Father Pitt

Tag: Schools

Who Really Designed Westinghouse High School? Well, It’s Complicated…

According to Wikipedia and the National Register of Historic Places and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation and numerous books and so on and so forth, the architects of Westinghouse High School were Ingham & Boyd. So you can just take the story as it comes to you, or you can can do what Father Pitt can’t stop himself from doing: keep pulling at a loose thread until the whole story unravels and has to be woven again.

The loose thread was that old Pa Pitt kept running across construction listings that said George S. Orth & Brother were designing a Homewood-Brushton High School in the middle teens of the last century. For a long time Father Pitt had just assumed that the project fell through, and later Ingham & Boyd were hired to design the school that was actually built in 1921. But then he found this elevation of the school as designed by the Orths:

It was printed in the Year Book of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, Incorporated, for 1916—long before the current school was built in 1921. But even a casual glance shows that it is fundamentally the school that stands today. Details are different, but the three-arched entrance, the blank walls on the projections at the ends of the building, the exact number and proportion of the windows, and so on, are all the same.

So why are the Orths not credited as the architects of Westinghouse?

The Wikipedia article on Westinghouse High School explains it, though without mentioning the change of architects. Digging for the foundation of the school began in 1915, while the Orths were still frantically scribbling their final drawings. But then the bids from the construction contractors came in, and they were shockingly high. The school board decided to wait for a little bit. Then there was a big war, and the construction didn’t actually begin until 1921.

So much we can learn from Wikipedia. The article does not mention the Orths, however, so it does not inform us that George S. Orth died in 1918, and Brother (his name was Alexander Beatty Orth) died in 1920. Having gone to a better place, the Orths were not inclined to finish the supervision of the project, so new architects had to be found. Enter Ingham & Boyd.

Comparing the Orths’ drawing with the school as it stands shows us that Ingham & Boyd took over the original plans, but adapted them to their own taste. They made the design more rigorously classical, changed the partly brick walls to all stone, simplified the ornamentation, and added inscriptions (a typical Ingham & Boyd touch) to the blank walls. But the main outlines were already established by George S. Orth & Brother.

Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

Having sifted through the history of Westinghouse High School, we must say that Ingham & Boyd did the larger part of the work. They not only remade the plans in a more modern style, but also supervised the construction and dealt with the school board as the costs kept rising, which must have required patience and many soothing words.

But the original design belongs to George S. and Alexander Beatty Orth, and they deserve the credit for it. It will probably take a long time for that truth to percolate through the many repositories of Pittsburgh architectural history. But, as the book of I Esdras says…

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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November 25, 2025
Gladstone School, Hazelwood

O. M. Topp was the architect of this palace of education, which grew in stages to magnificent proportions on a difficult slope. The original part of the school, opened in 1914, was featured in School Houses: the Eleventh Annual Year Book of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club Incorporated, a record of the 1916 exhibition of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club.

THE GLADSTONE SCHOOL
O. M. Topp, Architect, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
[1916]

VIEW SHOWING PORTION NOW FINISHED
THE GLADSTONE SCHOOL
O. M. Topp, Architect, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
[1916]

PLAN SHOWING THE COMPLETED BUILDING
THE GLADSTONE SCHOOL
O. M. Topp, Architect, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
[1916]

After sitting vacant for two decades, the main part of the school has been restored as apartments, much to the delight of nearby residents. One neighbor on the same street told old Pa Pitt he had been a student at the school, and was very happy to see the building taken care of once again—and happy to see someone documenting it with a camera.

If you visit, don’t forget to look up at the downspouts.

The population of the neighborhood rapidly grew, and an annex was added in 1926, connected to the main school by a pedestrian bridge. Restoration of the annex is still in progress.

Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

November 14, 2025
Art Deco Urn at the Beechwood School, Beechview

Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

Press C. Dowler was the architect of the school, and may have designed the urns as well.

November 6, 2025
Wilkinsburg High School

When the thriving borough of Wilkinsburg needed a magnificent new high school to accommodate its mushrooming population, the borough government decided to get the best building possible by inviting an all-star cast of architects to a competition. From the Pittsburg Press, July 8, 1908, p. 17:

Plans for a high school building to cost over $200,000 will be received by the school board of Wilkinsburg. The architects in the competition are Thomas H. Scott, M. G. Wilkins Company, DeBobula & Hazeltine, Milligan & Miller, S. E. Schrieber and E. J. Carlise. M. F. Henning is chairman of the building committee. The competing architects will be given about a month to submit plans.

