Father Pitt

Tag: Relief

  • Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Coraopolis

    Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church

    Here is a fine example of the last gasp of Gothic architecture in America. This church was built as late as 1951 in a style that would have seemed reasonably conservative twenty years earlier. The building has passed into the hands of the Immanuel Orthodox Presbyterian congregation, and members were spiffing up the grounds while old Pa Pitt was taking these pictures.

    Cornerstone: Zion Lutheran Church, 1899 • 1951
    West front entrance

    The west-front entrance is very similar to what William P. Hutchins did more than two decades earlier at St. Francis Xavier Church in Brighton Heights; perhaps they were both inspired by the same historical example.

    Addendum: The architect was Arthur N. Steinmark, who had worked for Hutchins at about the time he was designing St. Francis Xavier.1

    Entrance
    Chi-Rho with alpha and omega
    Hand
    Dove
    Lantern
    Lantern
    Zion Lutheran

    Around the corner, behind the church, is a Sunday-school building that dates from 1928 in a style we might call Educational Gothic.

    Sunday school
    Cornerstone: Zion Ev. Lutheran Sunday School Anno Domini 1928
    Sunday-school entrance

    Cameras: Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    1. “Who, What, Why, When and Where in Today’s Church Work,” Charette, December, 1949, p. 17. “In Coraopolis, Steinmark’s Zion Lutheran Church of brick and limestone will run into an existing three-story parish house.” ↩︎

  • Niches on the College of Fine Arts Building, Carnegie Mellon University

    Henry Hornbostel designed the front of the Fine Arts Building with niches that display all styles of architectural decoration, and more practically give students a place to sit between classes. The niches have continued to accumulate sculpture in styles from all over the world. The whimsical figures in the Gothic niche may have been done by Achille Giammartini.

    Figure in first niche
    Figure in first niche
    Foliage with critters in first niche
    Lion eating an unfortunate Gothic figure
    Figure in first niche
    Figure in first niche
    Second niche

    In the classical niche, the three orders of Greek architecture: Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, demonstrated with correct proportions.

    Third niche
    Fourth niche
    Sculpture in Indian style, with Egyptian column

    More pictures of the College of Fine Arts building.

  • Decorations on the Maginn Building

    Arch on the Maginn Building

    Father Pitt is fairly certain that the ornamental stonecarving on the Maginn Building was done by Achille Giammartini, Pittsburgh’s master of Romanesque whimsies. The style is Giammartini’s, and the building was designed by Charles Bickel, who is known to have brought in Giammartini for the German National Bank (now the Granite Building) around the corner, as we see in this advertisement:

    Advertisement for Achille Giammartini

    But, you say, speculation is not enough for you. You want the artist’s signature. Well, to old Pa Pitt, this looks like a signature:

    Face with mustache in the corner of the arch

    In fact, Father Pitt has formed the hypothesis that Giammartini littered the city with self-caricatures in Romanesque grotesque. Several other buildings bear carved faces similar to these two in the corners of the arch on the seventh floor of the Maginn Building.

    Grotesque face

    The rest of the ornaments are also in Giammartini’s trademark style: lush Romanesque foliage with slightly cartoonish faces peering out from the leaves.

    Capital
    Capital with face
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University

    Creare over the entrance

    The front of the College of Fine Arts in sunset light. Above, the word CREARE (“to create”) inscribed above the entrance by decorative sculptor Achille Giammartini.

    College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University
    Entrance
    Entrance decoration
    Ratio

    Reason.

    Cogitatio

    Design.

    We also have pictures of the sculpture-filled niches on the front of the College of Fine Arts building.

  • Decorations on the County Office Building

    Eagle and county arms

    The County Office Building, which opened in 1931, was designed by Stanley L. Roush, who was the king of public works in Allegheny County for a while. Its combination of styles is unique in Pittsburgh, as far as old Pa Pitt knows. In form it is of the school Father Pitt likes to call American Fascist, the weighty classical style filtered through streamlined Art Deco that was popular for American public buildings between the World Wars, and of which the grandest example in Pittsburgh is the federal courthouse. But the details are Romanesque rather than classical—an acknowledgment of the lingering influence of the great Richardson’s greatest masterpiece, the Allegheny County Courthouse. The carved ornaments are Art Deco adaptations of medieval themes, except for the eagle above, which is not at all medieval, and which clasps the arms of Allegheny County in its talons.

    County Office Building

    The Fourth Avenue side. The County Office Building is roughly square, so the four sides are similar, except that this side lacks an entrance. But this was the side that was lit by the sun when Father Pitt was taking pictures. It took a lot of fiddling and adaptation to get the whole side of the building across a tiny narrow street, so you will see stitching errors and other anomalies if you enlarge the picture.

