Tag: Storefronts

  • House with Storefront, Mount Oliver

    156 Brownsville Road
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Old maps seem to show that this house was built in the 1880s. The storefront is probably a later addition put on when Brownsville Road became the main shopping street of Mount Oliver. It has been very neatly refurbished for its current tenant, a gourmet cheese shop called “The Cheese Queen.” But before its windows were replaced a few years ago, the upper floors had the kind of three-over-one windows that were popular in the 1920s, just when the commercial strip on Brownsville Road was rapidly developing. Those two observations probably date the time this typical 1800s Pittsburgh frame house was converted to a store with apartment above.

  • Three Buildings on Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield

    Three buildings on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Three different buildings, three different styles: polyphony makes harmony in the streetscape.

  • Storefront on Brownsville Road, Mount Oliver

    149 Brownsville Road

    This storefront on Brownsville Road has layers of history. The original 1920 building must have been an interesting design; enough remains to show us that somebody tried hard to make it distinctive and up to date.

    Date stone with date 1920

    The ground floor looks like a postwar remodeling, and a well-preserved inscription in the floor of the entrance tells us that it was a shop called Harvard’s.

    Harvard’s

    As Mount Oliver trendifies, this storefront may become more desirable, and if you are the owner of a small business moving in, old Pa Pitt has a suggestion: whatever your business is, call it “Harvard’s.” You then have a ready-made logo, as well as a distinctive sidewalk inscription to welcome your customers. It would be an especially good name for the intellectual sort of used bookstore.

    Harvard’s entrance

    Father Pitt had to stand in the street and risk the wrath of the No. 51 bus to get this picture, but that is the kind of effort he is willing to make for you, his faithful readers.

    Finial
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    As you pass by on the opposite side of Brownsville Road, pause to admire the finial at the peak of the gable.

  • Commercial Building on Fifth Avenue, Coraopolis

    941 5th Avenue, Coraopolis

    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

    941 and 943 Fifth Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
  • Old Storefronts in Bloomfield

    Storefronts on Liberty Avenue
    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.

  • Three Commercial Buildings in the Strip

    1907 Penn Avenue

    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.

    1905 Penn Avenue
    1901 and 1903 Penn Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
  • Penn Main

    4111 Penn Avenue

    “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.

    Corner of Penn and Main

    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.

    Wilson Drugs
    4059

    The Second Empire style in its Pittsburgh incarnation is common in this section of the city. Little incised designs often decorate the lintels.

    4059
    4057 Penn Avenue

    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.

    4043 and 4045 Penn Avenue
    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.

    4045 Penn Avenue
    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.

  • Old Store in Imperial

    Old store in Imperial

    Here is an exceptionally well-preserved country store, complete with oversized signboard.

    Store from down the street
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    Old store in Imperial, Pennsylvania
    Kodak Retinette with Kentmere Pan 100 film.
  • Arlington Avenue, 1968 and Today

    Arlington Avenue at the streetcar loop, 1968
    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.

    Arlington Avenue
    Buildings on Arlington Avenue

    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.

    2403 Arlington Avenue
    2405 Arlington Avenue

    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.

    2439 Arlington Avenue

    A little of the Kittanning brick facing has come down from the front of this building, revealing the cheaper ordinary brick behind it.

    2439 Arlington Avenue
    Canopy with carved brackets
    2335 Arlington Avenue
    2233 Arlington Avenue
    Date stone with the date 1921
    2223 Arlington Avenue
    2311 Arlington Avenue
    2311 Arlington Avenue
    2311 Arlington Avenue
    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.

  • 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.