This building shows up as a theater on a 1916 map, and that is all Father Pitt knows about it.
The intersection of Brownsville Road and Narrow Avenue (now Newett Street) in 1916.
It is not documented at Cinema Treasures, where theater fanatics have catalogued 178 theaters in Pittsburgh, or at the expiring and impossible-to-navigate Carrick-Overbrook Wiki, so it may not have lasted very long as a theater. (And Father Pitt is only making the assumption that it was a movie theater rather than a live theater or vaudeville house, because the latter seems much less likely for the era and place.) If anyone from the neighborhood knows the story of this building, the information will be received with gratitude. The building is well kept: it has been updated just enough to be useful to its current tenant without destroying the original design of the exterior.
Poe’s “Purloined Letter” taught us that the best place to hide something is in plain sight. Here is a building that has been sitting here on Penn Avenue for more than a century and a quarter, where thousands walk past it every day, but the biographer of Alden & Harlow was unable to find it when she looked for it.
That, of course, is because she was looking for it. Father Pitt almost never finds things when he looks for them. He finds them when he is looking for something else. In this case, our frequent correspondent, the architect and historian David Schwing, had sent an article about the many buildings under construction in late 1896, and among them was this little item:
The Henry Phipps’ store building, on Penn avenue, corner Cecil way, to be finished January 1, is a massive steel structure 60×120, with Pompeiian brick front, ornamented with stone and terra cotta, thoroughly fireproof in construction; will be heated by steam; supplied with an independent electric plant of its own; electric elevators, and lighted by both systems of arc and incandescent. Alden & Harlow, architects.
There is little doubt about the identification. The Phipps-McElveen Building stands on the corner of Penn Avenue and Cecil Way—the corner that plat maps show belonged to Henry Phipps. The plat maps also show that the front of the building is sixty feet wide.
This building does not appear in the gorgeous book Architecture After Richardson by Margaret Henderson Floyd, which exhaustively catalogues all the known buildings of Alden & Harlow (and Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, and the other variations of the firm). However, there is a building that the author could not account for: an “as yet unlocated hotel for L. C. Phipps.” Lawrence C. Phipps was a nephew of Henry who would move to Denver in 1901 and go into the senatorial business. “The brick and terra cotta hotel for L. C. Phipps was eight stories high,” says the book, “but no visual records have been found.”
The brick and terra cotta Phipps-McElveen building has eight floors.
Thanks to the research of Mr. Schwing, who often does find things when he looks for them, we can put together what happened. It appears as though the plans for the property changed more than once. In the middle of 1895, it was announced that a twelve-storey hotel would be built on Penn Avenue from plans by D. H. Burnham & Company. But by early 1896, the hotel plan had been abandoned. “Longfellow, Alden & Harlow have the bids for the erection of an eight-story storeroom building on Penn Avenue, for Henry Phipps, between Marshell’s store and Cecil alley. It was the intention to put up a large hotel on the site, but this scheme has been abandoned. Work had started by early June. During the construction, Longfellow, Alden & Harlow decided to divide their firm, with Mr. Longfellow staying in Boston and Alden & Harlow taking all the Pittsburgh work.
So it looks as though we’ve found the missing building that Margaret Henderson Floyd couldn’t find, and old Pa Pitt offers this visual record in humble appreciation of her meticulous research and engaging writing.
Carrick became a borough in 1904, and for this little all-in-one borough building hired the big-deal architect Edward Stotz.1 It must have created an impression of prosperity when it was built in 1905, and it still looks solid and respectable today, one year short of a century after the people of Carrick voted for the borough to be annexed by the city of Pittsburgh in 1926. It has been converted into a retail store, and the huge second-floor window makes an excellent display for the current tenant.
The building originally had an elaborate baroque crest that has been shorn off. We can see it in this picture, where the municipal building appears behind the Carrick Hotel:
Longfellow, Alden & Harlow were the architects of this elegant little building in a simplified Renaissance style, which was finished in 1895. It does its best to convince us that the men who run the foundry are civilized people, in spite of the soot that surrounds them. The larger shop building behind it, built in 1901, was designed by Alden & Harlow, after the firm had decided to divide up the work, with Longfellow remaining in Boston and Alden & Harlow taking all the Pittsburgh jobs.
These buildings sat derelict and open to the weather for years, but have been cleaned up and put back together very neatly.
Rutan & Russell were the architects of this Renaissance palace, which opened in 1905. It’s also known as the Oppenheimer Building, and today as Aria Cultural District Lofts.
You can still see the sign for the Gerber Carriage Co. at the top of the building.
“Penn avenue always has been and seems to continue to be the Mecca of furniture houses,” wrote George Esterhammer in the Pittsburg Press in 1905,1 and indeed Penn Avenue between Ninth and Tenth was lined with huge furniture dealers on both sides for more than a century. (See Spear and Company, for example.) Mr. Esterhammer was the architect of this building, which was designed to the latest fireproof standards, including a 10,000-gallon tank on the roof and sprinklers throughout.
“The fireproof floors will be covered with narrow white maple,” Mr. Esterhammer continued, “thus allowing to display to better advantage the beauty of carpets and rugs. The front on Penn Avenue will be of plate glass, Cleveland sandstone, buff brick and ornamental fire flashed terra cotta. The main entrance and the stories above are a special feature, highly ornamented and will, in the opinion of the writer, be striking and attractive.”
The architect’s elevation was published with the article, so we can compare the building as designed to the building as it stands now. The crest has been lost, but other alterations have been minimal. The ground floor has been sensitively updated for a restaurant and storefront, but overall the building makes very much the same impression it must have made when it was new. “Altogether,” said Mr. Esterhammer, “Mr. Wildberg’s new building will lift up its head proud among its neighbors,” and it still does.
“Penn Avenue Improvement,” Pittsburg Press, June 18, 1905. The name is spelled “Easterhammer” above the article, but “Esterhammer” in the illustration caption and in other construction listings we have seen. He was a member of the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Techniker-Verband, and in their membership listings his first name is spelled “Georg.” ↩︎
A North Side landmark for just about a century now, the Allegheny YMCA on North Avenue was designed by R. Maurice Trimble and built in 1926. It did not hide its light under a bushel: the letters YMCA are picked out in light bulbs at the top of the North Avenue façade.
Charles Bickel was the architect of this factory and warehouse, which, like many industrial buildings of the time, takes its inspiration from the Marshall Field’s Wholesale Store by H. H. Richardson. Bickel, however, added his own sensibilities, and made it an impressive and distinctive building. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Built in 1906, this was the main building of Presbyterian Hospital until it moved to vastly larger facilities in Oakland in the 1930s. The building was later part of Providence Hospital, and now is used for offices.
