Father Pitt

Tag: Storefronts

  • The Corner of Carson and 24th, South Side

    Building at Carson and 24th, South Side

    For most of the history of the South Side, this corner at 24th and Carson was the gateway to the long Carson Street retail district. Further out there were a few shops and (especially) bars, but the looming mass of the steel mill dominated the streetscape. Now, of course, the SouthSide Works (spelled with internal capital, which is not old Pa Pitt’s fault) development that replaced the mill has extended the retail district by several more blocks, but this building still marks an obvious break between the new and the old.

    The rounded corner is distinctive and emphasizes the building’s function as a gateway. The proper inset entrance not only makes the storefront look characteristically Victorian, but also still fulfills its purpose of not hitting pedestrians in the face with a swinging door—a purpose we have unaccountably forgotten in our modern storefronts. One would think a few lawsuits by pedestrians with broken noses would establish a design precedent, but apparently that has not happened.

    Storefronts on Carson Street

  • Row of Commercial Buildings, Carson Street at 23rd, South Side

    Seen from the Birmingham Bridge, this row of Italianate storefronts retains most of its Victorian magnificence, although the newer windows blight the one on the end.

  • Backstreet Store in Sharpsburg

    Storefront in Sharpsburg

    A Romanesque—perhaps even Rundbogenstil—commercial building in the back streets of Sharpsburg. It has lost its cornice, and the second floor has received incorrect “multipane” windows, but the storefront with inset entrance is almost perfectly preserved.

    Oblique view

  • Building on Smithfield Street, Boston

    5729 Smithfield Street, Boston, Penna.

    This tidy little building has the look of an old meeting house or school, or even a little theater. Do any Elizabeth Township readers know its story? It’s on Smithfield Street in the little hamlet of Boston, just across the Boston Bridge from Versailles.

    Front

    There was a date stone or plaque in the gable once, and perhaps fairly recently: it was painted around when the current coat of paint was applied.

  • Kraynick’s Bike Shop, Garfield

    Kraynick’s Bike Shop

    Kraynick’s Bike Shop is a Pittsburgh legend, and it lives in a slightly bedraggled building that is so typically Pittsburgh it should never be improved. Now that Garfield is coming up in the trendy world, someone is likely to restore this Second Empire storefront sooner or later, but it retains so many layers of history, while still preserving so many original details (look at the roof slates, the brick cornice, the dentils on the third-floor dormers, the lintels above the second-floor windows), that it will be a shame when it is remade into a picture-book Victorian building.

  • Building on Penn Avenue at Winebiddle Street, Garfield

    Building at Penn and Winebiddle

    If we read our old maps correctly, this building on Penn Avenue at Winebiddle Street, probably built in the 1890s, housed the Garfield Bank. But since the name “Garfield Bank” does not appear before the 1923 layer, it may not originally have been built for that institution. It is a curiously eclectic building, hard to assign to a particular style, and the architect (or probably builder-with-a-pencil) seems not to have known quite how to deal with the front, leaving a disturbingly asymmetrical arrangement of windows. But it is an interesting construction, and it has been preserved in very good shape.

    Penn at Winebiddle

    On city planning maps, Penn Avenue is a neighborhood border, and the south side of Penn Avenue is in Bloomfield; but both sides of the Penn Avenue business district have always been called “Garfield” by Pittsburghers, as we see from the fact that a Garfield Bank occupied this building in 1923.

    From the west

  • Mt. Oliver Mens Shop

    The front of this building, which was originally constructed a little before 1910, has been perfectly pickled in the middle twentieth century. It is now an antique store advertising “useful junk,” and if you enlarge the picture, you will see how much of that junk is a perfect match for the era of the storefront itself.

  • Miller Hardware, Mount Oliver

    Here is a building that probably dates from the 1890s, and it appears to be occupied by the business that built it. Miller Hardware has expanded into the building next door as well, but it is still an old-fashioned hardware store.

  • Vanished Storefront on Brownsville Road, Knoxville

    Sometimes old Pa Pitt hasn’t got around to publishing a picture of something before it disappears. Back in January he took this picture of a three-storey commercial building from 1901; it has just been demolished. It was not an extraordinarily fine work of architecture, but the upper floors were pleasingly proportioned and treated with enough ornamentation to make the building a good citizen of the streetscape. The ground floor was a mass of decades’ worth of improvised improvements and adaptations; its last tenant was a general store that advertised “videos” among its wares, which tells us how long that store had been vacant.

  • Italianate Commercial Building, Lawrenceville

    An unusually attractive building on Butler Street at the corner of Main Street. Note the folk-art wood carving in the trim.