Father Pitt

Tag: Schoeneman (Vincent J.)

  • Crafton Borough Building

    Inscription reading “Crafton Borough”

    Built in 1938, the Crafton Borough Building was designed by Vincent L. Schoeneman and H. L. Carter.

    Crafton Borough Building

    This is about the peak of Art Deco modernity in Pittsburgh, and it impressed its neighbors enough that Munhall’s borough building (which old Pa Pitt really needs to visit soon) is very obviously influenced by it. Nor do we have to rely on the evidence of our own senses: it turns out that the Munhall council sent its architect over to inspect the Crafton Borough Building, telling him, “We want something like that.” The story about it in the Press was headed “Crafton Serves as ‘Model.’ ” “Munhall’s proposed new municipal building, to be erected at West Field, will be constructed along the lines of the one at Crafton. Adam G. Wickerham has been retained as architect.”

    Crafton Municipal Building

    So here is the building that hit late-1930s suburbanites as the ideal of a borough building, and old Pa Pitt can see why.

    Entrance

    “God is in the details,” as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe famously said, and here the details are perfectly harmonized, and we might add scrupulously kept by the borough. The windows have been replaced, which was probably necessary, but they were replaced with windows of the right size (which is regrettably unusual around here), and all the other trimmings are still there and mostly in good shape.

    Tower
    Clock

    The clock is not keeping time right now. Does anyone in the borough want to take up a collection for a new movement?

    Lantern
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Transom
    Borough building and war memorial
    Crafton Borough Building
    Crafton Borough Building
    Olympus E-20N; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
    Comments

  • 633 Washington Road, Mount Lebanon

    633 Washington Road

    This is a building you walk right past without even noticing it. One of old Pa Pitt’s favorite things to do is to show people how interesting the things they walk right past can be. This building was the subject of an article in the Charette, the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, so we know quite a bit about it, including that it looked like this when it was just finished in 1952:

    The architect was Vincent Schoeneman, known as “Shooey,” who had a flourishing practice in the middle of the twentieth century. He was “given carte blanche” on the design, the article tells us, but put some effort into making the building fit with its prewar neighbors. Thus the curious combination of modernist and Colonial elements.

    Perspective view

    Some things have changed. The windows have been replaced, trading the twelve horizontal panes on each side for three vertical sheets of glass, which is not an improvement. The signboard that once displayed the address in letters that managed to be both modest and large has been covered with aluminum (with a dark stripe that would be perfect for the words “633 WASHINGTON ROAD” spelled out in white letters). The wooden planters are no longer there, but they have been replaced by stone benches or shelves that match the side walls. The Colonial doors have been replaced with more ordinary stock doors. Still, a good bit of the original detail remains.

    Entrance

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    The whole text of the Charette article follows, reproduced here under the assumption that the copyright was not renewed.

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