The octagonal rotunda of the Allegheny County Jail, designed by H. H. Richardson.
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Old County Jail
Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR. -
Allegheny City Electric Station, North Side
These pictures are very large composites; expect 24 megabytes of data if you enlarge the one above. Commercial electric light was only a few years old when this power station was built in 1889. It was built in a restrained Victorian classical style that seems meant to make electric power look tame and respectable. But just a few years later, a new building was added next door that conveys quite a different architectural message.
The Irwin Avenue Substation was built in 1895, but it has the look of something built shortly after the Norman Conquest. The architectural message here seems to be that electricity is such a mighty force that only a medieval fortress can keep it under control. This building still belongs to Duquesne Light, and it is still called the Irwin Avenue Substation, even though Irwin Avenue has been called Brighton Road for more than ninety years.
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St. Ann’s Church, Hazelwood
St. Ann’s was built in our most Hungarian neighborhood for Hungarian Catholics. The cornerstone was laid in 1919; the congregation worshiped in the basement of the unfinished building for a few years, and finished the church in 1925. The church closed in 1998, and the building was sold; its current owners have kept it from falling down.1 That is as much as old Pa Pitt knows about the church, other than what you see in these pictures.
From the front, the church seems extremely tall, with its sanctuary upstairs from the main entrance. However, Hazelwood is a neighborhood mostly built on a slope, and the altar end of the sanctuary is at ground level. The cross in a circle on the façade was originally a rose window.
The central tower has an octagonal belfry.
Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR. Two identical side towers have interestingly treated roofs.
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Tower of the Allegheny County Courthouse
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Dormers on the Allegheny County Courthouse
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990. Above, on the Grant Street front; below, on the Fifth Avenue side.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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Allegheny County Courthouse
Samsung Digimax V4. From the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue (and try to explain that to an out-of-towner).
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Christ Evangelical United Brethren Church, Wilkinsburg
This elegantly proportioned corner-tower church is currently vacant. Doesn’t some artist need a distinctive studio? Think of what you could do with the auditorium and three floors of school next to it!
Sony Alpha 3000. The tower has completely abstract non-figurative gargoyles—perhaps a compromise the Romanesque-minded architect made with an iconophobic congregation.
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Brick Queen Anne in Manchester
A particularly fine house built in the 1880s and lovingly restored. It had the good luck to be just missed by the Ohio River Boulevard when it tore through the heart of Manchester.
Picturesquely wavy shingles still decorate the gable.
Not surprisingly, considering the fashion that Richardson’s courthouse set throughout the Pittsburgh area, this house has more than a touch of the Romanesque. Note the former address, 22, carved in stone.
A more modern architect might ask, “Why is there an oval window?” But in the Queen Anne style, which is devoted to the picturesque, the proper question to ask is, “Why should there not be an oval window?”
Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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Trinity Reformed Church, Wilkinsburg
Wilkinsburg used to call itself “City of Churches,” and it still has a denser concentration of great church architecture than almost any other neighborhood or borough. This one is battered but still hanging on, now as the Arc of the Covenant Church. The building dates from 1896–1897; the architect mentioned in contemporary listings was Elmer B. Milligan,1 who would soon take on Francis M. Miller as a partner—probably while this church was under construction, since a fortieth-anniversary program names Milligan & Miller as the architects.
The colossal octagonal lantern is the most striking feature of the church: there’s nothing else like it in Wilkinsburg.
Sony Alpha 3000; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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St. Basil’s from a Distance, Carrick
Father Pitt took his new old Kodak superzoom to the South Side Cemetery to try it out. These pictures of St. Basil’s Church are not cropped; the lens has a very long range, although there are more recent superzoom cameras with even longer ranges. Herman J. Lang was the architect of the church.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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