For its size, McDonald has an unusually rich architectural heritage. The Cladden Building sits right at the center of the borough and almost defines downtown McDonald with its exuberant outburst of Victorian eclecticism. The acute angle of the building seems to pivot on the big round turret on the corner. Almost certainly the original entrance to the corner storefront was right on that corner, with the structure above held up by an egregiously fat Corinthian pillar.
Built in about 1893, this church was designed by James N. Campbell, who gave it his usual outsized corner tower with enormous open arches for the belfry. It was later known as Carnegie United Methodist Church, which left it a few years ago. But it appears to have been adopted as a community center by the prospering Attawheed Islamic Center next door in the old Presbyterian church, which the new owners obviously treasure and pour a lot of labor into, so we hope the future of the building is secure.
Here’s a house in an eclectic style made up of bits of other eclectic styles, but they all fit together well. The heavy arches picked out in darker brick remind us of the Rundbogenstil, a word we like to say as often as possible; but the irregular picturesque arrangement of parts takes inspiration from the style that, in defiance of history, was called Queen Anne.
The turret has a well-preserved witch’s cap and a rim of foliage scrollwork.
The oriel and the porch pediment are both decorated with grotesque foliage ornaments.
The house next door is a duplicate, but reversed.
Finally, a house that shares the same general shape, but is distinguished by its shingly top with curved surfaces and ornamental swags and foliage picked out in contrasting paint.
Like many Shadyside houses, this one has automobiles burrowing under the porch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The rear section seems to have been a later addition, carefully matched to the original in style and materials.
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.
Inscription: “St. John’s German United Evangelical Protestant Church, A. D. 1872.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A former firehouse converted to apartments while keeping the distinctive outlines of the exterior.
Designed by Frederick Sauer, this school was called the Latimer School after Allegheny was conquered by Pittsburgh. It was built in 1898.
In the 1980s it was converted to apartments under the name “The School House.” As far as old Pa Pitt knows, this was the first major conversion of a disused school to apartments in the city, and it showed that the idea was viable.
The school was converted to apartments in the age of Postmodernism, and the designer of this canopy cleverly made it a kind of abstracted projection of the original entrance. Father Pitt caught the fabric part of the canopy on a bad hair day.
The North Avenue side.
Map.
On the corner of North Avenue and Middle Street stands this small but imposing German Lutheran church, built in 1877. Father Pitt is fairly sure the Lutherans have gone, though the church site (last updated in 2010) is still on line. The Urban Impact ministry remains.
“St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church, built 1877.”
Connoisseurs of such things will note that this is a church with the sanctuary upstairs.
The hefty tower was added in a burst of prosperity about 25 years after the church was built.
Meanwhile, just across narrow Middle Street was a different kind of Lutheran church. And although old Pa Pitt gave this article a humorous headline, he is fairly sure there was no battle. Pittsburgh learned the virtue of tolerance: those other Lutherans across the street may be completely wrong about everything that is most important in life, but they’re our neighbors, and we wave to them when we see them on the street.
St. Mark’s was built in 1892. After its Lutheran congregation left, it was a Church of God in Christ until a few years ago. It has recently been expensively refurbished and painted black (it used to be painted brick red). Old Pa Pitt has not heard who was responsible for the refurbishing, but all the stained glass was removed, which is often the sign of a Pentecostal congregation moving in.
Except for the loss of the glass, the church is in very good shape externally, and it is a fine example of Pittsburgh Rundbogenstil—the round-arched German style that mixes classical and Romanesque elements.
