Tag: Romanesque Architecture

  • Engine House No. 16, North Point Breeze

    Engine House No. 16

    No longer a firehouse, but the building has been adapted to other uses with care to preserve as much of its original stocky Romanesque look as possible.

    Engine House No. 16
    Sony Alpha 3000.

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  • Oakdale Public School

    Oakdale Public School

    High-school dropout James E. Allison would go on to have a long and distinguished career as an architect, much of it with his younger brother David in California as Allison & Allison. When he designed this little school,1 though, he was 24 years old, and he had just set up his own practice. Although he had no diplomas, he had worked for the Pittsburgh office of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge (the successors to the sainted Richardson), and then for Adler & Sullivan in Chicago. No one needs more education than that.

    Oakdale Public School

    The Romanesque style was all the rage in 1894, and Allison made sure his clients got their fill of round arches, emphasizing them with darker brick. It looks as though he had a lot of fun drawing the belfry.

    Inscription: Oakdale Public School, Anno Domini MDCCCICIV

    Whoever designed the inscription—possibly some high-school dropout—made an elementary mistake in Roman numerals that has persisted for 131 years. There is no sane way to read the date “MDCCCICIV.” But change the incorrect subtractive notation to MDCCCXCIV, and it gives us the date 1894, which matches our source.

    Oakdale Public School

    The school has been turned into apartments, but the exterior appearance has been kept close to original. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

    Oakdale Public School
    Olympus E-20N; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The rear section seems to have been a later addition, carefully matched to the original in style and materials.


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  • Deutche Vereinigte Evangelische-Protestantische Johannes Kirche, Carnegie

    Deutche Vereinigte Evangelische-Protestantische Johannes Kirche

    This old church was built in 1872, just a few years after the Civil War. It is now (according to neighbors) used for storage of lumber and building materials. Because money is not spent on extensive alterations, storage is, from a preservation point of view, one of the best uses that can be found for a church. Several Southern churches from the 1600s were preserved because they were turned into barns in the late 1700s, when the future Bible Belt was the most irreligious section of the country.

    Deutche Vereinigte Evangelische-Protestantische Johannes Kirche
    Inscription

    Inscription: “St. John’s German United Evangelical Protestant Church, A. D. 1872.”

    Ornament
    Deutche Vereinigte Evangelische-Protestantische Johannes Kirche
    Olympus E-20N; Samsung A15 5G.

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  • First Presbyterian Church, Ingram

    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania

    Built in about 1898, this church was designed by James N. Campbell,1 and it displays all the usual quirks of his style, including the corner tower with tall, narrow arches and the half-round auditorium made into the most prominent feature of the building: compare, for example, Beth-Eden Baptist Church in Manchester. It has been a Masonic hall for quite a while now. There are, however, still Presbyterians right across the street: the First United Presbyterian congregation was there, and the two denominations merged in 1959.

    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania

    In this case the Masons have not blocked in most of the windows the way men’s clubs usually do when they take over a building. An old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection shows that the basement windows have been filled with glass block, and the open tower has been bricked in. But the stained glass is still intact through most of the church.

    Postcard view of the church
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    Dormer
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    Olympus E-20N; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

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  • Allegheny County Courthouse

  • St. Agnes Church, Oakland

    St. Agnes Church

    This church at the eastern end of the Great Soho Curve is one of our endangered landmarks. It is a great masterpiece of ecclesiastical architecture by the Pittsburgh genius John T. Comès, who died at the age of 49 but had already built a legacy of glorious churches and schools across the country. However, it belongs to Carlow University, and universities hate historic buildings with a burning passion—Carlow more than most. All that stands in the way of a multimillion-dollar building with a rich donor’s name on it is this stupid church, which isn’t doing anybody any good. All it’s useful for is assembling large numbers of people for some sort of religious observance, and what good is that to a Catholic university?

    So we document its details as well as we can. There is a strong movement to preserve the church, but universities usually win these fights in the end.

    West front
    Entrance
    Entrance
    Crucifix and rose window
    Capitals
    Column
    Column
    Perspective view of the west front
    The martyrdom of St. Agnes.

    The martyrdom of St. Agnes.

    Reliefs

    In the center: a Chi-Rho monogram with the Alpha and Omega. Left to right are the symbols of the four Evangelists: the lion of Mark, the eagle of John, the human face of Matthew, and the ox of Luke.

    Tile with lion of St. Mark
    Vine ornament
    Door
    Statue
    St. Agnes
    Bell tower

    There’s still a bell in this tower.

