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Tag: Relief

Church of St. Stephen Proto-Martyr, Hazelwood

The Baroque style is unusual, but St. Stephen’s is a Frederick Sauer church through and through, starting with that yellow Kittanning brick he favored. We’ll have to wait till the leaves drop to get a view of the front (update: see it here), but since the building is slowly crumbling, it’s good to get the details as soon as we can.

Main entrance.

Update: An Iranian correspondent who does not seem to be a spammer has left a remark that Google Translate renders as “We have a similar example in Iran from Sar Setun.” Although it would not have occurred to him before, Father Pitt now notices how much this ornate entrance porch resembles certain examples of Islamic architecture.

Left entrance.

Right entrance.

The Evangelists Mark and John.

The Evangelists Luke and Matthew.

One of the side windows.

September 30, 2023
St. Rosalia Church, Greenfield

Designed by A. F. Link, this Romanesque church was begun in 1923 and opened in 1925. The style is transitional: it uses traditional Romanesque elements, but it is already veering toward the Art Deco modernist interpretation of those elements that would become common in the 1930s through the 1950s.

The cross at the top of the (liturgical) west front sets the modernist tone for the decorations.

These abstract capitals continue the streamlined modernist theme, as do the three lunettes (Mary, Jesus, Joseph) on the west front:

Though it is a complex design, the rose window echoes the streamlining of the capitals and other details.

In contrast to the Deco streamlining of the front, the side of the church, with its crenellations and complex brickwork, could almost pass for a middle-1800s church by Charles F. Bartberger. Yet the styles fit together; there is no dissonance between the different views of the church.

For those who are interested, here is a Pittsburgh Catholic article published March 27, 1924, that identifies many of the contractors and artists who worked on the church.

September 26, 2023
Minersville Public School, Upper Hill

Ulysses L. Peoples was the architect of this school, which opened in 1902 and even then was something unique.

The building itself is a tasteful but not extraordinary example of Romanesque style with Renaissance overtones—something we might call Rundbogenstil, because we like to say the word “Rundbogenstil.” It is a little bedraggled-looking now, because it closed in 2005. The more modern addition (by the time it was added this was known as the Madison Elementary School) has been adapted for the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, but nobody seems to know what to do with the original section.

A fine piece of work for a small school, like many another Romanesque school in Pittsburgh. But the carved decorations around the entrances are like nothing else in the city, or possibly on earth.

It seems as though the architect and the artist had conceived the curious notion that children should find school delightful, and that the entrance should convey the message that here is a place where we are going to have fun.

The side and rear of the building. The rear, facing an alley, is done in less expensive brick.

The later addition, from 1929, is by Pringle & Robling in quite a different style, a lightly Deco form of modernism.

A map showing the location of the building.

August 18, 2023
Brackets on the Church of the Assumption, Bellevue

The grotesque brackets along the sides of the Church of the Assumption run in a repeating series that seems to illustrate various stages of carving.

See the whole collection of the Church of the Assumption.

August 15, 2023
Gargoyles on the Church of the Assumption, Bellevue

The gargoyles on the Church of the Assumption capture the true medieval spirit of inspired grotesquerie and goofiness and filter it through a twentieth-century sensibility. This gargoyle is having a bad day.

This one on the side of the building seems to be above a chimney vent. It demonstrates, in a silly way that would have appealed to the medieval sense of humor, one of the torments prepared for the damned.

See the whole collection of the Church of the Assumption.

August 15, 2023
Dilworth, Porter & Co. Office

This fine Jacobean office in the forgotten industrial back streets of the near South Side is certainly the work of a distinguished architect or architects, but old Pa Pitt has not been able to find a name with the limited research he was able to do. He is therefore going to go far out on a limb and attribute it to MacClure & Spahr, because it is just their sort of thing.

Dilworth, Porter & Co. made railroad spikes and other things you would need if you were putting a railroad together. The company later became part of Republic Steel, and the plant was closed in 1950. It is now the M. Berger Industrial Park, with the old industrial sheds behind this office painted in garish colors. (Update: A reader very reasonably questions the use of the word “garish”—see the comment below—and perhaps “cheerful” would have been better. The point is that the colors are extraordinarily bright and seldom seen on old industrial buildings like these.)

Map.

August 9, 2023
Decorations by Achille Giammartini on the German National Bank

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.
(more…)

July 28, 2023
Seventeenth Ward World War I Memorial, South Side

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.

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

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

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

July 22, 2023
Pittsburgh Mercantile Company, South Side

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?

We have a large number of pictures if you care to see more.
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July 15, 2023
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Brighton Heights
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

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.

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 and pilaster capitals at the main entrance.

According to the church site, the neatly kept lawn was once the site of a parsonage.
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. ↩︎
July 12, 2023

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