Father Pitt

Tag: Renaissance Architecture

  • Lloyd Building, East Liberty

    Lloyd Building

    Carpenter & Crocker designed this rich-looking building for a real-estate man named S. H. Lloyd. It was built in 1905 or 1906, and a photograph published in 1907 shows it looking little different from the way it looks today.

    Lloyd building in 1907
    From Up-Town, Greater Pittsburg’s Classic Section.

    Once the building was finished, the architects moved their own office into it,1 thus making a favorable impression on potential clients even before they walked in the door.

    Corner of the building
    Cornice brackets
    Penn Avenue front
    Lloyd Building
    Window
    Sheridan Square entrance
    Sheridan Square entrance
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
    1. Up-Town: Greater Pittsburg’s Classic Section, p. 34 (unpaginated), 1907. “Much that is best in this line of work is that which has been executed by the architectural firm of Carpenter and Crocker whose offices are 410 in the Lloyd Building, which was erected by that firm last fall.” ↩︎
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  • Carl Building (Shields Building), Wilkinsburg

    Carl Building

    Designed in 1902 by the Beezer Brothers, this was Wilkinsburg’s contribution to the early skyscraper age. It was put up for Leopold Vilsack, a real-estate investor who was also one of the founders of the Iron City brewery. He named it for his son Carl; later it became known as the Shields Building.

    Architects’ rendering
    Pittsburgh Gazette, April 12, 1902, p. 8.

    When it was announced, the building was to have eight floors. One floor fell away between initial design and construction.

    Base of the building

    The building is now apartments. The base has been refurbished with a simpler and more abstract design that hardly registers as different from the original until we look at it closely.

    Cap with terra-cotta ornaments

    The cap is festooned with elaborate Baroque terra-cotta ornaments.

    Cap with terra cotta
    Carl Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Pittsburgh Charity Hospital, Larimer

    Pittsburgh Hospital

    Originally a Catholic hospital, later known as just Pittsburgh Hospital. Now it is the Champion City Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The main building was put up in about 1902; the architects were Schickel & Ditmars of New York,1 who were most famous for Catholic churches, including the immense Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, but also designed a number of hospitals.

    Frankstown Avenue front
    Frankstown Avenue end

    The addition on the Frankstown Avenue end has not weathered well.

    Pittsburgh Hospital
    Pittsburgh Hospital
    Pittsburgh Hospital
    Row of dormers
    Pittsburgh hospital with postwar additions
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    Postwar additions might have been designed by Press C. Dowler, who we know designed the School of Nursing behind the hospital in 1946 (which we’ll see soon).

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  • Alpha Apartments, Homewood

    Alpha Apartments

    This apartment building with Renaissance details was built in about 1905. The architect was A. E. Linkenheimer,1 about whom old Pa Pitt knows very little so far.

    Alpha Apartments

    The name of the building is interesting, because it is the name of a project that was planned at about the same time nearby at the intersection of Penn and East End Avenues, where Titus de Bobula was to supervise an immense $600,000 Alpha Apartment Hotel. That project fell through; at the moment Father Pitt does not know that the name was anything more than coincidence.

    Alpha Apartments
    Front entrance

    This building is under sentence of condemnation, but it does not appear to be in such bad shape that it could not be rescued. Homewood is not rich, but there has been some renovation going on in nearby streets.

    Alpha Apartments

    The Braddock Avenue side has its own neatly symmetrical façade.

    Rear section
    Side entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Miller House, Shadyside

    Miller house

    This Renaissance palace was designed for Rachel and Mortimer Miller by Maximilian Nirdlinger, whose name is at the top of old Pa Pitt’s list of architects whose names are the most fun to say.1 It was built in 1904, when Nirdlinger was still young; with eye-catching but respectable designs like this one, he established himself as a favorite house designer among the Social Register set.

