Tag: Storefronts

  • Spanish Mission Style on Brookline Boulevard

    802 Brookline Boulevard

    Yesterday we looked at the Spanish Mission style in Dormont. One of the adjacent city neighborhoods, Brookline, is also stuffed with Spanish Mission commercial buildings along Brookline Boulevard. Again, we look for tiled overhangs (although often the tiles have been replaced with asphalt shingles) held up by exaggerated brackets.

    Brookline Theatre

    This building was the Brookline Theatre, a silent-era neighborhood movie house.

    Brookline Theatre
    758–800 Brookline Boulevard
    Windows and tiled overhang
    758–800
    936–932
    Slated overhangs

    The building above and the one below both bear dates of 1926, and they share some similar design ideas—though the one above has slated instead of tiled overhangs.

    Tiled overhangs
    972 Brookline Boulevard
    944
    944
    824
    Olympus E-20N; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    An abstract and geometric form of the style, but the overhang was probably tiled originally, and it probably had brackets before it was rebuilt.


    Comments
  • Spanish Mission Style in Dormont

    1431 Potomac Avenue

    A tiled overhang and exaggerated brackets to hold it up: these are two markers of the Spanish Mission style that was fantastically popular in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Dormont in particular filled up with apartment and commercial buildings in that style, like this one at Potomac and Glenmore Avenues, which was built in 1923. Here’s a small collection of commercial buildings in the Mission style on Potomac Avenue and West Liberty Avenue, the two main commercial streets of the borough.

    1436–1434 Potomac Avenue
    1436–1434 Potomac Avenue
    Wasson Building
    Wasson Building
    1419–1421 Potomac Avenue
    2883 West Liberty Avenue
    2893 and 2895 West Liberty Avenue
    West Liberty Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Comments
  • Apartment Building with Storefronts by William E. Snaman in Dormont

    2895–2899 West Liberty Avenue

    It would have been a better composition with the original ground floor, but even so the upper two-thirds are attractive. We attribute this building to William E. Snaman because it is the only apartment building in the vicinity built at the right time to match this listing:

    The Construction Record, October 30, 1915. “George E. McKee, Alger street, was awarded the contract for erecting a three-story brick store and apartment building on West Liberty avenue, Dormont, for Mrs. Mary Ivol, 6268 West Liberty avenue, Dormont. Plans by Architect W. E. Snaman, Empire building. Cost $10,000.”

    Wreath in stained glass
    Apartment building at Tennessee and West Liberty Avenues
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Comments
  • Restoring a Commercial Building in Beechview

    1600 Broadway, Beechview

    About twenty years ago, there was an aborted attempt to revitalize the business district of Beechview—aborted because the developer absconded with the money and went back to his native Brazil, whence, according to the Brazilian constitution, he could not be extradited. So neighborhood gossip tells us, at any rate. The project had got as far as partly restoring this building, and a thriving restaurant occupied the ground floor for a while. But then the furnace broke, and the landlord was gone, and the building was tied up in legal wrangling and became uninhabitable. Meanwhile, much of the business district more or less revitalized itself, with a big Mexican supermarket and a number of interesting ethnic restaurants moving in.

    1600 Broadway, Beechview

    Now, at last, the restoration is beginning again, and this time it seems very thorough. It’s an attractive building that deserves a long future. Old Pa Pitt hopes his readers will pardon these hasty cell-phone pictures, taken as he happened to be passing by without his usual big bag of cameras.

    1600 Broadway, Beechview

    Although Father Pitt has no evidence other than the style and the location, he suspects the building was designed and built by local architect and contractor William J. Gray, who was responsible for the Boylan Building on the opposite corner of the same intersection and for a now-vanished building on one of the other corners—and quite possibly for the building on the fourth corner as well.

    1600 Broadway, Beechview

    These arches framed inset balconies for the upstairs apartments. It looks as though they are to be filled in, which may be necessary to make the building rentable, but will take away a distinctive feature.

    1600 Broadway, Beechview

    Comments
  • More of Victorian Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield

    4701 Liberty Avenue

    More of the Victorian business district of Bloomfield, from the age when it was a very German neighborhood. We begin with a building we have seen before, which has just finished a renovation and is ready for another century and a quarter of use. The tall third floor, as old Pa Pitt remarked before, looks like an assembly room of some sort.

    The rest of these buildings all date from the 1890s.

    4623

    The date stone gives us the date 1890 and the name of the owner, P. Biedenbach.

    Crest of 4623, with date stone reading “P. D. Biedenbach, A. D. 1890”
    4609
    4605 and 4607

    Two of a row of modest houses with storefronts put up in the 1890s.

