Last year we saw the Natatorium Building in the middle of a renovation. Now here it is renovated, and looking pretty much the same. The original architect was R. B. Melvin.
We also have some history of the Natatorium Building.
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The Natatorium Building, Renovated
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Borough Hall, Bellevue
E. T. Sanderson, an architect who has not made a big impression on old Pa Pitt so far, designed the Bellevue Borough Hall,1 and it has changed little since it was built in 1910.
Thanks to David Schwing for pointing out this illustration. Mr. Sanderson’s prettily rendered front elevation was published in The Builder for July, 1909. From it we can see that the terra-cotta ornamentation was radically simplified between initial design and construction: what would have been an elaborately stacked Renaissance entrance with pilasters and pediment was pared down to a much more modern-looking terra-cotta frame.
Terra cotta is very good for decorative inscriptions.
The tower has some pleasing Arts-and-Crafts woodwork.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
- Proposals, Pittsburgh Post, April 4, 1910, p. 4: “Sealed proposals for a low pressure gravity heating apparatus for the basement and first story of the borough hall, Bellevue, Pa., in accordance with plans and specifications on file at the office of E. T. Sanderson, architect, 704 Empire Bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa.…” ↩︎
Addendum: We reprint the descriptive text that went with the architect’s drawing above:
The Proposed Borough Hall
The proposed borough hall at Bellevue, Pa. was designed by Architect E. T. Sanderson, Pittsburgh. It contains a high basement and two stories. The lower end of the basement is a full story above the ground and contains quarters for the fire department, consisting of a room for the ladder truck and hose wagon and the stables and also a room for apparatus that may be purchased in the future.
There is also a hose tower for drying the hose and at the top of this tower is the fire bell. On this floor are also located the police department headquarters, with cell room, headquarters room, locker room, etc. The office of the burgess is also located on this floor, as is the heating apparatus.
On the main floor is the council chamber, which is of ample size with committee rooms adjoining it. here also are the offices of the borough officials and a wide staircase leads from the entrance hall to the auditorium on the floor above. The rear portion of the first floor is given over to rooms for the firemen, consisting of lounging and reading rooms, billiard room, locker room, card room and toilet.
The upper floor is largely taken up with the assembly hall or auditorium, which contains an ample stage, with dressing rooms at either side. This assembly hall has a seating capacity of about five hundred.
At the rear of the hall are retiring rooms for men and women and also a large serving room.
The exterior of the building is of brick and terra cotta with a green tile roof.
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Engine Co. No. 11, Troy Hill
Joseph Stillburg, toward the end of an illustrious career, designed this very firehousey-looking firehouse for the city of Allegheny. It later became Truck Company No. 39 in Pittsburgh before being diverted to other uses.
Obviously the top of the tower has gone missing; Mr. Stillburg would not have put in Corinthian pilasters to hold up a strip of aluminum. Somebody ought to take those utility cables out of the picture.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Fujifilm FinePix HS20 EXR. And here are some more historic utility cables.
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Edgewood School and Edgewood High School
The original Edgewood Public School was built in 1891, as the keystone of its great entrance arch tells us. Old Pa Pitt was not able to find the architect of the school, but he would not be surprised to hear that it was Frederick Osterling. The picturesque and asymmetrical Romanesque of this building reminds us of his early style, which was influenced by Richardsonian Romanesque but also reached back into the pre-Richardsonian Romanesque of his master Joseph Stillburg.
In 1914, Ingham & Boyd were commissioned to design a new high school for the growing borough,1 which was built the following year. The style could hardly be more different. This is a typical Ingham & Boyd building in every way, with a simple and dignified classicism (and no columns, because Ingham & Boyd disapproved of columns) and a completely symmetrical façade. Today both schools, connected by a newer entrance (so that the old entrances are blocked in), are in use as the Edgewood Elementary STEAM Academy. The builders of the original 1891 school would probably have agreed that a well-educated citizen ought to have some familiarity with the marvelous properties of steam technology.
The new high school was featured in the April, 1917, issue of the Architectural Forum. This photo shows us that the entrance has been eliminated, and the windows replaced with blank expanses of glass. In the main, though, the general appearance of the school has not changed.
Here we see how the entrance looked when it was an entrance.
