It might look better with a little paint, but this commercial building preserves some interesting details that might have disappeared if its owners had been more prosperous
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Commercial Building on Fifth Avenue, Coraopolis
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
Old Storefronts in Bloomfield
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. These little stores with living quarters above were built in the 1880s, but the buildings are not much different from thousands that went up throughout the nineteenth century, and indeed they have their stylistic roots in the eighteenth century. They all preserve their properly inset shop entrances, so that doors do not hit passing pedestrians in the face.
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Three Commercial Buildings in the Strip
Three of the modest commercial buildings typical of the Strip. The Penn Avenue business district grew up when the Strip was a clutter of miscellaneous industry and working-class housing; the same buildings, and others filled in on the same scale, turned into wholesale food businesses when food became the main focus of the neighborhood. In spite of the way the Strip has grown in the past two decades, Penn Avenue has changed remarkably little. Businesses come and go, but many of the old standby food dealers have been here for decades—two kinds of Sunseris, Stamoolis Brothers, Wholey’s, Sam Bok, Labad’s, and so on.
Nikon COOLPIX P100. -
Penn Main
“Penn Main” is the name Pittsburghers give to the district around the intersection of Penn Avenue and Main Street, which (this being Pittsburgh) is not the main street of anything. On city planning maps, Penn Avenue is the border between Lawrenceville and Bloomfield; and since the sun was shining on the Lawrenceville side when we visited, all these buildings are counted as being in Lawrenceville for planning purposes. We begin above with a nicely preserved example of a typical small Victorian store with apartment above.
Penn Avenue and Main Street do not meet at a right angle, so the buildings on the corner are forced into odd shapes. The one above deals with its acute angle by blunting the point of it. The one below (seen in a picture from two years ago) has a less offensive obtuse angle to deal with.
The Second Empire style in its Pittsburgh incarnation is common in this section of the city. Little incised designs often decorate the lintels.
This building would have matched its neighbor originally, but at some point the storefront was filled in to make an apartment. Now that Penn Main is becoming a desirable neighborhood, the alteration might be reversed.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Two quite different houses. The one on the left is a duplex, though it may have been built as a single-family house. The one on the right is a kind of lean-to parasite on its larger neighbor, uncharacteristically set back from the street so that it has a front yard and a porch, as if someone was trying to create a little country house in the city.
This picture only: Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. This one is getting a going-over. Father Pitt would prefer to see more original-looking windows, but at least the size of the windows has not been altered, and any future owner who feels motivated will be able to replace them with proper double-hung two-over-two sash windows.
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Old Store in Imperial
Here is an exceptionally well-preserved country store, complete with oversized signboard.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. 
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Arlington Avenue, 1968 and Today
Arlington Avenue on March 30, 1968, with Route 48 streetcar coming out of the streetcar loop, by David Wilson from Oak Park, Illinois, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Arlington Avenue was already looking a bit bedraggled in 1968, when David Wilson, a streetcar fanatic who documented the streetcar lines of Pittsburgh with hundreds of pictures, caught the Route 48 car peeking out of the streetcar loop.
Most of the buildings in this picture are still there on Arlington Avenue, but the Arlington business district has mostly been abandoned by business. The storefronts that are not empty have been filled in for apartments.
This one, with a much-altered ground floor, is still going as a convenience store. Because the street plan in Arlington is irregular, many of the commercial buildings on Arlington Avenue are odd shapes.
This little storefront has been filled in by a contractor who had no need of a busybody architect to tell him what to do. The original building is a pleasing little composition by someone who might have seen some of the German art magazines that circulated among architects in Pittsburgh.
A little of the Kittanning brick facing has come down from the front of this building, revealing the cheaper ordinary brick behind it.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Now, about that streetcar loop: we’ll be seeing that very soon, because it is still there as well, or at least partly so.
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Storefront on Potomac Avenue, Dormont
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. A beautiful storefront with veiny marble and a large panel of stained glass spanning the whole width. Note the properly inset entrance, so that the door does not fly open into passing pedestrians’ faces—a requirement we have forgotten.
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Some Buildings on Chartiers Avenue, McKees Rocks
Chartiers Avenue is the main business street of downtown McKees Rocks; and although it has lost some important buildings, enough remains to form the basis of a revival that seems to be in its early stages already. Above, a typically Pittsburgh commercial interpretation of the Italian Renaissance.
