Father Pitt

Tag: Schools

South Vocational High School, South Side

The South Vocational High School was designed by Marion M. Steen, who gave us many impressive schools around here. His father, James T. Steen, was a distinguished architect as well; Marion followed in his father’s classicist footsteps, but gradually adopted more and more Moderne mannerisms until he became one of our leading Art Deco architects. This school was a kind of vocational annex for the South High School across the street. Construction began in 1939, and it opened in 1940, just in time to be adapted to round-the-clock wartime training for mechanical trades.

This is Steen’s most aggressively modern design. He seems to have imagined a building that would look like a cross between school and factory.

This composite picture is huge: if you click on it, expect more than 18 megabytes of data.

Here is the Sarah Street front. As in all Steen’s other schools, the decorative details are imaginative and appropriate. These suggest a new world of technological wonder.

Now let’s walk around to the Tenth Street entrance, where we’ll find a remarkable decorative aluminum panel in the transom.

And…wait a minute…is that an inscription in…

…cuneiform?

Yes, it is a cuneiform character. It represents the Sumerian or Akkadian word for “to sow” or “to cultivate,” which is very appropriate over the door of a school.

We have many public buildings with inscriptions in Latin. But is this the only school in North America with a cuneiform inscription over the entrance? Father Pitt would love to have any others pointed out to him.

Do not suppose, by the way, that old Pa Pitt is fluent in Akkadian, much as he would like to be able to read the adventures of Gilgamesh without a translation. It was, however, easy to trace the character and feed it into an image search, and although Google did not come up with the exact character at the top of the list, it took only a bit of scrolling to find the character we were looking for. Father Pitt wishes he could say he had thought of that solution to the problem himself, but, having recognized that this was a cuneiform character, he got no further until a cleverer friend suggested the way forward.

The building is in use as the Pittsburgh Online Academy (which needs a building for some reason; perhaps our school board has only a fuzzy notion of what “online” means), so for the moment it is well kept and externally in original condition.

July 23, 2023
C. M. Schwab Industrial School, Homestead

When a new generation of architects feels utter contempt for the work of the previous generation, this is the result. Fortunately, the contempt extended to ignoring the details of the original building, which are therefore preserved, except for the loss of the cornice. Like several other previously abandoned buildings in the historic center of Homestead, this one has now found another use.

The school was named for Charles M. Schwab, who was superintendent of the Homestead Works and later the first president of United States Steel.

July 9, 2023
Fifth Ward Manual Training School, Manchester

Now part of the Conroy Early Childhood Center, this old school hovers between classical and Romanesque styles, which means that perhaps the best term for it is Rundbogenstil, the word old Pa Pitt most likes to pronounce in public.

Since it has been made an annex of a larger building, it no longer requires its main entrance, which leads to this architectural dissonance:

Addendum: The particularly fine inscription and relief work were done by Achille Giammartini, who lived a few doors down on Page Street.

May 9, 2023
Boggs Avenue School, Mount Washington

A modest Renaissance palace designed by Sydney F. Heckert and built in 1925. It is now apartments.

When the building was converted from school to residence, someone thought this treatment of the front entrances was a good idea. Someone was mistaken.

January 12, 2023
Woolslair Public School, Bloomfield/Lawrenceville

This fine Renaissance palace, built in 1897, was designed by Samuel T. McClaren. It sits on 40th Street at Liberty Avenue, where it is technically—according to city planning maps—in Bloomfield. Most Pittsburghers, however, would probably call this section of Bloomfield “Lawrenceville,” since it sticks like a thumb into lower Lawrenceville, and the Lawrenceville line runs along two edges of the school’s lot.

For some reason the style of this building is listed as “Romanesque revival” wherever we find it mentioned on line. Old Pa Pitt will leave it up to his readers: is this building, with its egg-and-dart decorations, false balconies, and Trajanesque inscriptions, anything other than a Victorian interpretation of a Renaissance interpretation of classical architecture? Now, if you had said “Rundbogenstil,” Father Pitt might have accepted it, because he likes to say the word “Rundbogenstil.”

December 21, 2022
Hebrew Institute, Hill

In the early twentieth century, the Hill was Pittsburgh’s most diverse neighborhood, and in particular it was the main center of Jewish culture. A number of buildings survive from the Jewish community there, though they have all been turned to other uses. This one, for example, is now a “community engagement center” run by the University of Pittsburgh. But it was the original home of the Hebrew Institute, which moved to Squirrel Hill in 1944. It was a school that taught Hebrew language, literature, and culture to Jewish children. The style of the building is typical Pittsburgh School Classical, but the broken pediment above the entrance frames a Torah scroll.