    Miller house
    Miller house
    Miller house
    Miller house
    Front entrance to the Miller house
    Copper cornice with Greek key
    Terra-cotta shield on the Miller house
    Windows with terra-cotta ornaments
    Terra cotta
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
    1. Pittsburg Press, February 2, 1904, p. 12. “A $30,000 residence will be erected on Morewood avenue, Twentieth ward. The plans for it have just been completed by Architect M. Nirdlinger for Mortimer C. Miller. The structure will be three stories high of ornamental brick with terra cotta trimmings.” The land is shown on plat maps as owned by Rachel McM. Miller. ↩︎
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  • Old Braddock Post Office

    Old Braddock post office

    Though the post office moved a few blocks away to an undistinguished modern building, this extravagant Beaux-Arts palace has fortunately been preserved.

    Entrance to the old Braddock post office
    Segmental pediment
    Inscription and crest
    Crest with cartouche
    Old Braddock post office

  • Telephone Exchange, Allegheny Center

    “Bell Telephone” inscription
    Telephone exchange

    Not only is this elegant palace of switching one of the few buildings left in Allegheny Center from before the great urban renewal of the 1960s, but it also preserves a memory of the extinct street layout of old Allegheny.

    Street signs: East Diamond Street, East Montgomery Avenue

    The architect was probably James Windrim of Philadelphia, who did most of the work for Bell of Pennsylvania in the first quarter of the twentieth century. His mission was to make these necessary industrial buildings ornaments to their neighborhoods, so that the telephone company would not face too much opposition. In the nineteenth century, it had been usual to put street signs on the corners of buildings; it was already a bit old-fashioned by the time this exchange was built, but several of the old Bell Telephone exchanges have them, and we suppose it was another way of making them seem like good neighborhood citizens. These streets no longer exist; the quarter-loop drive that turns around this corner is known as Montgomery Place.

    Montgomery Avenue façade
    Telephone exchange
    Telephone exchange
    Doorway
    Doorway
    Bracket
    Telephone exchange from North Commons
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Park Place School

    Park Place School

    For some reason, Park Place is one of those neighborhoods that have no official existence on city planning maps. It is counted as part of Point Breeze South, but there is a considerable gap between the rest of Point Breeze South and Park Place, which slops over into Wilkinsburg, thus becoming one of the rare neighborhoods that ignore city boundaries. In fact the border goes through a number of buildings and houses.

    Ellsworth Dean was the architect of this Renaissance palace of education, which was built in 1903. It is now an “Environmental Charter School.” We assume that means children can have the unique experience of learning in an environment. (Actually, old Pa Pitt just looked up the school’s Web site, and now he is wishing there had been such things as Environmental Charter Schools when he was a tot back in pre-Revolutionary days.)

    Park Place School
    Park Place School
    Entrance to the Park Place School
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • Godfrey Stengel House, Schenley Farms

    Godfrey Stengel house at 4136 Bigelow Boulevard

    Built in 1913, this house is a minor landmark of early modernism in Pittsburgh. Kiehnel & Elliott were the architects, and Richard Kiehnel had a thoroughly German architectural education. He applied the latest Jugendstil ideas of decoration, with a little Prairie Style thrown in, to the forms that were popular in Pittsburgh—like the standard three-storey Renaissance palace that is the basis of this house. The combination was a winner: clients got something that looked bracingly up to date, but didn’t make their neighbors hate them.

    Godfrey Stengel house at 4136 Bigelow Boulevard
    Art-glass window
    Godfrey Stengel house at 4136 Bigelow Boulevard
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Ira Bixler House, Schenley Farms

    Ira L. Bixler house at 209 Tennyson Avenue

    This Renaissance palace, built in 1919 for coal baron Ira Bixler, was designed by Alden & Harlow.

    Ira L. Bixler house at 209 Tennyson Avenue
    Ira Bixler house
    Ira L. Bixler house at 209 Tennyson Avenue
    Ira L. Bixler house at 209 Tennyson Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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