The Buhl Building, an earlier work of Benno Janssen, is covered with Wedgwood-style terra-cotta decorations. Below, the Market Street end of the building.
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Terra-Cotta Decorations on the Buhl Building
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Mayor Guthrie
George W. Guthrie was mayor of Pittsburgh when the Keenan Building was put up in 1907, and here is his face among the terra-cotta decorations on the building, where he keeps company with other prominent men of Pittsburgh. Pittsburghers remember Guthrie as the mayor who finally engineered the successful conquest of Allegheny, so North Siders sometimes think of him the way Ukrainians think of Vladimir Putin. Perhaps his most important accomplishment, though, was clean city water that, for the first time, brought typhoid under control in Pittsburgh, where it had been a scourge for the first century and a half of the city’s existence.
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Reliefs by John Massey Rhind on the People’s Savings Bank Building
John Massey Rhind was Andrew Carnegie’s favorite sculptor; he gave us the Noble Quartet in front of the Carnegie Institute and the statue of Robert Burns outside Phipps Conservatory. Here he gives us some allegorical figures to adorn the entrances to the People’s Savings Bank’s splendid tower at Fourth Avenue and Wood Street. Not altogether coincidentally, the building itself was designed by Alden & Harlow, Carnegie’s favorite architects, whose firm (with their earlier partner Longfellow) was also responsible for the Carnegie Institute. Above, the Wood Street side; below, the Fourth Avenue side.
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Lion on the Keystone Bank Building
Fourth Avenue has a denser population of lions than anywhere else in Pittsburgh, and possibly anywhere else in North America.
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Commercial National Bank
This little bank on Fourth Avenue was originally designed by Alden and Harlow. The central section has been ruthlessly mutilated, with the elegant arch replaced by a cartoon suggestion of an arch. For reasons unknown, much of the rest of the building was left untouched (although it is pretty clearly missing its top), and the details there are enough to make it worth our while to stop and admire them.
Of course there are lions. How could there not be lions?
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Roof Ornaments, Soldiers and Sailors Memorial
Above, the distinctive grotesque eruption at the pinnacle of the pyramid roof. Below, the alternating eagles and torches of the cornice.
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Green Tree, Land of the Pharaohs
In Pittsburgh, the Egyptian style is almost always associated with the death business, so it is no surprise to learn that this little building was a monument dealer before it became Green Tree’s oddest office building. The fact that it sits directly across the road from the entrance to Chartiers Cemetery is another clue. It is right on the border of Green Tree, at the edge of a little neighborhood called Rook, which once had a station on the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, and still has a large freight yard belonging to the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway.
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Engine Company No. 28, Shadyside
A large classical firehouse with its front on Filbert Street and a long, well-designed side on Elmer Street.
The Filbert Street front.
Arms of the city of Pittsburgh, on the left side of the front.
Arms of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on the right side of the front.
The Elmer Street side looks like an Italian Renaissance palace.
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The Lionhead, Shadyside
Twin lion heads guard the entrances to the Lionhead, an apartment building in Shadyside.
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Decorations on the Parkvale Building, Oakland
The richly decorated Parkvale Building on Forbes Avenue is currently under renovation, so we can hope that these splendid reliefs will continue to delight future generations of Pittsburghers.
