Father Pitt

Tag: Terra Cotta

  • Storefronts on Potomac Avenue, Dormont

    1413 and 1421 Potomac Avenue

    Potomac Avenue is a good example of the suburban neighborhood business district of the early twentieth century, and one of the pleasantest shopping streets in the South Hills. Here are just a few of the storefronts.

    1421 Potomac Avenue

    The Spanish Mission style was especially popular in Dormont. To make a building Spanish Mission style, you put a tiled overhang along the top of the façade. Done. This building, incidentally, is still home to the Potomac Bakery, which as of this writing has been here for 99 years.

    1413 Potomac Avenue

    There was a time, not too long ago, when almost every neighborhood business district had a Murphy’s variety store. This one is now a pool hall, but it has changed very little on the outside.

    1403–1409

    This is the building at the corner of West Liberty Avenue and Potomac Avenue; we have pictures of the West Liberty Avenue end as well. It is decorated with conventional but pretty terra-cotta panels.

    Ornament with fruit and foliage
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Werner Building, East Liberty

    Werner Building

    Frederick Sauer was the architect of this ornate commercial palace, built in 1908. It is covered in white enameled terra-cotta ornaments that give it a sense of opulence above its budget.

    Street sign for S. Highland Ave. and Baum St.
    Highland Avenue front elevation
    Entrance
    Transom
    Inscription: Werner Bldg.
    Window
    Cornice
    Terra-cotta ornament

    We also have some earlier pictures of the Werner Building and some remarks on its history.

    Werner Building
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Carl Building (Shields Building), Wilkinsburg

    Carl Building

    Designed in 1902 by the Beezer Brothers, this was Wilkinsburg’s contribution to the early skyscraper age. It was put up for Leopold Vilsack, a real-estate investor who was also one of the founders of the Iron City brewery. He named it for his son Carl; later it became known as the Shields Building.

    Architects’ rendering
    Pittsburgh Gazette, April 12, 1902, p. 8.

    When it was announced, the building was to have eight floors. One floor fell away between initial design and construction.

    Base of the building

    The building is now apartments. The base has been refurbished with a simpler and more abstract design that hardly registers as different from the original until we look at it closely.

    Cap with terra-cotta ornaments

    The cap is festooned with elaborate Baroque terra-cotta ornaments.

    Cap with terra cotta
    Carl Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Horner School, Wilkinsburg

    Inscription over the Wallace Avenue entrance to the Horner School

    Alden & Harlow were the architects of this classically symmetrical school, which was built in 1926. Alden had died in 1908, and Harlow had only another year to live (he died in 1927); it seems that by this time much of the design work in the firm was done by Howard K. Jones. The school now is kept in good shape as the home of various community services.

    Horner School
    Horner School
    Horner School
    Terra-cotta ornament

    The 1920s were in the middle of the golden age of terra-cotta ornament.

    Terra-cotta ornament
    Cornice with terra cotta
    Clock
    Side of the school, showing slope

    The architects had a typically Pittsburghish lot to deal with, so the school has four floors above ground on the Wallace Avenue front and two in the rear on North Avenue.

    North Avenue face
    North Avenue entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    The North Avenue entrance is reached by a bridge over a sort of trench that exposes the windows of the floor below.

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  • Lemington School, Lincoln–Lemington–Belmar

    Terra cotta over the entrance

    The most extraordinary riot of polychrome terra cotta in Pittsburgh greets students coming into this school, still in use as the Catalyst Academy charter school. The architect was Edward Weber, who was commissioned by the Pittsburgh school system’s supervising architect Marion Steen; the school was built in 1937–1938.

    Lemington School
    Lemington School
    Entrance
    Terra cotta
    Lemington School
    African head in terra cotta

    On a school that is full of surprises, the second-most-surprising thing is the “five races of man” frieze that runs along the top of the front. In the early twentieth century, it was common to divide the human species into five “races”: African, Asian, Caucasian, American Indian, and Australian. Modern scientists would say that the “five races” theory is untenable, but it was widely accepted in the 1930s, and this school was topped with a visual assertion that it would be for everybody.

    Asian head in terra cotta
    Caucasian head in terra cotta

    Caucasian Man looks quite surprised to find himself stuck in a frieze.