Second Floor Plan The floor plans show us that, as a high school, the building was small, but up to date with all the latest features. The accompanying text describes the school thoroughly:
Edgewood High School, Edgewood Park, Pa. Page 102. The High School at Edgewood Park, Pa., is located adjacent to a grade school building, with which it is connected by a covered and enclosed passage, so that the grade school pupils may use the gymnasium and auditorium of the high school building, the connection being made through the first floor main corridor on the left of the plan. It is intended to enlarge the building, when necessary, by an additional corridor and class rooms at the rear of the auditorium, leaving one side of the auditorium and gymnasium free, the lighting being maintained substantially as at present. The exterior walls are of mottled gray brick and terra cotta. The floors and roof are built fireproof, of reinforced concrete and hollow tile. The floors of corridors and locker rooms are of terrazzo, tile being used in toilet rooms and maple flooring elsewhere in the building, except in the chemical laboratory, where the floor is of asphalt. The interior trim is of oak, except on the ground floor, where pine is used. The heating and ventilating are by a combined motor driven supply and exhaust fan system, supplemented by direct radiation. The steam plant is in the adjoining grade school. The class rooms seat from 35 to 40 pupils each, a total of 310. The cost of the building was 17 cents per cubic foot.
Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. “Higher education leads to higher ideals, to greater wisdom, and to contentment.” It is a typical Ingham & Boyd touch to add an inspiring quotation to the front of a school.
But where did the quotation come from? This is a curious mystery. It must have been familiar, or it would not have been enshrined in terra cotta. But old Pa Pitt’s diligent searches in the world’s digitized libraries have found it in only two places:
- A 1949 advertisement from the Committee on Steel Pipe Research of American Iron and Steel Institute that ran in several architectural magazines, where it is again quoted as a well-known saying: “The American system of free public education has become a symbol of democracy through its thousands of magnificent school buildings from coast to coast. The number, size, beauty, and superior physical equipment of these schools demonstrate our public understanding that ‘higher education leads to higher ideals, to greater wisdom, and to contentment.’ ”
- The March 21, 1959, issue of the Shamokin News-Dispatch, where it is used as an unattributed space-filler, again in quotation marks, meaning that the compositor grabbed it from somewhere.
So we have a quotation that was well known in 1915, but has left no trace in print before 1949 across the millions of digitized books, magazines, and newspapers on line. If anyone can give us a hint as to where this quotation came from, old Pa Pitt would be very grateful.
- We have the Architectural Record article, of course, and many other listings as well. The Construction Record, October 3, 1914. “Architects Ingham & Boyd, Vandergrift building, are writing specifications on a two-story brick and fireproof high school building for the Board of Education to be built on Maple avenue at a cost of $75,000.” ↩︎
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Kaufmann & Baer Department Store
“The Kaufmann & Baer department store is an enormous shiny white terra cotta building, filled with windows and probably good for its purpose.” So the architect Aymar Embury II (did ever an architect have such an architecty name?) dismissed this building in his article about Pittsburgh architecture in 1915,1 when the building was new. It was put up for Kaufmann & Baer—the Kaufmanns being members of the same family as Morris Kaufmann, who ran that other department store with a similar name on Smithfield Street. Most older Pittsburghers remember it affectionately as the Gimbels Building, because Gimbels bought Kaufmann & Baer in 1925 and this building was Gimbels for most of its life as a department store. Starrett & Van Vleck, New York specialists in department stores, were the architects.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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Some Houses on Cedar Avenue, Dutchtown
Cedar Avenue, facing the East Commons, was a prestigious address in old Allegheny, and after spending some time looking a bit down in the mouth it is becoming a prestigious address again. Fortunately it lost very few of its splendid Victorian houses. Here are a few of them.
For many years this house has been the headquarters of the Dental Society of Western Pennsylvania.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Storefronts on Potomac Avenue, Dormont
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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Werner Building, East Liberty
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.
We also have some earlier pictures of the Werner Building and some remarks on its history.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Carl Building (Shields Building), Wilkinsburg
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.
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.
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.
The cap is festooned with elaborate Baroque terra-cotta ornaments.
Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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Horner School, Wilkinsburg
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.
The 1920s were in the middle of the golden age of terra-cotta ornament.
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.
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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