Tag: Relief

  • Decorations by Achille Giammartini on the German National Bank

    Romanesqu apital with face

    The German National Bank—now the Granite Building—is one of the most ornately Romanesque constructions ever put up in a city that was wild for Romanesque. The architect was Charles Bickel, but much of the effect of the building comes from the lavish and infinitely varied stonecarving of Achille Giammartini, Pittsburgh’s favorite decorator of Romanesque buildings.

    We have sixteen more pictures in this article, and this is only a beginning. Old Pa Pitt will have to return several more times with his long lens to document Giammartini’s work on this building.

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  • Seventeenth Ward World War I Memorial, South Side

    Relief

    This little memorial sits at the corner of Carson and Tenth Streets, the intersection that is more or less the gateway to the South Side proper. Most people pass by without noticing it, so old Pa Pitt decided to document it in detail.

    Frank Aretz, best known for his ecclesiastical art, did the small Art Deco relief, according to a plaque installed by the city on this memorial. The architect was Stanley Roush, the king of public works in Pittsburgh in the 1920s and 1930s. Donatelli Granite, still in the memorial business, did the stonework.

    Seventeenth Ward War Memorial
    Inscription
    Inscription

    The left and right steles bear the names of battlefields where Americans fought.

    Inscription
    Inscription

    Many war memorials display the names of those who served, but this one sealed the names in stone for future generations to discover.

    Face of the relief

    The relief has been eroding and perhaps vandalized, but the streamlined Art Deco style is still distinctive.

    Bust of the relief
    Seventeenth Ward War Memorial
  • Pittsburgh Mercantile Company, South Side

    Heads on the Pittsburgh Mercantile Company Building

    Designed by Rutan & Russell, the Pittsburgh Mercantile Company was definitely not a company store, because those had been made illegal in Pennsylvania. Instead, it was a separate company that happened to have exactly the same officers as Jones & Laughlin, which ran the steel plant across the street, and that happened to accept the scrip in which the steelworkers were paid.

    So it was a company store, but technically legal.

    The words “company store” probably conjure up images of bleak little Soviet-style general stores, but this was obviously nothing like that image. It was a fantastic palace of every kind of merchandise, and the architectural decoration was obviously meant to send the message that there was no reason to object to the company-store system, because what else on the South Side could begin to equal this experience?

    The building

    We have a large number of pictures if you care to see more.

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  • All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Brighton Heights

    All Saints’ Episcopal Church

    Disclosure: old Pa Pitt took some utility cables out of some of these pictures. Fans of Pittsburgh utility cables will have to look elsewhere today.

    A beautiful Gothic church from the 1930s. It is typical of Episcopal churches in Pittsburgh: small but rich, Gothic in style, with a steeply pitched roof that makes up more than half the height of the building. The architects were Ingham & Boyd.1

    Front
    Front entrance

    The wooden wheelchair ramp is not the most elegant solution to the problem of access, but it does its job without permanent damage to the building.

    Loaves and fishes

    Loaves and fishes.

    Pelican

    The pelican, a symbol of Christ. In medieval zoology, the pelican was known for feeding her young with her own blood. Modern zoology disputes the data, but as symbolism the legend is irresistible.

    Vine

    Vine and pilaster capitals at the main entrance.

    Oblique view
    Lawn

    According to the church site, the neatly kept lawn was once the site of a parsonage.

    Side of the building
    1. Source: “Episcopalians Planning North Side Edifice,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, March 30, 1930. Also, “Big Six Who Shaped Face of Pittsburgh To Be Honored for Outstanding Work,” Pittsburgh Press, January 13, 1952, where it is listed among Ingham’s works, along with other Ingham & Boyd projects. Thanks to David Schwing for these clippings. In an earlier version of this article, Father Pitt had admitted ignorance of the architect, but the discovery of the attribution is not surprising, since Ingham & Boyd did several other churches in a very similar style. ↩︎

  • One Block of Sidney Street on the South Side

    2109 Sidney Street

    The 2100 block of Sidney Street has some of the finest high-Victorian houses on the South Side, and several of them have unusual decorative details worth a closer examination. Old Pa Pitt took an evening stroll down Sidney Street the other day and, as always, came back with a few pictures. We’ll start with No. 2109. Note the multiple shapes of roof slates, the woodwork in the dormers, and the rusticated lintels in the picture above.

