This tidy little building in the back streets of the near South Side was built as the office for the Pittsburgh Foundry plant. The style brings a bit of Arts-and-Crafts to the usual industrial Romanesque. Note the patterned bricks.
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Pittsburgh Foundry Office, South Side
HDR images from a Kodak EasyShare Z1285 set to bracket three exposures at intervals of 1 EV. -
Neville Island Presbyterian Church
About this church old Pa Pitt knows only what you see in these pictures. The sign has not changed since 2021, but the grounds are still mowed and the building is in good shape. Its most prominent feature is its tower with eye-catchingly prickly battlements.
Kodak EasyShare Z1285. -
First Methodist Episcopal Church of Coraopolis
Now the Coraopolis United Methodist Church. The father-and-son team of T. B. and Lawrence Wolfe, part of a century-long dynasty of Wolfes in Pittsburgh architecture, designed this church, built in 1924.
Our friend Dr. Boli had opinions about this picture.
The building this one replaced is also still standing—a typical late-1800s Pittsburgh Rundbogenstil church, and one with the sanctuary upstairs if you come in by the front door. It was a short block away, and it is still in use as a church, now Coraopolis Abundant Life Ministries.
Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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First Presbyterian Church, Oakmont
This church, built in 1895, is a fine example of what old Pa Pitt would call Pittsburgh Rundbogenstil, because he likes to say “Rundbogenstil.” Otherwise we would just have to call it “Romanesque,” and where’s the fun in that? It now belongs to Riverside Community Church.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. An old postcard shows us that little has changed about the building in more than a century.
From the postcard collection of the Presbyterian Historical Society. -
A Stroll on Avery Street in Dutchtown
The part of Dutchtown south of East Ohio Street is a tiny but densely packed treasury of Victorian styles. Old Pa Pitt took a walk on Avery Street the other evening, when the sun had moved far enough around in the sky to paint the houses on the southeast side of the street.
Is this the most beautiful breezeway in Pittsburgh? It’s certainly in the running.
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Union Methodist Episcopal Church, Manchester
Barr & Moser were big names in the architecture of the up-and-coming city of Pittsburgh in the middle 1800s. This church, which opened in 1867, is one of their few surviving works. It is in some ways a typical Pittsburgh neighborhood church, with the sanctuary upstairs. But the three arches at the top of the Manhattan Street face of the building are anything but typical. Some replacement brick in the large center arch suggests that some decorative element decayed and was filled in, but even as the building stands now we can see how modern it must have looked in the time just after the Civil War.
This picture took six separate photographs to render, but the result is the front of the church almost as the architects drew it.
The church has belonged to at least three different congregations. It was the Union Methodist Episcopal Church through the early 1900s; by 1923 it belonged to St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church; then in 1961—as this replacement cornerstone records—it was bought by the New Zion Baptist Church. The building does not appear to be in use right now, but we hope it can be maintained.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, Oakland
George S. Orth was the architect of this palace of education, which was finished in 1894. It’s a little bit Flemish Renaissance, with eye-catching horizontal stripes and Rundbogenstil eyebrows over the arches.
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Row of Houses on North Avenue
These are what old Pa Pitt calls Baltimore-style rowhouses: that is, rowhouses where the whole row is built as one subdivided building right against the sidewalk (as opposed to the typical Pittsburgh terrace, where the houses are set back with tiny front yards). Since North Avenue is the neighborhood boundary on city planning maps, these fall into the “Central Northside” for planning purposes; but socially they formed part of the wealthy section of Allegheny that includes Allegheny West across the street.
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Ferguson Block
Now the Keystone Flats apartments, this building was put up in the 1890s, and that is about all old Pa Pitt knows about it. It’s a good example of the Rundbogenstil, straddling the line between Romanesque and Renaissance.
In most cities, Third Avenue would be called an alley, so it is nearly impossible to get a picture like this. It cannot be done without a lot of fudging, so you will notice slightly different colors in different parts of the picture. But it does give us a good idea of the design.
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Hartje Brothers Building
The Boulevard of the Allies side of one of the side-by-side Hartje Brothers buildings. Charles Bickel designed this building and the matching one behind it on Wood Street. This was the later of the two, both built in 1902 for the Hartje Brothers Paper Manufacturing Company. Mr. Bickel was extraordinarily prolific, but old Pa Pitt thinks he deserved his success. For an interesting comparison, look at the Reymer Brothers candy factory and the Concordia Club, and see how Charles Bickel created different effects from the same basic shapes.