Addendum: The architect, according to a 1914 issue of the Construction Record, was Walter S. Cohen, who had a thriving practice serving mostly Jewish clients. “Architect Walter S. Cohen, Oliver building, has plans nearly completed for a two-story brick and stone institute building for the Hebrew Institute of Pittsburgh, Wylie avenue and Green street, to be built at a cost of $30,000.”

December 16, 2022
Prospect School, Mount Washington

The firm of James T. Steen & Sons gave us many prominent buildings. The elder James died in 1923, but the firm flourished under his son Marion M. Steen, whose particular specialty was schools. Here is one of his finest works, built in 1931 with additions in 1937. The school closed in 2006, but it was converted to loft apartments without losing any of the glorious Art Deco decorations and reliefs.

Addendum: The reliefs are by Charles Bradley Warren, who also did Pursuit of Knowledge on North Catholic High School.

Old Pa Pitt seldom does this, but because there are eighteen pictures in this article, he will avoid weighing down the front page of the site by placing the rest of them below the metaphorical fold.
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December 1, 2022
Regina Coeli Church and School, Manchester

Now the New Zion Baptist Church in what may be Pittsburgh’s only clot of three different Baptist churches in the same spot, this former Italian parish church is a good example of the modernist interpretation of Gothic that was popular briefly after the Second World War. The fine reliefs are in a style that filters medieval religious art through a slightly Art Deco lens.

There seems to have been an inscription over the skull and crossbones (representing conquered Death), but it is no longer legible.

Sinite parvulos, et nolite eos prohibere ad me venire: talium est enim regnum caelorum. (Matt. 19:14.)

October 30, 2022
St. Luke’s Church, Carnegie
Now St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church of St. Raphael Parish, because the history of parish consolidation in Carnegie is complicated even by Catholic Pittsburgh standards. Built in 1881, this church was out of commission for a while after the Hurricane Ivan floods in Carnegie, but it is now restored and expanded, and in fact is the only remaining Western Catholic church in Carnegie. (There’s a Byzantine-rite Ukrainian church, too.)

The parish school behind the church closed some years ago, but the building still belongs to the church and has been adapted to other uses, including Sunday school and offices.

Addendum: The architect of the school was Albert F. Link.¹
1. Source: The Construction Record, January 13, 1912: “Carnegie, Pa. — Architect A. L. Fink [sic], 407 North Craig street, Pittsburgh, is drawing plans for a two-story brick fireproof parochial school, to be constructed on Third avenue and Fourth street, for St. Luke’s Roman Catholic Congregation. Building will contain 12 school rooms and auditorium on first floor. Cost $45,000.” The magazine was sloppily edited, but every once in a while we wonder whether one of the misprints was deliberate. ↩︎
October 29, 2022
King School of Rhetoric, Knoxville

This building has been much altered and diminished. There was originally more building behind it, and the façade has been drastically remodeled. The front entrance is now a pair of windows, and the original grand arches have been bricked in, with small and mismatched windows. The city’s Hilltop architectural inventory (PDF) classed this as a building with low architectural integrity. But it is very interesting for two reasons. First, the front gives us a good lesson in urban archaeology: enough is left so that we can try to imagine how the original building looked. Second, the fact that there was such a thing as a prominent school of rhetoric in Knoxville is itself an interesting window into times past. The briefest exposure to any of our politicians today will be enough to convince us that a school of rhetoric would be welcome in these parts.

Addendum: The building was originally the First Methodist Protestant Church of Knoxville. When the church moved a block away, Mr. King bought the building and had it completely remodeled by Knoxville’s own favorite architect, E. V. Denick. A newspaper account in the Pittsburgh Post, March 5, 1911, described the school and the renovations:

WILL BUILD FOR SCHOOL.

Byron W. King’s Institution to Be Housed in Own Home in Knoxville.

A school of oratory is to be erected in Knoxville. Byron W. King, well known as a teacher of elocution and kindred Subjects, has purchased the property of the Knoxville Methodist Protestant Church, Zara street and Virginia avenue, and will have it remodeled to suit his purposes.

Plans for the remodeling have been made by Architect Edwin V. Denick, and work will begin at once on the transformation. When completed the building will be a three-story brick that will have all of the appointments necessary for Mr. King’s purposes.

A large auditorium and classrooms will be placed on the first floor. On the upper floors will be dormitories and other accessories that have been figured on by Mr. King. In the basement will be a large dining hall, a kitchen and the heating apparatus.

With the remodeling of the old structure and the brightening up of both its exterior and interior, together with the Y. M. C. A. building across the street, the corner will be a lively one and will put on quite a metropolitan air.

The new church of the Knoxville Methodist Protestant congregation is at Georgia avenue and Zara street. King’s School of Oratory and Dramatic Culture is now in Sixth street, Pittsburgh.

September 25, 2022