    Since we have fifteen pictures, we’ll put the rest below the fold to avoid slowing down the main page for a week.

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  • Hampton Hall, Oakland

    Hampton Hall from the front

    According to a city architectural inventory (PDF), Hampton Hall was built in 1928, and the architect was H. G. Hodgkins, who seems to have been based in Chicago, to judge by listings in Chicago trade magazines that show up in a Google Books search.

    The interior includes quite a bit of Nemadji tile, and old Pa Pitt had never heard of Nemadji tile until he found this page on Hampton Hall from a site of Historic U. S. Tile Installations. The exterior is fairy-tale Tudor, designed to make apartment dwellers feel as though they were great lords of Queen Elizabeth’s time.

    A bear

    The entrance is flanked by bears holding shields, as bears are wont to do.

    An equal and opposite bear
    Inscription
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ornament and tile
    Oblique view
  • Masonic Temple, McKeesport

    Masonic Temple in McKeesport

    An imposing presence on the McKeesport skyline, the Masonic Temple has changed very little since it was built. It has lost its cornice, which is the most vulnerable part of a Beaux-Arts palace like this, but otherwise retains most of its decorations, as we can see by comparing it to this old postcard from the “PowerLibrary” collection.

    Here are a few of those decorations close up:

    Inscription
    Curl
    Cartouche
    Lintel
    Walnut Street entrance
    From a block away

    Perhaps even more imposing from a block away.

    We’ll be seeing much more of McKeesport in the days and weeks to come. It is a city for which old Pa Pitt harbors an unreasoning love—perhaps the only kind of love McKeesport can inspire at the moment. In its day, it was a metropolis in its own right, and it was filled with the work of distinguished architects; but no city in the area has suffered more, with the possible exception of Braddock. Yet, though much has vanished, so many beautiful buildings remain that it would be possible to set up a site like Father Pitt’s just for McKeesport.

    Addendum: With a fair degree of certainty, thanks to a Press puff piece on local architects in 1905, we can identify the architect as Harry Summers Estep. “Recently, in a competition with more than a dozen other architects, he was awarded the prize for best perspective view submitted for the new Masonic temple to be built at McKeesport. The building will cost about $120,000 when completed and will be, for its size and purpose, one of the best buildings in the State.”

  • Achille Giammartini

    Purely by accident, old Pa Pitt stumbled on this portrait of the great architectural sculptor Achille Giammartini, whose work adorns churches, houses, and commercial buildings all over the city. There is almost no trace of Giammartini on the Web: in fact, search engines usually come up with no more than half a dozen results, and the first two are usually from Father Pitt. So this seems like as good a time as any to announce Father Pitt’s new project.

    Bit by bit, Father Pitt is building a Pittsburgh Encyclopedia, where he will keep detailed information about architects, sculptors, neighborhoods, and such things, so that he can refer to those articles rather than repeating himself every time he publishes a new picture. Something similar has worked well with Flora Pittsburghensis and the Flora Pittsburghensis reference site.

    At present the Pittsburgh Encyclopedia is just beginning: it has nine articles in total. But we have just added an article on Achille Giammartini that gathers more information about him than exists in any other single place on the Web.

  • 819 and 821 Penn Avenue

    819 and 821 Penn Avenue

    A pair of commercial buildings with striking terra-cotta details—especially No. 819, on the left. The huge windows would have allowed light to pour into workshops on the upper floors.

    Bracket
    Greek key and egg and dart
    Spiral
    Vitruvian scroll
    Cornice

    Truly enlightened zoning regulations would mandate cornices with lions’ heads on all buildings more than four storeys tall.

    Diamond
    Side by side
  • Decorative Relief on Soldiers and Sailors Hall

    Pediment

    Some of the carved ornaments on Soldiers and Sailors Hall.

    Corn, grapes, pineapples
    Scrollwork
    Seal of the City of Pittsburgh

    Seal of the City of Pittsburgh.