Father Pitt

Tag: Schools

Annunciation School, Perry South

Benno Janssen and Edward J. Hergenroeder were the architects of this school, which seems to show the economy of line old Pa Pitt associates with Janssen. Hergenroeder would go on to design many Catholic schools, as well as the convent around the corner from this one (which we’ll be seeing soon).

The parish school closed years ago, but the building has found another use, so it is occupied and well maintained.

Among the decorations are several inscriptions, most of them not from Catholic sources.

“Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.” —Addison.

The side entrance on Arvada Way.

“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.” —Shakespeare.

Terra-cotta figures of children enjoying their childhood decorate the side walls of the school.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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February 26, 2025
Tenth Ward Public School No. 2, Observatory Hill
Perched on the side of a steep hill, this tiny schoolhouse was built in 1874.¹ After Allegheny was conquered by Pittsburgh, this was known as the Milroy School (after Milroy Street, which passes on the right side of the school). After it closed as a school in 1938, it was used as community center called Milroy House, and then a preschool; and now it is abandoned and waiting for its next life.

The school appears to have had three classrooms: left, right, and rear.

A picture taken in 1923, when the building was already half a century old, shows how the school looked with its belfry and its real windows.

From Historic Pittsburgh. The photograph was digitized with a copyright watermark, but it has been out of copyright since 2019.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
1. A brief history of the building is at Historic Pittsburgh. ↩︎
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February 17, 2025
St. Philip’s School, Crafton
Designed by Albert F. Link, the original part of St. Philip’s School was built in 1914–1915¹ to look like a fairy-tale castle. The steep hillside site was probably an inspiration: anything built here would look a bit like a medieval fortress, so why not go all the way?

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
1. Source: The Construction Record, December 19, 1914. “Architect A. F. Link, N. Craig street, has plans for the superstructure of a two-story brick parochial school building for St. Phillips [sic] Roman Catholic Congregation to be built at a cost of $60,000. Foundation work has been completed.” ↩︎
December 26, 2024
Crafton High School

Still in use, with modern additions, as Crafton Elementary School, this Jacobean palace was built in 1913. The architect was Press C. Dowler, already well into a career that would last another half-century. His assignment here seems to have been to make up in spectacle for what the little borough’s high school lacked in size, and he came through with the goods, festooning the building with crenellations and terra-cotta ornamentation. But although the decoration may be a bit extravagant, it is done with good taste, making a balanced composition outlined by the sharp contrast between the red brick and the white trim.

The original school had two identical entrances—probably, as was common in those days, one for boys and one for girls.

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

December 10, 2024
Auditorium Entrance, Andrew W. Mellon Middle School, Mount Lebanon

The National Forum warns us that we have to keep an eye on this school. All the schools of its era in Mount Lebanon were designed by Ingham & Boyd, or by Ingham, Boyd & Pratt once Pratt became a partner. This one comes from the era when they were adapting Art Deco elements to their usual ruthlessly symmetrical classicism, and the result shows some similarity to the same firm’s Buhl Planetarium. It has not changed much since it was built, except that, when the name was changed from “Junior High School” to “Middle School,” the inscription was clumsily applied with no spacing between the letters. That bugs old Pa Pitt, but he is not going to get up on a ladder and fix it himself.

Father Pitt does not know the sculptor of these two medallions, but he has a pretty good guess. Compare them to the reliefs by Sidney Waugh on Buhl Planetarium: The Heavens and The Earth and Primitive Science and Modern Science. It seems likely that the same architects hired the same sculptor for these reliefs.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

The marquee is festooned with unexpectedly colorful Art Deco swags.

September 26, 2024
Coraopolis Junior High School

Edward Stotz, who also designed Fifth Avenue High School and Schenley High School (the country’s first million-dollar high school), was the architect of this staid and respectable school, now turned into apartments.

The inscription over the door was hand-painted by someone with a distinctive idea of quotation marks.

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

September 12, 2024
St. Francis de Sales School, McKees Rocks

This composite picture is big; enlarge it to appreciate the variety of classical ornament.

Unlike the adjacent church, St. Francis de Sales School found a new use when it closed, and it is still maintained. The alterations were heavy and unsympathetic, but we can still see enough of the original design to imagine the rest. The original part of the school was built in 1909; it appears to have been expanded later. This is the Margaret Street end, with the original inscription.

This end of the school appears to be a later expansion.

The open belfry in this entrance tower, and the entrance below it, suggest some Art Nouveau influence.

Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

September 9, 2024
Neville School, Neville Island

The school for Neville Township, the municipality whose borders are the shores of Neville Island, was built in three main stages. The little school above, with four or five rooms, was the first.

Some time later, a two-storey building in a matching Jacobean style was built around the corner. (Addendum: Father Pitt has some reason to believe, but no definite proof yet, that the architect of both the prewar school buildings was John H. Phillips of McKees Rocks, who designed many schools for suburban boroughs.)

Finally, a postwar modern section was added, probably around 1960 to judge from the style. It was not in use for a long time: old Pa Pitt had a very pleasant conversation with a neighborhood resident whose wife was a member of the last graduating class of this school in 1971. Neville Township and Coraopolis merged their school systems into the Cornell School District, whose name is a portmanteau of the two municipalities. Fortunately, the buildings have found other uses.

August 2, 2024
Edwin Markham Public School, Mount Lebanon

All the older schools in Mount Lebanon were designed by Ingham & Boyd, and here we see a fine example of their style. An Ingham & Boyd school is an implied guarantee that your children will grow up to be respectable citizens. The buildings are in a restrained classical style, with just enough ornament to show that good money was spent on this structure. This particular school is named for a poet who was a big deal in the early twentieth century and has been almost completely forgotten since then.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

May 23, 2024
St. Michael’s Mädchen Schule, South Side Slopes

It seems certain that this building, formerly the girls’ school for St. Michael’s parish, will be demolished sooner or later; what has saved it so far is the expense of demolishing a large building in a neighborhood with low property values. But the South Side Slopes, like many city neighborhoods, have become much more valuable lately.

Right now, the building appears to house a whole alternate civilization of “homeless” squatters. In an ideal city, perhaps, it could continue to do so, but with a city budget for maintaining it and providing the elementary comforts to the residents. We do not live in that ideal city.

At any rate, it seemed worth stopping to record a few details of the building before it disappears entirely, and another piece of Pittsburgh’s rich German history is gone. We also have a few pictures from a year and a half ago, including a composite view of the front.

“St. Michael’s Mädchen Schule” (“St. Michael’s Girls’ School”).

“Errichtet A. D. 1872” (“Erected A. D. 1872”).

“Wiedererbaut A. D. 1900” (“Rebuilt A. D. 1900”).

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

April 20, 2024