This grand mansion was built in about 1890 for railroad magnate Harry Darlington. It occupies a tiny lot, so it is one room wide—but four storeys tall and half a block deep.
The building is decorated with numerous terra-cotta tiles with fine scrolly foliage.
A carriage house in the back has matching stony foundations.
An early work of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow in Pittsburgh, this house was given the Carol J. Peterson treatment, so that it has its own little book of its history. Old Pa Pitt will not repeat everything the late Ms. Peterson found out about it, but this is the outline: Joseph O. Horne, son of the department-store baron, married Elizabeth Jones, daughter of the steel baron B. F. Jones, and her father had Longfellow, Alden & Harlow design this cozy little Romanesque house for the young couple. It was one of the many houses restored in the late twentieth century by serial restorationist Joedda Sampson, and now it looks pretty much the way the architects drew it, minus some erosion and a century of soot.
The decoration on the dormer is a bit eroded, but that probably makes it more picturesque than it was when the house was new.
An eclectic commercial block on the steep slope of the last block of Wabash Street, this building was probably put up in the 1890s.
St. Josaphat’s is one of the most unusual of John T. Comès’ works. It has some of his trademarks, notably the stripes—he loved stripes. But it also takes more inspiration from Art Nouveau than most of his churches, which are usually more firmly rooted in historical models. It is now having some renovation work done to fit it for its post-church life.
The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad had its shops just down the hill from this building, so here is a railroad men’s YMCA, now turned into an office building.
RAILROAD
YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN
ASSOCIATION
The inscription was probably spelled out in bronze letters; when they were removed, they left legible ghosts behind.
The cornerstone tells us that the building was put up in 1905.
Addendum: The building was under the supervision of Chief Engineer J. A. Atwood, who may have designed it. Source: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, January 4, 1905: “At McKees Rocks, Allegheny county, the Pittsburg & Lake Erie Railroad Company will erect a building for the Y. M. C. A.. Bids will be received until January 15th by Chief Engineer J. A. Atwood.”
This Romanesque—or shall we say Rundbogenstil? Because we like to say “Rundbogenstil”—firehouse was built for the city of Allegheny, probably in the 1890s to judge by our old maps. The alterations since then can be explained by the fact that a firehouse is basically a men’s club, and men’s clubs in Pittsburgh gradually fill in their windows and block as much natural light as they can. It does make one wonder what they expect to do with that tower now, but perhaps firemen have secret initiation rituals for which a dark tower is the ideal setting.
This little country church is now surrounded by suburbs, though there are still farms nearby. The date stone on the front of the building tells us it was built in 1868.
Originally the First United Presbyterian Church, this congregation merged with the Bellefield Presbyterian Church down the street, which sold its building (of which only the tower remains) and moved here, with the compensation that this church was renamed Bellefield Presbyterian. The building, designed by William Boyd and built in 1896, is festooned with a riot of carved Romanesque ornaments.
Each one of these cherubs has a different face and different ornamental carving surrounding it.
A. F. Link designed this Romanesque school in 1912, a little more than a decade before he designed the magnificent church beside it. This design already shows Link’s trademark habit of abstracting and modernizing historic forms: here he combines a hint of Romanesque with some very Jugendstil abstract patterns in the brickwork.
Fortunately the building has been sold to Yeshiva Schools, so it will not be abandoned to rot the way so many Catholic schools have been.
Our great ecclesiastical architect John T. Comès designed a fine church for St. Martin’s parish in the West End, but the church was demolished long ago. The rectory, however, remains, and it is a remarkable piece of work itself. We might call it Romanesque, or Art Nouveau, or Arts-and-Crafts, or perhaps even Rundbogenstil. Father Pitt is tempted, however, to call it Pre-Raphaelite. It reminds him of Pre-Raphaelite paintings; we can imagine it as a backdrop for figures by Burne-Jones.
The rich colors and deliberately handmade look of these ornamental tiles add considerably to the effect of the façade.
