A minor work of a major architect, this building on Shiloh Street has suffered multiple renovations since it was built in 1911 that have gradually taken away much of its character. The ground floor was completely remodeled; the arched windows have been replaced with square windows and the arches filled in; and just a few years ago the roofline lost a crest. Still, what remains gives us some idea of how Frederick Osterling handled a small commission.
In 1891 the Architectural Record ran a long illustrated feature on “The Romanesque Revival in America.” Naturally it dwelt on the accomplishments of H. H. Richardson, and in particular on Trinity Church in Boston and the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, his two most famous buildings. But what about the work done in the “Richardsonian Romanesque” style since Richardson’s death? Few churches could stand up to Trinity, but…
A Presbyterian church at Pittsburg by Mr. Richardson’s successors, Messrs. Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, is an unmistakable and a very successful piece of Richardsonian Romanesque, which owes much of its success to the skill with which the central tower, a lower and much simpler crowning feature than that of [Trinity Church in] Boston, is developed into the church to which the other features of a short nave and shallow transepts are brought into harmonious subordination.
The church has not changed much since the picture above was published in 1891. It has expanded, but the expansions have been carefully matched to the original. And since the soot has been cleaned off, it looks almost as just-built today as it did when it was new—and almost as timelessly ancient, which is the paradoxical trick that the best Richardsonian Romanesque buildings can pull.
There are some secondary sources that say this was one of the projects Richardson had sketched before his death and left his successors to finish, but the earlier sources seem to attribute it entirely to Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge.
In the engraving, the Fidelity Building on Fourth Avenue as it was designed. In the photograph, the building as it exists today (or actually as it existed in 2015, but not much has changed—even the posters for ABC Imaging were the same the last time old Pa Pitt looked). Father Pitt has tried to arrange the comparison to make the one substantial difference obvious: at some point between design and construction, one more floor was added.
The architect, James T. Steen, was an early adopter of the Richardsonian Romanesque style: Richardson’s courthouse, which set off the mania for Romanesque in Pittsburgh, was still under construction when this building was put up. This was before the age of skyscrapers, when the base-shaft-cap formula gave architects a simple way of extending height indefinitely by multiplying identical floors in the middle. Here, Steen seems to have decided that just duplicating one of the floors would make the top of the building undersized and underwhelming. Instead, he added a new sixth floor between the fifth floor and what had been the sixth but now became the seventh floor. He gave this new sixth floor arches smaller than the ones below but larger than the ones above, and transferred some of the weighty stone detail from the fifth floor to the new sixth floor. The result was a composition that still seems rightly balanced, and you would probably never guess that the height had been extended if you had not seen the earlier drawing.
The advertisement comes from J. F. Dieffenbacher’s Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny Cities, for 1888. Note the temporary address; the new building was still either under construction or in the planning stage.
This little Romanesque church on Arlington Avenue was converted to residential use with almost no alteration of the exterior.
Designed by Allison & Allison, this stony Romanesque church was renamed Riverview Presbyterian in 1977, when, we suppose, no one remembered Watson anymore. After sitting vacant for a while, it now has a nondenominational congregation called Pittsburgh Higher Ground, and we wish them long life and prosperity in this beautiful building.
Old Pa Pitt thinks writers on architecture tend to throw the name “Richardsonian” in front of the term “Romanesque” far too thoughtlessly, but there is no question about this church. It is very Richardsonian, right down to the little triangular dormers on the roof. Compare them to the ones on Richardson’s famous Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Allegheny West:
This is the architectural equivalent of a direct quotation.
Frederick Sauer designed St. Stanislaus Kostka, which was built in 1891. The church presides dramatically over the broad plaza of Smallman Street. It used to look out on a sea of railroad tracks, but its view improved considerably when the Pennsylvania Railroad built its colossal Produce Terminal.
It is probable that the rectory, done in a matching style, was also designed by Sauer. The glass blocks are not an improvement, but they have kept the building standing and in use.
Alpha Terrace, a set of unusually fine Victorian rowhouses designed by James T. Steen1 in an eclectic Romanesque with bits of Second Empire and Gothic thrown in, is a historic district of its own. The houses are on both sides of Beatty Street in East Liberty. The row on the northwest side of the street went up in about 1885.
The houses on the southeast side of the street are a few years newer, probably from about 1894, and they incorporate more of the Queen Anne style, with shingles and ornate woodwork.
The rest of our pictures are from the sunny side of the street, for very practical photographic reasons. We’ll return when the light is better for the houses on the southeast side.
Separate ownership is not always kind to terraces like this, but the aluminum siding on the roof is about the worst alteration Alpha Terrace has suffered.
Designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, probably the one firm with the best claim to the title of successors of H. H. Richardson, this station sat derelict for years. After a fundraising campaign, it is being restored as the Coach Fred Milanovich Center for Community Connection. We last saw it in July, and since then a good bit has been accomplished. Workers were busy today when old Pa Pitt came by.
The old freight depot is altered but still standing.
Father Pitt thinks this is the most picturesquely sited church in Allegheny County. On a day of rapidly changing lighting, he captured it in multiple moods.
The cemetery is stuffed with Revolutionary War veterans, and several of them will be appearing over at Pittsburgh Cemeteries.
The Wood Street end of the Granite Building in a composite photograph that gets a little fuzzy toward the top, but otherwise gives us a good notion of the design of the Romanesque extravaganza. It was built in 1889 as the German National Bank; the architects were Bickel & Brennan—the Bickel being Charles Bickel, who would go one to become Pittsburgh’s most prolific architect of commercial buildings.
We also have pictures of some of Achille Giammartini’s carvings on the building, and of the German National Bank ghost signs still visible on the side that faces Liberty Avenue.
