Father Pitt

Tag: Storefronts

  • Broadway and Beechview Avenue, Beechview

    Broadway in Beechview

    Beechview is something unique in Pittsburgh and very rare in the United States: an early-twentieth-century streetcar suburb where the streetcars still run down the main street as they did when the neighborhood was first laid out. The central business district has had its ups and downs; right now it is a good place to find interesting little ethnic restaurants and groceries. Most of the neighborhood is laid out as a grid in spite of the precipitous hills, but Broadway, the street with the car line, follows the top of the ridge. Beechview Avenue (below) continues the straight line of the business district as Broadway curves off toward the Fallowfield streetcar viaduct and abruptly ends at Fallowfield Avenue, leaving the streetcars to continue on their own right-of-way.

    Storefronts on Beechview Avenue

    Following the ancient tradition that the street with the tracks belongs to the streetcar company, the Port Authority is responsible for maintaining Broadway.

    Streetcar service in Beechview is interrupted right now because the Saw Mill Run viaduct has been closed for emergency repairs. The Red Line will roll up Broadway again as soon as the bridge reopens.

  • Commercial Building on Fourth Avenue

    Commercial building on Fourth Avenue

    This building sits in what may be the densest block of great architecture in North America, and no one pays attention to it. It is not mentioned in the various guides to Fourth Avenue, so old Pa Pitt does not know the architect or whether the building even has a name. When the building was put up, it was apparently at 93 and 95, according to the numbers over the doors; but its address is now 311 Fourth Avenue. A classified ad in the Dispatch from 1890 mentions the firm of Black & Baird as lending money at 95 Fourth Avenue. The National Real Estate Journal in 1922 shows 311 as the home of the Freehold Real Estate Co.; if the address numbers had changed by then, this is that building.

    As a work of architecture, the only thing that can be said against it is that it does not compete with the works of Daniel Burnham, Alden & Harlow, Frederick Osterling, and the other great names whose works line this street. If it is a work of one of those masters, then it is a lesser work—but certainly not one to be ashamed of. In any other block it would be one of the more distinguished buildings. The large windows on the second and third floors suggest workshops of some kind. The ornamentation is artistic and in exactly the right proportion to accent rather than unbalance the architectural forms.

    Any readers who know more about the origin and history of this building are earnestly invited to comment.

  • Matched Pair of Victorian Commercial Buildings on Carson Street

    Both could use a little spiffing up, but they are fine examples of the Victorian commercial architecture for which Carson Street is famous.

  • Strangely Altered Carson Street Victorian

    This building has had some adventures. Originally a typical Pittsburgh Romanesque commercial building, it had a radical renovation of the ground floor at some point in the Art Deco era (early enough that the entrances are still recessed from the sidewalk). Possibly at the same time, but probably later, the second and third floors were very inexpertly done over in an aggressively modernist style: the ornaments removed, the original tall windows replaced with much smaller windows, and the remaining space bricked up. Only the top remains more or less unaltered, though its ironwork date could use a bit of restoration, and the ironwork initials have left only their shadows.

  • Beechview Community Center

    A commercial building like a thousand others in the city, but nicely restored, with attractively varied brickwork and a subtle polychrome scheme to pick out the details of the trim. Because old Pa Pitt happened to be out for a walk in the neighborhood, we get to see it from all angles.

    In most cities you can ask how many floors a building is and get a reasonable answer. In Pittsburgh, that’s a complicated question.

  • Victorian Storefront on Carson Street

    This was the home of a prosperous shopkeeper in East Birmingham, one who had two full floors of living quarters above the shop, with the addition of a couple of comfortable attic rooms. The ground floor has been altered somewhat, but only in the incidentals; on the whole, the building is in a splendid state of preservation.

  • Art Deco Buildings on Washington Road, Mount Lebanon

    Uptown Mount Lebanon has one of the best collections of Art Deco architecture in the area. These two buildings sit side by side on Washington Road at the corner of Alfred Street. With some confidence, old Pa Pitt identifies the Gothic fantasy on the right as an old movie theater, although he would be happy to be corrected.

    Update: Father Pitt is corrected. The building on the right was the William Hall office and apartment building, designed in 1929 by Geisler & Smithyman. The one on the left was the Medical Arts Building, as we can guess from the splendid terra-cotta panels.

  • Bracket

    Ornamental bracket on a storefront on Carson Street.

  • Art Nouveau Stained Glass on Carson Street

    The Art Nouveau style never made much headway in Pittsburgh, but there are a few examples of ornamentation in a style that deserves that name—especially stained glass, which lends itself to the kind of abstraction we associate with Art Nouveau. This window is in a storefront near the Birmingham Bridge.

  • Victorian Storefronts on Carson Street

    A pair of storefronts in a commercial building between 15th and 16th Streets. The decorations are very well preserved—enlarge the picture to see how the ornaments in the carved cornice match the keystones in the flattened arches. Notice also the recessed entrances. Old Pa Pitt is still astonished that we have forgotten the reason for those. The reason is that, if the entrance were flush with the sidewalk, someone leaving the store could swing the door out into a passing pedestrian’s face. This happens more often than we realize in modern storefronts, or old ones that have been modernized, and apparently the reaction each time is “Who could have seen that coming?”—to which the answer is “Any Victorian architect.”

    Note the distinctive beehive ornament in the middle of the building that serves as the date stone.