When the Duquesne Light Company invaded residential neighborhoods to plant its death-ray generators, the neighbors were likely to object. It would help the company’s image if the power substations were elegant constructions. This classical palace of voltage conveyed the message that your Duquesne Light Company was substantial, respectable, and benevolent. The big hole that was later cut out of the front on the right side conveys the message that we needed to put the death-ray cannon somewhere.
The Kinder Building is a little Beaux-Arts masterpiece at the corner of Western Avenue and Galveston Avenue. At night its carefully balanced classical entrance takes on a pleasing air of mystery.
In the early twentieth century, orphans—of whom there were too many—were sent to live in orphanages. We don’t do that anymore, and most of the large orphanages in our area have long since been demolished. This is an exception: it was also an old folks’ home, and that function remains.
Addendum: Here is a rendering of the building the way the architect designed it, from The Builder, June, 1914:
That whole issue is devoted to works of architect Thomas Hannah, whom we had already identified as the architect from the Construction Record, as you see below.
The original section was built in 1914, and the architect was Thomas Hannah, as we learn from the invaluable Construction Record:
November 22, 1913: “Architect Thomas Hannah, Keenan building, has plans under way for an orphanage and home for the aged to be constructed in Mt. Lebanon for the Baptist Orphanage & Home Society of Western Pennsylvania, Union Bank building. The building will contain administration offices and accommodations for about 50 persons.”
May 16, 1914: “The new building for the Baptist Orphanage, to be built in Mt. Lebanon, Pittsburgh, plans for which were made by Architect Thomas Hannah, Keenan building, Pittsburgh will be a three-story and basement brick structure, 36×105 feet. It is expected that the contract for erecting same will be awarded shortly. Material specifications will include structural steel, concrete foundations, cut stone work, face brick, composition roofing, sheet metal work, concrete porch floors, interior finish of yellow pine, low pressure steam heating system, plumbing, lighting fixtures, etc.”
This simple but elegantly proportioned outbuilding could also be Hannah’s work.
Now Thackeray Hall of the University of Pittsburgh. The architect was Abram Garfield, son of our martyred president. This section on University Place is the older part of the building; a larger addition was built on Thackeray Avenue in 1925.
Mr. Garfield would not have approved of those asymmetrical doors on his rigorously symmetrical Renaissance palace. Is Pitt really so strapped for cash that these are the best the university can do?
Here we see how the older building connects to the carefully matched 1925 addition (on the left), with a new entrance at the seam between the buildings.
A particularly grand example of the Renaissance-palace school of telephone exchanges. Father Pitt believes that all our Renaissance-palace telephone exchanges were probably done by the same architect, and some day he hopes to find out who it was. (Update: It was probably James Windrim, a well-known Philadelphian who had the Bell Telephone franchise in Pennsylvania for many years. He designed the 1923 Bell Telephone Building downtown, and is known to have worked on other telephone exchanges in our area.)
This tenement house in Hazelwood was built in 1903, making it one of Titus de Bobula’s early commissions in Pittsburgh. It is very conventional for De Bobula, but it represented him in a Pittsburgh Press roundup of local architects in 1905 (“Able Architects the Authors of City’s Architectural Beauty,” April 29, 1905), where this picture was published (we regret that we have not been able to find a better copy than this ugly microfilm scan):
From what we can see in the indistinct old photograph, the building has not changed much at all, though Gertrude Street in front of it has been regraded.
The Gertrude Street face. It is likely that many of the first residents were Hungarian millworkers: that is a bit of De Bobula’s First Hungarian Reformed Church peeking out from behind the building.
Entrance on the south end of the building. The entrances originally had some sort of triangular pediment or small projecting roof; the Press photo is too indistinct to make out any details, but we can see the shadow of a triangle over the entrances at both ends.
The Elizabeth Street end of the building.
This glorious Renaissance palace was built in 1910; the architect was Thomas Hannah, who also gave us the Keenan Building. It is now a hotel.
Addendum: Here is a picture of the building when it was freshly built, from the June 1914 issue of The Builder, which is devoted to works of Thomas Hannah. The long side faced open space in those days.
This rich little Beaux-Arts bank on Carson Street at 18th Street was built in 1902. We have a daylight picture of the Peoples Trust Company of Pittsburgh building from the same angle.
Detroit architect Peter Dederichs gave us this gorgeous Renaissance basilica, which is crammed into an absurdly tiny space at the foot of the bluff in Sharpsburg. The exterior hasn’t changed in any significant way since the building went up in 1916, as we can see in a cover story in Stone magazine from February of 1919. In that story we learn that the stone was Dark Hollow Gray Bedford limestone from Indiana, and it has stood up perfectly to more than a century of Pittsburgh atmosphere.
The foundation of the congregation.
The building of the church.
Capitals of the Corinthian order.
The apse, and an especially lush growth of utility cables.
Looking toward the church on Penn Street.
These three attached units were originally named Howard, Delaware, and Norfolk, and you can still barely make out the ghosts of those names above the three entrances. They were built in 1901.
Two of the three units have had their balconies filled in, apparently to make closets, judging by the floor plans on the Mozart Management page for the Eaglemoor. The third is almost certainly what all three originally looked like.
Some paint is being touched up along the side.
Update: A correspondent with inside information mentions that the new paint job is meant to return the apartments to something like their original appearance. (We’ll have to come back soon to see the results.) The balconies did indeed turn into closets many years ago.
Mozart Management has two tours of this building on YouTube:
And here is a map.
