Father Pitt

Tag: Skyscrapers

  • West Penn Building

    West Penn Building

    Charles Bickel designed this small skyscraper at First Avenue and Wood Street, which was finished in 1907. It’s a perfect demonstration of the base-shaft-cap form of an early skyscraper. In fact we can use this building as a textbook in our short course on how to read a Beaux-Arts skyscraper. The two-storey base contains the public aspects of the building—retail stores, public offices, and so on. The shaft is the main body of the building, a repeated pattern of windows and wall. The cap gives the building a presentable top, since a gentleman would not appear outdoors without his hat. Note also the floor just above the base outlined with a prominent border. That is the bosses’ floor, where the managers and other important people have their offices. “Form follows function,” as Louis Sullivan said; and in this case the form gives concrete shape to a social reality. You have now completed our course, and may award yourself a certificate.

    West Penn Building

  • The House Building (and the Smithfield Street Bridge)

    House Building from the Smithfield Street Bridge

    The House Building (1902, architect James T. Steen) looms before us as we cross the Smithfield Street Bridge.

    House Building

  • Clark Building

    Clark Building

    The Clark Building was built in 1928 at the same time as the Stanley Theater (now the Benedum Center) around the corner, and designed by the same architects—the Hoffman-Henon Company, which specialized in theaters but could also turn out a pretty good skyscraper in a sort of modernized Beaux-Arts classical style. The upper floors are apartments, but the lower floors are still, as they have been for many years, the center of the jewelry district downtown.

  • Tower Two-Sixty

    Tower Two-Sixty

    The blockish Tower Two-Sixty looms over the little human-sized buildings on the Diamond.

  • Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building

    Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building

    We’ve already seen this building from the side and rear. Here is most of it from the front, with the Boulevard of the Allies ramp and the low roofline of Chinatown in the foreground. From this angle we can see, if we know its history, how the building was put up in two stages: the original was eight storeys tall, and then five more storeys (counting the top storey, which has no windows on the front) were added a decade later. That accounts for the unorthodox stripe of ornament across the middle, which used to be the cap of the building. But the architects, MacClure and Spahr, did such a good job of extending the building that, without knowing its history, we would never have guessed that the top floors were added later.

    Addendum: According to an article in the Engineering News for January 18, 1917, the addition was planned when the original building was put up, so MacClure & Spahr had to create a building that would look complete at two stages. That’s how you separate the pros from the amateurs in the architecture business.

  • Subway Crossing First Avenue

    Subway crossing first avenue

    A Silver Line car crosses First Avenue on its way toward Steel Plaza. In the background, One Oxford Centre, the Grant Building, and the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building.

  • Jones and Laughlin Headquarters Building

    Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building

    This small skyscraper was not originally built as a skyscraper. The first part of it was put up in 1907; in 1917 five more storeys were added (very skillfully, we might add), bringing the building just about high enough to qualify as a small skyscraper in old Pa Pitt’s admittedly fluid definition of the term. The architects both times were MacClure & Spahr, who also gave us the Union National Bank Building and the Diamond Building, among others. Since 1952, this building has belonged to the city, which calls it the John P. Robin Civic Building.

  • The Canyon

    Looking eastward on Fourth Avenue

    Looking eastward on Fourth Avenue from the intersection with Wood Street.

  • Fifth Avenue Place from the Diamond

    Fifth Avenue Place looms over the DFiamond

    Fifth Avenue Place looms over the low human-sized buildings on the Diamond.

  • Union National Bank Building

    Union National Bank Building

    Now converted to luxury apartments as “The Carlyle,” this classical Fourth Avenue bank tower was designed by the firm of MacClure and Spahr. Benno Janssen, who was working at the firm, is said to have had a large part in the design. It opened in 1906. Curiously, the building behind it, the Commonwealth Bank Building, was built at the same time and reached exactly the same height, 300 feet.