, and when it was done he moved his office into it. It is the only one of Sauer’s buildings, as far as old Pa Pitt knows, that bore his name on the building itself, though at some point some workman, doubtless thinking he was doing a splendid job of renovating the building, did his best to obliterate the letters:

    F. C. Sauer, architect

    Addendum: As we might have guessed from looking at the front, the building rose in two stages. Three floors were added in 1909.1

    804
    Cornice
    Ornament in terra cotta
    Ornament in terra cotta
    Green terra cotta
    Sony Alpha 3000; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Two Beaux-Arts Survivors on Penn Avenue

    819 and 821 Penn Avenue

    Doubtless built for very pedestrian commercial uses—with huge windows that provided bright light from the south all day—these two buildings nevertheless could not be seen in public until they were dressed in the proper Beaux-Arts fashion. Other more recent buildings grew up around them and then were torn down, but these have survived, and seemed to be getting some work when Father Pitt walked past them recently.

    Both buildings pull from the same repertory of classical ornaments in terra cotta, but mix them up in different ways.

    Ornaments on 819 and 821

    No. 819 is more heavily ornamented—both in the sense of the abundance of ornaments and in the sense that the individual ornaments seem weightier:

    Bracket
    Lions on the cornice
    Foliage and Greek key

    No. 821, on the other hand, is decorated with a lighter and more Baroque touch:

    Cartouche
    Cartouche and Vitruvian scroll
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Bernard Gloeckler Co. Warehouse (Pennrose Building), Strip District

    Pennrose Building

    One of the few first-generation skyscrapers outside downtown, this was originally the warehouse for the Bernard Gloeckler Company, a prosperous dealer in “butchers’ supplies & tools, store fixtures, refrigerators, etc.,” according to a 1913 city directory (where the name is spelled Gloekler; we have also seen Glockler and Gleckler). It was later called the Pennrose Building, and of course it has been adapted as luxury apartments. It was built in 1906; the architects were the Philadelphia firm of Ballinger & Perrot.1

    Bernard Gloeckler Co. Warehouse
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The building was reinforced concrete throughout, and Ballinger & Perrot literally wrote the book on reinforced concrete: Inspector’s Handbook of Reinforced Concrete, by Walter F. Ballinger and Emile G. Perrot (New York: The Engineering News Publishing Co.; London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1909).

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  • A Handsome Warehouse in the Strip

    1649 Penn Avenue

    A century ago, if we read our old maps right, this building was a garage—and probably warehouse—for the Pennsylvania Motor Sales Corp. (Addendum: It was built in 1919, probably finished in 1920; the architect was Thomas Hannah.1) The ground floor now houses a large Asian market full of delicious things; the upper floors still seem to be used for storage. The original windows are still in the upper floors, making this an unusually well-preserved example of commercial architecture of the First World War period.

    Decorative tile

    The utilitarian square front (whose proportions are already dignified) is livened up by brightly colored tile decorations.

    1649 Penn Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • French Cottage in North Point Breeze

    7001 Penn Avenue

    Alternating bands of brick and stone make this fantasy French cottage more than usually picturesque.

    7001 Penn Avenue
    7001 Penn Avenue
    Sony Alpha 3000.
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