Father Pitt

Tag: Renaissance Architecture

Twentieth Century Club, Oakland

As you can see, it takes some effort to achieve this kind of symmetry in Pittsburgh, a city where the phrase “ground floor” is ambiguous at best. Pittsburgh’s premier women’s club hired Pittsburgh’s premier architect of clubs, Benno Janssen, to design this splendid Renaissance palace, built—according to the inscription—in 1930. The inscription also tells us that the club was founded in 1894. The rest (on the right) is the club motto: “Not for ourselves alone, but for the whole world.” The building now belongs to Pitt.

Janssen liked this kind of cartouche with monogram: compare his Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association.

The entrance on the Bigelow Boulevard side, at lower ground level.

A relief over the Bigelow Boulevard entrance bears the club motto again. For context, here is an older picture from the corner of Bigelow Boulevard and Bigelow Boulevard (no one said navigating Oakland was easy); the lower entrance is behind the elegant stone wall.

June 6, 2023
The Schenley, Newly Built

From Our Cities, Picturesque and Commercial, a souvenir book of Pittsburgh and Allegheny published in 1898, the year the Hotel Schenley was built. Except for the sensitively matched addition in the front and the loss of the cornice, the building looks much the same today.

Note the big expanse of nothing on the hill to the right. That was still open land belonging to Mary Schenley when the hotel was built.

May 27, 2023
Cathedral Mansions and Haddon Hall in 1929

Thanks to a kind correspondent, old Pa Pitt has an opportunity to prove himself right about one thing and wrong about something else. Being wrong is almost as good as being right, because it means learning something new.

Our correspondent sent two pictures that appeared in an advertisement that ran in the Post-Gazette in 1929. The ad was for Frigidaire refrigerating systems, as used in prominent buildings in the city.

First, the Cathedral Mansions apartments on Ellsworth Avenue.

Here Father Pitt was right. A little while ago, we ran this picture of Cathedral Mansions as it looks today:

At that time we mentioned that we suspected it had lost a cornice. Father Pitt was right about that, as you can see from the 1929 picture.

Now, here’s the one we were wrong about:

This building is now an apartment building called Hampshire Hall. As “Haddon Hall” it was a hotel with apartments. Here is what it looks like today:

The obvious change is that modernist growth on the front. When he published these pictures, Father Pitt wrote, “It appears to be a glass enclosure for what was once an elegant verandah.” That is wrong. It seems to have been a replacement for the original dining room or lounge of the hotel. It was probably put there in about 1961: a newspaper ad from December 22, 1961, promotes the Walt Harper Quintet’s appearance at the “newly remodeled Haddon Hall Lounge.”

Many thanks to our correspondent for the pictures, which give us new information about these two notable buildings. If anyone knows the architect of either one, but especially Haddon Hall/Hampshire Hall (which is in a distinctive modernist-Renaissance style), Father Pitt would be grateful for the information.

May 26, 2023
Hotel Schenley, Oakland

This picture reminded old Pa Pitt of an old postcard, so he rendered it in two colors to make it look even more like an old postcard. The rest of the pictures in the article are in natural colors.

Designed by Rutan & Russell, this was our first skyscraper hotel, and the most luxurious hotel in the city when it went up in 1898—at a time when it was actually at the edge of the urbanized area. It remained the Pittsburgh base of the rich and famous for half a century, but it declined after the Second World War, and in 1956 was sold to Pitt. It is now the William Pitt Union, with many of the exterior and interior details scrupulously preserved.

The same as the first picture, but in natural colors.

Addendum: See a picture of the Hotel Schenley in 1898, the year it was built.

May 25, 2023
King Edward Annex, Oakland

Since we mentioned the smaller King Edward Annex a couple of days ago when we looked at the old King Edward Apartments, here it is. The city’s architectural inventory (PDF) dates it at about 1925 (Update: This is a little too early; see below), which seems plausible. It looks a bit worn, and the top of the building is definitely not the way the architect imagined it. But it still has a restrained dignity, especially if we ignore the missing cornice. Old Pa Pitt has a suspicion that average Americans simply don’t see the tops of buildings, so when they are mutilated no one but Father Pitt notices.

Addendum: The King Edward Annex was built in about 1927; the architects were Hannah and Sterling. Source: The Charette, Vol. 7, No. 2 (February 1927): “209. Architect: Hannah & Sterling, 209-9th Street, Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner Arthur McSorley. Title: Apartment House. Owner now taking bids. Location: Melwood Street, Pittsburgh. Approximate size: 28 apartments; four stories, fireproof. Cubage: 300.000 ft.”

May 8, 2023
College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University

Built to be an inspiring showcase of the world’s best traditions in art, the College of Fine Arts building was positioned at the top of the Mall, as if the arts might be of some importance even in a technical school.

Niches along the front of the building pay tribute to various architectural and sculptural traditions.

May 1, 2023
Clyde House, Shadyside

This Renaissance house in Shadyside is now a residence for first-year students at Carnegie Mellon. The round dormer is unusual, but there was a brief fad for them around the turn of the twentieth century: see also the J. J. Matthews House.

Addendum: The architect was Frederick Osterling. This is the sole survivor of a row of three houses Osterling designed; this one was for James H. Hammond. See Works of F. J. Osterling by J. Franklin Nelson, 1904.

April 24, 2023
8 Market Square

This building on the Diamond has lost its cornice, but the rest of it is intact, and the details are worth a closer look.

March 16, 2023
Weldin’s Building

Until a few years ago, this building was the home of Weldin’s, the venerable stationer that had been selling pens, ink, and paper since well before the Civil War. Weldin’s itself is no more—the business moved to the Gulf Tower for a few years, and then vanished in the early months of the COVID pandemic. But the extraordinarily rich Italian Renaissance front of this building remains as a highlight of an extraordinarily rich row of small commercial buildings on Wood Street.

Addendum: Although the building itself is considerably older, the front is the work of architect George Schwan, who designed a new front for the building in 1913. From the Construction Record, December 13, 1913: “Architect George H. Schwan, Peoples Bank Building, has plans nearly completed for altering a three-story brick mercantile building on 415 Wood street, for J. R. Weldin & Company, 431 Wood street. Cost, $10,000.” In 1913, $10,000 would have bought an entire replacement of the front and much of the interior.

March 8, 2023
Renaissance Deco in Mount Oliver

Italian Renaissance architecture filtered through an Art Deco lens makes an extraordinarily rich little building on Brownsville Road. The storefronts have been modernized; they would almost certainly not have had doors that open right into pedestrians’ faces when this building was put up in 1928. But the overall impression the building makes is still dignified, with a touch of Venetian fantasy that reminds us of a Pandro S. Berman production.

March 7, 2023