Father Pitt

Tag: Public Baths

  • Soho Public Baths

    Soho Public Baths

    Built in 1907–1908, this splendid bathhouse was designed by Carpenter & Crocker,1 who did the whole ground-floor front in terra cotta.

    This bathhouse served Soho, once a crowded neighborhood of tiny houses, many without indoor plumbing; long lines would form on Saturday nights as the working classes took their one chance to get clean. Almost all the houses are gone, and most of the other buildings, leaving overgrown foundations; this stretch of Fifth Avenue is spookily deserted. Even the neighborhood has ceased to exist in Pittsburghers’ imaginations. Soho once referred to the area around the north end of today’s Birmingham Bridge, but there is no such place now on city planning maps. What used to be Soho is divided officially between “Bluff,” “West Oakland,” and “South Oakland.” Soho is generally mentioned only when Andy Warhol comes up, because he was born there; but if you ask where Soho was, Wikipedia will tell you it is a synonym for Uptown, which it will also tell you is the same as the Bluff. (In fact the house where Andy Warhol was born, now a patch of woods on a deserted street, is in the part designated West Oakland by the city.)

    This building was in use more recently than most, but it, too, has been left to rot. It is one of only three or four standing public baths in the city, only one of which—the Oliver Bathhouse—is still serving its original purpose.

    Public Baths

    Old Pa Pitt painted out the close-up graffiti in this picture, because they were distracting, and because if street gangs want to advertise on his site, they can pay for it.

    Soho Public Baths
    Soho Public Baths
    Soho Public Baths
    Balcony
    Ornament with cartouche
    Frieze
    Lintel
    Cartouche
    Keystone
    Soho Public Baths
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
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  • Oliver Bathhouse, South Side

    The Oliver Bathhouse

    The Oliver Bathhouse, built as the South Side Baths but soon renamed for its donor (who had died in the long delay between the donation and the construction), has been getting a thorough restoration and renovation. The outside of the building looks almost brand new.

    Old photo of the South Side Baths

    This picture from Preservation Pittsburgh’s collection is dated January 31, 1913, at Wikimedia Commons, but that is an error. In the Construction Record for May 30, 1914, we read, “Architects MacClure & Spahr, Keystone building, will lake bids until June 1 on the erection of a brick, stone and terra cotta fireproof bath house on Tenth and Bingham streets, for the Henry W. Oliver Estate. Cost $100,000.” The building might have been finished by January of 1915 if the construction got started right away. Wikipedia concurs that the building was finished in 1915. Since this picture was taken from a printed source, we suspect that a poorly-scanned “1918” might have been misread as “1913.”

    Inscription over the entrance: “South Side Baths presented to the City of Pittsburgh by Henry W. Oliver.”
    “South Side Baths, presented to the City of Pittsburgh by Henry W. Oliver.”

    Oliver’s steel mills nearby employed many of the workmen who would benefit from these baths. He might not pay them enough to afford more than squalid tenements with inadequate bathing facilities, but he was willing to spend enough to make them smell better on Saturday nights.

    Cartouche
    Oliver Bathhouse
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    The Oliver Bathhouse survives as a bathhouse, uniquely among the public baths in Pittsburgh, because the more upscale denizens of today’s South Side appreciate its large indoor swimming pool, the only city pool open in the winter.

    More pictures of the Oliver Bathhouse.

    Map.

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