    Side of the church
    East side of the west front
    St. Agnes Church
    St. Agnes Church
    Church and rectory

    The rectory next door is designed to match the church. It shows the Art Nouveau influence that Comès could combine effortlessly with historical models to produce a style uniquely his own.

    Rectory
    St. Agnes Rectory
    Entrance to the rectory
    Entrance
    Rectory
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • Harry, George, Matilda, and Laura, plus Hilda and Herbert

    Matilda and Laura

    That sounds like the title for a very complicated farce, but these are actually the names of six apartment buildings in Oakland, all of which share a common style. First, on Oakland Avenue, we have Harry, George, Matilda, and Laura, which look like four buildings but are really two identical buildings, each divided in two parts. The romantic battlemented fronts give tenants the chance to imagine themselves as medieval lords and ladies fresh out of a Walter Scott novel. These fantasies were effective in selling apartments, and probably still are.

    Harry, George, Matilda, and Laura apartments
    Harry
    Harry in perspective
    Matilda and Laura

    Around the corner on Dawson Street are two other buildings that share many of the same details. They had the same owner—John Dimling (note the sign for the private alley Dimling Way in the picture above)—and we can guess that they were probably drawn by the same pencil. These are called Hilda and Herbert.

    Hilda

    Here the architect has responded to the challenge of a lot that is not rectangular with a pair of asymmetrical designs that resemble but do not repeat Harry, George, Matilda, and Laura.

    Herbert
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    John Dimling was also the owner of the rainbow terrace on Dawson Street, and it is a good guess that the same architect was responsible for that as well. That architect was almost certainly Frederick Sauer, who is best remembered for his churches (like St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. Stephen Proto-Martyr) and his backyard whimsies, but who was very busy with all kinds of work. Father Pitt has not found these particular buildings in construction listings yet; but John Dimling was responsible for quite a bit of development in this part of Oakland, and in looking through the trade magazines for Mr. Dimling’s name, we find that, whenever an architect is mentioned, it is always and without exception F. C. Sauer during the period when these buildings went up (around the turn of the twentieth century). We therefore attribute them to Sauer until someone proves otherwise.


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  • Dual Presbyterians in Carnegie

    First Presbyterian Church, Carnegie

    This church, formerly First Presbyterian of Carnegie, now belongs to the Attawheed Islamic Center, which keeps the building up beautifully and lavishes a lot of attention on the landscaping. We can see from an old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection (undated, but probably about 1900) that this side of the building has hardly changed at all—except for the improvement in the landscaping. Even the stained glass is intact, since it is not representational and therefore causes no offense to Islamic principles.

    Old postcard of First Presbyterian Church
    Rear of the church

    At least two layers of educational buildings are behind the church.

    Diagonally across Washington Avenue is another Presbyterian church…

    First United Presbyterian Church

    …but this one was First United Presbyterian. The United Presbyterians were a Pittsburgh-based denomination that finally merged with those other Presbyterians in 1958. The building now is used as a banquet hall.

    First United Presbyterian Church
    Towers
    First United Presbyterian Church
    Rear of the church
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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  • Marine Bank Building

    Marine Bank

    Built in 1890, this rich feast of stonework was designed by Frederick Osterling in his Richardsonian Romanesque phase.

    Romanesque capital

    The carved ornaments are by Achille Giammartini, including old Pa Pitt’s favorite gargoyle in the city.

    Dragon gargoyle
    Foliage ornament
    Marine Bank Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • Eastminster Presbyterian Church, East Liberty

    Tower of Eastminster United Presbyterian Church

    Built in 1893 as Sixth United Presbyterian, this church was designed by William S. Fraser, who was a big deal in Pittsburgh in the later 1800s. Fraser adopted a very Richardsonian kind of Romanesque for this church, putting its congregation right at the top of the fashion heap for the moment.

    Eastminster Presbyterian
    Postcard of Sixth United Presbyterian Church
    Undated postcard, about 1900, from the Presbyterian Historical Society via Wikimedia Commons.

    If you ask why there are two Presbyterian churches so close together—this and East Liberty Presbyterian—the answer is that there were two kinds of Presbyterians. Sixth U. P. belonged to the United Presbyterians, a Pittsburgh-based splinter group that eventually merged with the other Presbyterians in 1958. Most neighborhoods and boroughs with large Protestant populations thus had two Presbyterian churches—or more, since there were Reformed Presbyterians and Cumberland Presbyterians as well.

    Eastminster U. P. Church
    Workmen restoring stained glass

    The stained glass is being restored slowly and carefully.

    Highland Avenue entrance
    Central door
    Eastminster United Presbyterian Church
    Organized 1856, built 1893
    Capitals
    Lantern
    Side entrance
    Station Street entrance
    Vine ornament
    Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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