The main tower of Allegheny General is one of the few classic skyscrapers outside downtown, and a landmark of Art Deco in Pittsburgh, as well as a landmark of the style Father Pitt calls Mausoleum-on-a-Stick, where the top of the tower is modeled after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. It was designed by York & Sawyer, who made a specialty of hospitals, and built in 1930. Today we’re going to pay particular attention to the grand entrance on North Avenue, which is covered with extravagant terra-cotta decorations, so we have more than thirty pictures to show you.
The striking feature of this modernist synagogue is the huge relief over the entrance that symbolically depicts the Twelve Tribes of Israel surrounding the Tablets of the Law. The architects were Ben Friedman and Nathan Cantor, although Father Pitt has not yet sorted out whether they worked together or at different times.
Ground was broken for the first part of the building on April 20, 1947; first services were conducted September 3, 1948. Ground for the Rabbi Sivitz Memorial Talmud Torah and Main Building was broken August 17, 1952; it was dedicated on August 27, 1955.
This preliminary sketch for the synagogue was published on the cover of the Jewish Criterion, August 23, 1946. The sketch is quite different from the building as it stands, but obviously an early stage in the evolution of the same idea. Through the halftoning, we can just make out the name “Friedman” in the signature.
The symbols are taken from the prophecy of Jacob in Genesis 49:
Reuben, unstable as water;
Simeon and Levi: instruments of cruelty are in their habitations (but Simeon’s sword is mitigated by a wreath of olive, and Levi later became the priestly class, and thus is represented by a swinging censer);
Judah is a lion’s whelp;
Zebulun shall be for an haven of ships;
Issachar is a strong ass, crouching down between two burdens;
Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse’ heels, so that his rider shall fall backward;
Gad, a troupe shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last;
Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties;
Naphthali is a hind let loose;
Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall;
Instead of a heroic soldier, or—as in more than one First World War memorial—a baffled and scared soldier, we have a shiny plaque with a horse all ready for a rider. This strikes old Pa Pitt as a real soldier’s monument. A member of Troop H would remember the horses above all as what distinguished a cavalry unit. He would look at this relief and feel immediately that he was the soldier who was meant to mount that horse. In a way, the monument also serves as a memorial to the passing away of the horse as an important factor in military operations.
The life of Christ is depicted in relief at the main entrance to East Liberty Presbyterian Church. We believe the sculptor was John Angel (but we would be delighted to be corrected). Above, the Nativity.
The baptism of Christ by John the Baptist.
The Sermon on the Mount.
The Commission to the Disciples.
Christ washing the disciples’ feet.
The Last Supper.
“Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Parables and miracles of Christ are illustrated in the smaller panels below.
Built in 1881, this is the only remaining downtown work of Joseph Stillburg—as far as old Pa Pitt knows, but he still hopes for surprises. Stillburg was a very big deal in Pittsburgh in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, but most of his buildings have disappeared. They were prominent buildings in their time—the Pittsburgh Exposition buildings, for example, and the Bissell Block—but they were replaced by other even grander projects as the land they were built on became even more valuable (or, in the case of the Exposition buildings, they were taken down for Point Park).
This building is a symphonic fugue of perfectly balanced themes and rhythms woven into a composition that must have been strikingly modern in 1881. It has been restored and renovated with good taste, and it is ready for another century and a half of use.
This picture has been manipulated on two planes to match the perspective of the 1889 image below. It is no longer possible to stand in exactly the same place, because other buildings have sprouted in inconvenient places.
W. H. Keech was a dealer in furniture and carpets. In the 1880s he built this towering six-floor commercial palace on Penn Avenue at Garrison Place in the furniture district. The main part of the building has hardly changed since the photograph below was published in Pittsburgh Illustrated in 1889:
Probably in the 1890s, an addition was put on the right-hand side of the building, matching the original as well as possible.
This building is festooned with decorative details in just the right places, including some Romanesque carved stone above the entrance. (Addendum: The architect of the original building and additions, including one to the right later destroyed by fire and another one after that, was James T. Steen, according to a plaque on the Conover Building three doors down, which was originally part of the expanded Keech Block.)
This small Romanesque commercial building at the corner of Forbes Avenue and Marion Street, probably built in the late 1880s or the 1890s, has a stone front that makes it a little more elaborate than its neighbors. It probably had a couple of pinnacles along the roofline that would have made it stand out even more. It has been modernized a little, which obscures some of the original details, but it appears that it originally had a corner entrance, and weathered Romanesque carvings—including an almost-obliterated face peering out of the foliage—still adorn the capital of the thick column at the corner.
The building next door, which seems to have been built a few years later, was obviously meant to continue the stone front of the corner building, with similar stone and lintels and a similar broad arch.
This stone-fronted Romanesque house on North Avenue is decorated with intricate carvings, and Father Pitt would guess that they were probably by Achille Giammartini, who was responsible for most of the best Romanesque decoration in Pittsburgh, and who also decorated the Masonic Hall just up the street.
Bartberger & East were the architects of this Masonic Hall, which sat derelict and in danger of demolition for many years. (The Bartberger of the partnership was Charles M. Barberger, the younger of the two Charles Bartbergers.)1 Now it is beautifully restored as a center of literary culture, which teaches us not to lose hope.
The building was put up in 1893, as you can tell by reading the super-secret Masonic code in terra cotta on the front: “A. L. 5893.” “A. L.” stands for anno lucis, “in the year of light,” a Masonic dating system that takes the creation of the world as its starting point. At the risk of suffering the fate of William Morgan, old Pa Pitt will reveal the secret calculation that converts A. L. dates to our Gregorian calendar: subtract 4000.
Like most lodge buildings of the time, this one had the main assembly hall upstairs, leaving rentable storefronts on the ground floor. The side entrance on Reddour Street, which led up to the main hall, is festooned with carvings by Achille Giammartini.