    4525

    A building that preserves its corner entrance, though not the original treatment of it.

    4523

    Elaborate brickwork distinguishes this building from its neighbors.

    4521
    Olympus E-20N.

    Another small storefront with living quarters above.


    Comments
  • Storefronts and Apartments by Sylvanus W. McCluskey, Bloomfield

    4519 and 4519 Liberty Avenue
    Olympus E-20N.

    This building is probably the work of Sylvanus W. McCluskey, a Lawrenceville architect. Our source spells the name “McCloskey,” but that is within the usual limits of Linotypist accuracy. From the Pittsburg Post, October 9, 1900:

    Another apartment house is to be built in the Sixteenth Ward. It will stand on a plot at Nos. 4517 and 4519 Liberty street, Bloomfield, and will be owned by Michael McKenna. It will be a three-story brick building with storerooms on the first floor. Architect S. W. McCloskey designed it and has awarded the contract for its erection to Frank McMasters. Work on it will be started at once. The building without the interior finish will cost about $15,000.


    Comments
  • Carrick Hotel

    Carrick Hotel
    Found at the Carrick-Overbrook Wiki.

    Last week we saw this picture of the old Carrick Hotel, with the Carrick Municipal Building behind it. The Municipal Building is still there, converted to a storefront. What happened to the hotel?

    It’s still there, too, under decades of accretion.

    Carrick Hotel
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    You would hardly recognize it, until you notice those distinctive dormers peering at you from behind the later overgrowth. This kind of development is typical in business districts that became prosperous but not too prosperous: prosperous enough for commercial frontage to be valuable, but not prosperous enough to make it worthwhile constructing larger buildings. Houses and other buildings grew storefronts in front, but the valuable original building remained behind the new construction. As the neighborhood aged, the commercial frontage became less valuable again, and it was adapted into offices or apartments.


    Comments
  • Lutz’s Meat Market, Hill District

    Lutz Building

    You can read the history of Lutz’s Meat Market at the Hill District Digital History site, where you’ll also see a picture by Teenie Harris, who, as usual, snapped the shutter at exactly the moment that captured everyone in the scene in the most characteristic pose.

    Lutz Building

    The building has been beautifully restored, including the elaborate woodwork of the cornice and storefront.

    Corner entrance
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    These corner entrances are often filled in, so it makes old Pa Pitt happy to see this one preserved and carefully restored.


    Comments
  • Some Commercial Buildings on Brownsville Road, Carrick

    2610 Brownsville Road

    The Carrick business district is oddly discontinuous, with several clots of commercial buildings along Brownsville Road interspersed with less densely developed areas. Here are a few buildings in the clot near the intersection with Churchview Avenue. Above, an interesting building that looks more Chicago than Pittsburgh, with some modernistic Prairie Style details and charming little round-topped dormers with oval windows that will probably cost a fortune if they ever have to be replaced. For some reason someone decided to paint the blond Kittanning brick of the front grey, which was not an ideal choice but might have been the simplest way to get rid of graffiti.

    Dormer
    2610
    2612

    This is a building in a style we might call Provincial Renaissance. The ground floor has been remodeled, probably more than once, and while it is not a good match for the rest of the building, old Pa Pitt will admit to a sneaking admiration for the impressive glass-block bay in the front.

    2601

    Here is a building that had the typical Pittsburgh problem of a three-dimensional triangle to solve, where the architect had to deal with not only an awkward angle but also a steep rise behind the building. Whoever it was solved the problem attractively.

    2604

    This building preserves much of its original detail, including the date 1904 in the crest. The ground floor, uglified by siding going in random directions, would look much better painted green to match the cornice and crest; but at least it is well maintained.

    Date 1904 on the crest of the building
    2600 Brownsville Road

    Finally, this building had an expensive and tasteless modernization applied about five years ago, replacing an earlier expensive and tasteless modernization that probably dated from the 1950s and had not aged well. The terra cotta around the entrance to the second floor hints at what the ground floor might have looked like originally.

  • Store and Apartments by Louis Stevens, Carrick

    2551 Churchview Avenue

    This was an early commission for Louis Stevens,1 who would be best known in his career for houses and mansions for the rich and the upper middle class. It was built in 1911 on Churchview Avenue (then called Church Avenue, but renamed Churchview when Carrick was taken into the city of Pittsburgh), just off Brownsville Road. Four years earlier, Stevens had been studying architecture in Carnegie Tech’s night school. The front of the building has been muddled a bit, but the renovations were done in a halfhearted manner that allows us to appreciate the original composition.

    2551 Churchview Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. Our source for the attribution is this map of Stevens’ works created by a Google Maps user, to whom many thanks. ↩︎

    Comments