Three different buildings, three different styles: polyphony makes harmony in the streetscape.
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Three Buildings on Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
Building at Pearl Street and Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield
This building was put up between 1903 and 1910, and that is all old Pa Pitt knows about it. The extra-tall third floor looks like a lodge meeting hall, but it does not appear on maps as a lodge. The ground floor was a bank for many years. The building is going through a thorough renovation now, including new windows all around, fortunately the right size for the window openings.
Pearl Street is not quite perpendicular to Liberty Avenue, so this building has the common Pittsburgh problem of an obtuse angle to solve. You might not notice the solution unless you look closely.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, Strip
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.
Nikon COOLPIX P100. 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.
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Union Church, Robinson Township
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.
Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Kodak EasyShare Z981; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
Pittsburgh Foundry Office, South Side
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.
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. (Addendum: The congregation informed the Presbytery that it would close the church in 2022, according to a Pittsburgh Presbytery newsletter [PDF].) 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.