This little building has an interesting combination of details. The upper windows have round arches, but the lintels above them are fattened into incipient Gothic arches. The multiple decorative patterns in the brick add a rug-like texture to the front.
This building is marked “HALL” on old maps, suggesting that it belonged to a lodge of some sort. It has been altered so much that it is hard to see what it originally looked like. Nevertheless, it presents a neat front, if not a well-proportioned one. The vast expanse of side wall, exposed when a more interesting neighboring building was demolished about ten years ago, cries out for a huge mural of Cubist guitars.
“Cute” is a word old Pa Pitt seldom employs, but it is hard to think of a better term for the Gothic front on this little building. It appears to be a later addition to an older building. The Gothic peak is a thin false front with nothing behind it, and it was made a little too insubstantial: it is leaning backward slightly and will probably have to be stabilized by the next owner.
The ground floor has been altered, but the original character of this corner building is otherwise well preserved. Until very recently, its neighbor was one of the finest buildings in McKees Rocks, the McKees Rocks Trust Company, a sumptuously Ionic bank that loomed paternally over the whole block. As you can see, Father Pitt was just a little too late.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Finally, this union hall is a fascinating example of contemporary architecture. The building was an undistinguished little storefront from the 1950s or so, altered so much that it was impossible to guess its original character. In 2016, however, this impressive classical front was put on, which changed the look not only of the building but even of the whole street around it. Father Pitt has seen many examples of “New Classical” architecture that make him want to hide under an Edwardian sofa, but this one does exactly what it set out to do. It has classical dignity and a little ostentatiousness without lapsing into parody. The exposed girder above the column is a wry wink at modernist architecture, but the metal canopy makes the girder seem appropriate.
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Two Commercial Buildings in McKees Rocks
In its prime, this Renaissance palace on Island Avenue had four storefronts on the ground floor and three floors of apartments above. The storefronts have also been turned into apartments, but in a cheap way that could probably be reversed when McKees Rocks is prosperous again. The building is still in pretty good shape, and the details are worth appreciating, for which reason we give you a very large picture above. Old Pa Pitt especially likes the round and oval windows in the stairwells.
Across the street is a smaller building whose storefronts have also been turned into apartments, but with even less alteration. The big display windows are still there. It’s easy to imagine the ground floor becoming trendy little shops again in that rosy future when Island Avenue is a busy commercial street once more.
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An Odd Corner in East Liberty
Highland Avenue crosses Centre Avenue in East Liberty at an odd angle, creating an opportunity for two typically Pittsburghish odd-shaped buildings. First, the Wallace Building, shoved into a sharp corner and coming to a point at the intersection. The building was designed by George S. Orth in 1896.1
Old Pa Pitt hopes his readers will forgive a slightly imperfect composite of three photographs.
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. On the opposite side of Centre Avenue, the Stevenson Building fills in an oblique angle. Its prominent corner entrance makes the most of its location.
The original building was designed by William Ross Proctor and built in 1896. In 1927, the three bays at far left in the picture above were added under the supervision of O. M. Topp, who matched the style of the original so carefully that Father Pitt had not noticed the seam, and therefore was confused about the architects in an earlier version of this article.2
- Source: Pittsburg Post, May 22, 1896, p. 9. “D. H. Wallace yesterday broke ground at Sheridan, Center and Highland avenues for a $50,000 building. George S. Orth is the architect. The building will be three-storied, and on the first floor will be storerooms, with flats on the other floors.” ↩︎
- This is what old Pa Pitt wrote, which he preserves in a footnote to show how wrong he can be, which would not have happened if he had paid more attention to the stated dimensions: “There is some uncertainty about the design of this building. It is listed by the city as a building designed by William Ross Proctor and built in 1896. However, Father Pitt finds a 1927 listing in the Charette, the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, that matches this building perfectly and assigns it to O. M. Topp: “313. Architect: O. M. Topp, Jenkins Arcade, Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner: James B. Stevenson. Title: Store and Office Building. Location: Highland and Center Avenues. Approximate size: 25×100 ft.; three stories and basement. Cubage: 100,000 cu. ft. First story: Amherst buff sandstone; second and third stories: Roman brick and terra cotta.” Nevertheless, a building of exactly these dimensions stood here long before 1927, and we have not been able to find any newspaper stories about its destruction or replacement. It is possible that Topp only supervised renovations, and the editor of the Charette misunderstood the information he was given. As of now, therefore, Father Pitt assigns the building to O. M. Topp, but with the understanding that Proctor might have been the original architect.” ↩︎
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