As the business district along Penn Avenue becomes a more and more desirable place for artsy shops and galleries, it has been cheering to see many old buildings cleaned up and given new life in Garfield. Here is one of the finest. Old Pa Pitt knows nothing about it other than that its name is Butler.
Father Pitt took these pictures more than a year ago, but for some reason he never published them until now. This Rundbogenstil building at Third Street and Third Avenue takes full advantage of its corner site, and the details of the pediment and cornice have been lovingly picked out in tastefully balanced colors.
We have seen these beautiful storefronts before, but only obliquely. Here they are again, because we can never see them too often. This is one of the best Victorian cast-iron fronts in the city. Note that whoever designed the building has tried very hard to make you perceive it as symmetrical, though in fact the section on the right is significantly wider than the other two.
Maximilian Nirdlinger, who is on old Pa Pitt’s short list of architects whose names are most fun to say, designed this little store building in 1914, and we would guess it was completed by 1915. It was a very small and inexpensive project for downtown, but Nirdlinger made sure it was a tasteful one; and it has been updated without losing its essential character, which is classical by way of German-art-magazine modern.
This splendid building is well preserved two-thirds of the way down from the top; the ground floor has been replaced, but with a very neutral remodeling that does not clash offensively with the floors above it. Below, one of the elaborate terra-cotta brackets under the cornice.
A well-preserved specimen of Victorian architecture on Main Street in Sharpsburg. The windows have been altered, but the storefront with its inset entrance is intact, and the decorative details of the upper floors have been kept—except for what was probably art glass in the attic.
We saw this old building (probably dating from the Civil War era or before) four years ago, when its modernist façade was being pulled off to reveal a middle-nineteenth-century commercial building behind it. Now the building is restored to something more like its original appearance, though the storefront entrance would have been inset by at least the width of the door to avoid hitting pedestrians in the face, something we have stopped caring about in our more enlightened era. (Note the position of the pedestrians in the picture below, and imagine someone leaving the building in a hurry.)
By most standards the SouthSide Works, by far the largest “new urban” development in Pittsburgh, has been a great success. The retail part of it, however, has had its ups and downs. It was planned with a focus on a “town square” a block away from Carson Street, with 27th Street as a line of shops linking Carson Street to the center of the new neighborhood, and then rows of smaller shops here along Carson Street, the back side of the development. What happened might have been predicted by a good urban planner: the part of the development that continued the well-established Carson Street business district flourished and remained mostly occupied, spilling its prosperity across the street to previously empty storefronts and triggering new construction; meanwhile, the “town square,” after an initial burst of success, languished, with many large storefronts empty. Now the square has filled up again, and we shall see where the cycle takes us from here.
Architecturally, the Carson Street side of the development is again a success. It may not be inspired architecture, but it does its job of fitting with the established architectural traditions of the South Side and visually connecting itself with the rest of the Carson Street business district. Father Pitt might point out, however, that some of the materials—metal facings of buildings, for example—are beginning to look a bit bedraggled already. The parts faced in brick, however, are not. This may serve as a lesson to young architects: brick lasts.
This Art Deco building probably dates from the 1930s. The sharply rectangular forms are softened and enriched by textures in terra cotta, making a composition that should please both classicists and modernists.
We’ve seen this exuberantly Victorian building on Carson Street before. It is one of the few relatively unmutilated survivors of the style that was common for commercial buildings in the 1870s and 1880s, so old Pa Pitt got out a long lens to appreciate some of the details.
