Father Pitt

Tag: Stables

  • Allegheny City Stables, North Side

    Allegheny City Stables

    About five years ago we looked at the Allegheny City Stables in the middle of its adaptation into loft apartments. Now the renovation is complete, and a new apartment building has gone up next door, making this block of North Avenue much more inviting. Technically it is across the street from Allegheny West, but it was the Allegheny West Civic Council that saved the building, and socially it forms part of today’s Allegheny West rather than the rest of the “Central Northside” neighborhood as designated on city planning maps.

    Entrance
    Perspective view
    Sony Alpha 3000.

  • Old Stable, Shadyside

    With the limited research he was willing to put into it, old Pa Pitt was not able to confirm his impression that this building on Elmer Street was once a stable. But it certainly has the look of a stable. Well into the early twentieth century, the city was full of stables where the thousands of draft horses that pulled every kind of conveyance were kept.

  • Allegheny City Stables

    The Allegheny City Stables were built in 1896. If you enlarge the photo (click on it), you can just make out the old sign over the main door:

    D.P.W. 8th DIV.
    BUREAU OF HIGHWAYS & SEWERS

    It’s right across North Avenue from Allegheny West, then the richest neighborhood in Allegheny. Perhaps this was one of the encroachments that induced Allegheny West society to move in a body to Sewickley Heights, where their descendants still live today.

    Now, 123 years later, Allegheny West is once again the finest neighborhood on the North Side, and its desirability is spilling across North Avenue. The stable is being renovated and turned into loft apartments, like every other old industrial building.

    (And if you notice a familiar picture at the Wikipedia article, it’s because Father Pitt added it himself to show the current state of the building.)