The winner was Thomas H. Scott, whose name was among the few correctly spelled in the article. He beat some big names, including Wilkinsburg’s own Milligan & Miller, E. J. Carlisle (who already had many schools to his credit), the W. G. Wilkins Company (specialists in large industrial buildings and warehouses, including the one that is now the Andy Warhol Museum), the wildly eccentric and self-aggrandizing genius Titus de Bobula (with an otherwise unknown partner), and probably Frederick Scheibler, if we are correct in guessing that “F. G. Scheibler” was misheard over the telephone as “S. E. Schrieber.” Scott, of course, was a big name himself, and the borough could have had no reason to regret its choice.

The school, which is an interconnected complex of buildings that also included the junior high school, is no longer in use as a school: Wilkinsburg students go to Westinghouse in Pittsburgh from the seventh grade on. But the building is well maintained.

Sony Alpha 3000; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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October 21, 2025
Oakdale Public School

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.

Olympus E-20N; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

The rear section seems to have been a later addition, carefully matched to the original in style and materials.

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August 7, 2025
Harding School, Carnegie

In 1922, President Harding was popular—just about as popular as any president since Washington had ever been. He was a little less popular a few years later, after he had died and members of his circle who had not shot themselves began serving prison terms. But the name seems not to have been enough of an embarrassment to change the inscription on the school. It retains that inscription in its new life as a retirement home more than a century later.

The first school on this site was the old Chartiers Public School (we assume the date 1878 refers to the building of that school). In 1922, this much larger building went up around the old school—for it appears that the original school may still exist, invisible under a layer of 1922 construction.

The architect of the new school was Frank M. Crooks, the M. standing for McCandless, who was a lifelong resident of the little town of McDonald west of Carnegie.

Olympus E-20N; Samsung A15 5G.

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August 1, 2025
Ingram Public School

Press C. Dowler, who designed several other schools and public buildings in the Chartiers Valley, was the architect of this school, which was built in 1914. It is no longer in use, but the building is in good shape.

Throughout his long career, which went from Romanesque through classical through Art Deco to modernism, Dowler used simple materials to weave interesting geometric decorations.

Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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July 19, 2025
St. Mary’s R. C. Schools, Lawrenceville

Built in 1881 for St. Mary’s, an Irish Catholic parish in Lawrenceville, this old school is now neatly restored as apartments.

Much of the original woodwork is preserved, including incised folk-art decorations typical of the period.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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June 14, 2025
St. Mary’s Academy, Lawrenceville

This building was put up in about 1854, well before the adjacent church, making it one of the very few surviving public buildings in Pittsburgh from before the Civil War, and one of the small number of buildings in the Greek Revival style. It is stable but vacant, and its future is questionable. The rising value of Lawrenceville real estate might make it profitable to convert it into a house or a duplex, but that same rising value would make it much more profitable to replace it with a few townhouses or a small apartment building.

The ornate metalwork support for the porch roof is a later addition, we assume, but it ought to be preserved as well. The stock wrought-iron railing on top of the porch roof can go to the recycling plant.

A good summary of the history of the parish, including this building, is in James Wudarczyk’s Faith of Our Fathers: Religion in Lawrenceville.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

Map.
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June 10, 2025
Clark High School, Scott Township

Just outside Carnegie on Washington Avenue, this school opened in the fall of 1935. It was designed in a bracingly modern style by Mount Lebanon architect J. Lawrence Hopp, who designed a number of other schools in nearby suburbs. It has been an office building for quite a while now, but the alterations to the exterior have not been severe, as we can see from a 1950 photograph of students trying their hands at rescue techniques.

Photo by Post-Gazette photographer Paul Slantis, from Historic Pittsburgh (go there to see it in full resolution).

A certain number of students were probably lost every time these drills were performed, but that is the price we pay for preparedness.

Some history of the building and all the yearbooks are at the Chartiers Valley Historical Society page on Clark High School.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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June 5, 2025