Father Pitt

Tag: Storefronts

  • Corner Building on Fifth Avenue

    214 Fifth Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    Father Pitt does not know the story of this building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and McMasters Way. The great G. C. Murphy downtown empire, “the world’s largest variety store,” slopped into it as it expanded, and by bad luck and misunderstanding the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation plaque for the main Art Deco Murphy’s building (designed by Harold E. Crosby in 1930) ended up on the front of this building instead. Whatever this building was originally, it’s obviously much older than 1930. Updates to the ground floor have been handled with good taste, and the entrance is still on the corner. Old Pa Pitt approves of corner entrances.

  • Terra-Cotta Front on Smithfield Street

    643 Smithfield Street
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    The ground-floor storefront was replaced at some time in the modernist era, but the upper two floors preserve two-thirds of a fine terra-cotta front.

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  • A Relic of the Middle 1800s

    628 Smithfield Street

    Here is a remnant of the old middle-nineteenth-century commercial Pittsburgh, when a large part of the population lived downtown and shopkeepers often lived above their shops. In addition to being an unusual relic of the mostly obliterated past of downtown, this particular building is famous for its mural, “The Two Andys,” by Tom Mosser and Sarah Zeffiro.

    Building with The Two Andys
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Flatiron Building in Marshall-Shadeland

    2650 California Avenue

    Father Pitt was looking at Wikipedia’s list of flatiron buildings in the United States and thinking that he could multiply the number by ten or so just from buildings in Pittsburgh and the surrounding suburbs. So he has begun a collection of these flatiron buildings, meaning buildings that are triangular like a clothes iron. Here is one that he found especially attractive. The shape is dictated by the acute angle between California Avenue and Woodland Avenue, and of course it has the usual Pittsburgh problem of irregularity in three dimensions to deal with. The form of the building is typical of early-twentieth-century commercial architecture, but the Art Nouveau patterns picked out in light Kittanning brick set this building apart from others like it.

    Flatiron building
    Canon PowerShot S45.
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  • Corner Store in Homewood

    113 North Lang Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    A typical Pittsburgh corner building—typical especially in that the corner is not a right angle. Some of the details are well preserved, including the elaborate decorative brickwork in the cornice and the signboard above the storefront, ready for some local artist to inscribe the next tenant’s name in paint.

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  • Fancy Front in Allentown

    740 East Warrington Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    If you’re stuck in a dumpy old wooden building and your business is prospering, but not prospering that much, you can make a good impression by putting a new front on the building and leaving the rest. That’s what happened here. This is actually a wood-frame building—except on the street face, where the owner added a spiffy new brick and stone front. Old maps reveal the secret: a thin line of brick appears on the front of the wooden building between 1910 and 1923. Mission accomplished: the building looked new and expensive, but the owner wasn’t deep in debt.

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  • Second Empire Storefront on Warrington Avenue, Allentown

    804 East Warrington Avenue

    The Alla Famiglia restaurant was one of the pioneers in the ongoing revitalization of Allentown, and its owners have spiffed up this building beautifully. They have also expanded into the old movie theater next door.

    804 East Warrington Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • The Louisa, Carrick

    Louisa

    A typical small apartment building with storefronts that keeps many of its distinctive details, including the tiled overhang with exaggerated brackets. The windows have been replaced (although the art glass surrounding the stairwell windows is still there), and the storefront on the right has been heavily altered. But the quoins picked out in contrasting Kittanning brick still grab our attention as we walk by.

    Perspective view
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Commercial Building on Wood Street, Wilkinsburg

    817–813 Wood Street
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    This flamboyantly eclectic building caught old Pa Pitt’s eye as he walked down Wood Street in Wilkinsburg. He knows nothing else about it, other than that he hopes current and future owners realize that they have a remarkable building in an unusually good state of preservation.

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  • Hafer Building, Dormont

    Hafer Building

    An unusually well-preserved commercial building in an eclectic style from the early twentieth century. The glass block in the stairwell doubtless marks where some more attractive art glass, which probably became a maintenance headache, would have been; and the blank panels above the storefronts were probably art glass as well (compare, for example, this other storefront on the same street). But the ground floor was never fussed with very much, and it still retains its stonework and inscription. The grey paint is not old Pa Pitt’s favorite treatment, but paint can be painted over.

    Hafer Building
    Hafer and Kinsey Buildings
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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