    Gargoyle

    An Art Deco gargoyle.

    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Decorative relief
    Frieze
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • A Splendid Commercial Building in Manchester

    1401 Columbus Avenue

    Columbus Avenue is at the ragged back end of Manchester, where there are still many crumbling and abandoned buildings. This one, however, has been beautifully restored; it is the home of a marketing company that obviously sees the value in having a landmark building for its headquarters.

    1887 on the date stone
    Decoration
    Terra cotta
    Bracket
    Floral ornament
    1401 Columbus Avenue
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

  • W. J. Gilmore Drug Company Building

    W. J. Gilmore Drug Company Building

    This feast of deco-Gothic terra cotta on the Boulevard of the Allies was designed by Joseph F. Kuntz, who worked for the Wm. G. Wilkins Company. It opened in 1925. Several of Kuntz’s buildings are notable for their terra-cotta fronts: see, for example, the Maul Building and the Hunt Armory.

    View along the front
    Ornament
    Ornaments
    Ornament
    Metalwork
    Probably cast iron
    Transom
    Ornament
    Perspective view

  • Under the Rotunda at Penn Station

    Skylight in the Rotunda

    The rotunda of Penn Station is such a remarkable structure that it has its own separate listing with the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. The skylight is a fine example of abstract geometry in metalwork.

    Arch in the rotunda

    The current owners of the Pennsylvanian hate photographers and tourists who come up to see the rotunda, and post signs on the walk up to the rotunda warning that this is private property and no access beyond this point and, with dogged specificity, NO PROM PHOTOS. But old Pa Pitt walked up through the parking lot, taking pictures all the way, and therefore saw the signs only on the way back. Sorry about that, all ye fanatical upholders of the rights of private property, but these pictures have already been donated to Wikimedia Commons, so good luck getting them taken off line.

    Face above Philadelphia

    The four corners of the earth, or at least the four corners of the Pennsylvania Railroad, are represented on the four pillars of the rotunda.

    Pittsburg

    “Pittsburg” was the official spelling, according to the United States Post Office, when the rotunda was built in 1900.

    Pittsburg
    Philadelphia
    Philadelphia
    New York
    New York
    Chicago
    Chicago

  • Terra Cotta on Penn Station

    Union Station, Pittsburgh

    The front of Union Station, which was the official name of what we usually call Penn Station in Pittsburgh, was completely illuminated by winter sun the other day, so old Pa Pitt took the opportunity to pick out some of the multitude of terra-cotta decorations with a long lens.

    Cornice
    Terra cotta
    Terra cotta
    Above an arch
    Face in relief
    Another face
    Corner ornament
    Broken pediment
    Clock and shield
    Clock
    Shield
    Face above the shield

  • The Mysterious Heads in Coffey Way

    Arbuckle Coffee building

    The Liberty Avenue face of this building has been modernized and remodernized so many times that no one would take it for anything remarkably old. But it is actually one of the very few commercial buildings remaining downtown from the Civil War era. It was built in about 1865 for Arbuckle & Company, a dealer in coffee and sugar in the days when Liberty Avenue was the wholesale food district, with a railroad running right down the middle to bring the food in at its freshest. And if you will come around the back with us, you will see one of Pittsburgh’s odd little hidden treasures.

    Coffey Way

    The short alley behind the building is still called Coffey Way, and the back of the Arbuckle building shows the very old bricks we might expect. And among those bricks, in an alley that hardly anyone even knows about, we find “some of the oldest surviving architectural sculpture in the city,” according to Discovering Pittsburgh’s Sculpture by Marilyn Evert.

    Figure 1

    These medallions are obviously meant to represent specific figures, but no one is quite sure which specific figures. This one has been identified as George Washington or Colonel Bouquet (the one who built the blockhouse).

    Figure 2

    This keen-eyed lady has been identified as Jane Grey Swisshelm or Mary Croghan Schenley.

    Figure 3

    This is probably an allegorical head of Liberty, although it has also been identified as an “Indian head” of the sort common on nineteenth-century coins.

    Figure 4

    This one is very likely to be Abraham Lincoln, but “very likely” is the most certainty we can summon up. It could also be John Arbuckle himself, the head of the firm, who appears in a later photograph with a beard and distinctively hollow cheeks. We note that this is the only one of the faces turned left instead of right; if you like to find symbolism in things like that, go ahead.

    John Arbuckle, incidentally, was the inventor of processes for preserving coffee and automating its packaging, so we may regard him as the founder of coffee as a mass-produced consumer product. This little alley, therefore, ought to be on every coffee-lover’s pilgrimage list.