    American Indian head in terra cotta
    Australian head in terra cotta
    Corner of the frieze

    We said that the “five races of man” were the second-most-surprising thing about the school. The most surprising thing is the Aztec or Central American influence in the decoration. It was very rare for American architects to look to the Americas for inspiration, and almost unheard-of in Pittsburgh: the only other significant example old Pa Pitt can think of at the moment is the South Park Golf Club by Henry Hornbostel.

    Entrance

    This entrance seems plain after the explosion of terra cotta at the two main entrances, but the details are carefully balanced. Note the textured brickwork, with a brick sticking out at regular intervals to create shadowed detail on what would otherwise be a plain brick wall.

    Grate

    Even the grates are unique works of metal art.

    Lemington School
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Penn Building, Wilkinsburg

    Penn Building, Wilkinsburg

    A commercial building on Penn Avenue with a well-preserved terra-cotta front whose distinctive Art Deco decorations were worth picking out with a long lens.

    Terra cotta
    Terra-cotta frieze
    Terra-cotta frieze
    Ornament
    Entrance
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR
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  • Ross Pumping Station at the Waterworks

    Ross Pumping Station with decorations

    Thomas Scott designed this palatial waterworks, which stands in a little enclave of the city of Pittsburgh on the north shore of the Allegheny just outside Aspinwall. As he did with the Mission Pumping Station on the South Side Slopes, he decorated this one with elaborate grotesque heads and other classical effusions.

    Ross Pumping Station
    Ross Pumping Station
    Pediment
    Terra-cotta head
    Lion brackets
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ornament
    Ross pumping station
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Miller House, Shadyside

    Miller house

    This Renaissance palace was designed for Rachel and Mortimer Miller by Maximilian Nirdlinger, whose name is at the top of old Pa Pitt’s list of architects whose names are the most fun to say.1 It was built in 1904, when Nirdlinger was still young; with eye-catching but respectable designs like this one, he established himself as a favorite house designer among the Social Register set.

    Miller house
    Miller house
    Miller house
    Miller house
    Front entrance to the Miller house
    Copper cornice with Greek key
    Terra-cotta shield on the Miller house
    Windows with terra-cotta ornaments
    Terra cotta
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
    1. Pittsburg Press, February 2, 1904, p. 12. “A $30,000 residence will be erected on Morewood avenue, Twentieth ward. The plans for it have just been completed by Architect M. Nirdlinger for Mortimer C. Miller. The structure will be three stories high of ornamental brick with terra cotta trimmings.” The land is shown on plat maps as owned by Rachel McM. Miller. ↩︎
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  • A Jewel on Braddock Avenue, Braddock

    1129 Braddock Avenue

    Two doors up the street from St. Michael’s School is this colorful little building, of whose history old Pa Pitt knows nothing. Perhaps someone better informed can reveal it to us in the comments. Father Pitt thought it might have been part of St. Michael’s parish, but old maps do not seem to suggest that it was. Whatever it was, its colorful tile arches and terra-cotta ornaments are worth preserving, and we are happy to see it so well maintained.

    A feast of terra cotta
    Entrance with tile decorations
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans F/1.4 35mm lens.
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  • Sacred Heart Convent, Braddock

    Sacred Heart convent

    Father Pitt will admit right away that he is not sure this was the convent, and perhaps a well-informed reader could enlighten us. He arrived at his conclusion by elimination. There was a church, a school, a rectory, and a convent in the old Sacred Heart parish before it moved out of Braddock. The school still stands; the church was demolished; the rectory was a house the church bought on Talbot Avenue; and so we are left with this building facing 6th Street, on the grounds of the church, which was probably the convent.

    Sacred Heart convent

    The style of the building is unusual and interesting, and we suspect it might have been designed by one of the local Mon Valley architects about whom Pa Pitt knows too little.

    Entrance with terra cotta

    The entrance is surrounded by decorative terra cotta in a good state of preservation.

    Cross in terra cotta
    Wrought-iron fence with pilaster in background

    The wrought-iron fence in front of the building is original, and an exceptionally well-preserved example of its type—though probably not for too much longer.

    Sacred Heart convent

    Old Pa Pitt would love to know how that room over the entrance looked before it was glass-blocked.

    Dormer

    The polygonal side and rear dormers are unusual and attractive.

    Convent from the rear
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    When the church next to the building was demolished, it left a big flat lot that some daring urban pioneer who bought the building could turn into a splendid formal garden.

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