Father Pitt

Tag: Victorian Architecture

The Late Shady Avenue Cumberland Presbyterian Church

Exactly two years ago today, Father Pitt paid a visit to this unique church, one of the most imaginative works of architect Thomas Cox McKee. At the time, he had no idea the church would be demolished a few months later, or he would have documented it more carefully. Looking back on the pictures he published then, old Pa Pitt decided they were lousy, not to mince words. As a memorial to the vanished building, he decided to go back to the original images and see if he could make better pictures out of them. Two years from now, Father Pitt will look back at these pictures and think they were lousy and he could do better, but the delight of a life of constant learning is seeing incremental improvement.

To put the pictures in context, we reprint the text of the article we published two years ago:

Now known as Shady Avenue Christian Assembly, after having spent many years as Shady Avenue Presbyterian Church (without the “Cumberland”).

Just down the street from the huge and spectacular Calvary Episcopal and Sacred Heart Catholic churches, each the size of many a cathedral, this 1889 church is likely to pass unnoticed. Once you do notice it, though, you will not stop noticing it. It is a bravura performance in a sort of Queen Anne Romanesque style by a Victorian architect who was about 22 years old at the time, and who was not afraid to pull out all the stops and stomp on the pedals for all he was worth. An entire issue of the East Ender, the East End Historical Society’s newsletter, was devoted to the architect, T. C. McKee (PDF), and we take all our information from Justin P. Greenawalt with profound gratitude for his research.

Thomas Cox McKee (usually known as T. C. McKee) was apprenticed to architect James W. Drum. But in 1886, when young McKee was still only 20, his master was run over by a freight train. Instead of looking for another apprentice position, McKee went out on his own and seems to have been successful right away. He later built a comfortable practice designing homes for the wealthy and small to medium-sized commercial buildings, along with at least one prominent school (the Belmar School in Homewood, still standing). Then, in 1910, he threw it all away and went to Cleveland, where he took odd jobs until he settled down as a designer of soda fountains. No one seems to know what happened, although Mr. Greenawalt’s article hints that it might have had something to do with McKee’s constitutional extravagance.

That extravagance comes through in every detail of this building. In the age of modernism, this sort of thing was dismissed as a bunch of Victorian noise, but the masses are balanced to form interesting compositions from every angle.

The much more conventional 1911 addition (although even it is a little bit fantastical) was designed by Rodgers & Minnis. Below we see it across the pile of dirt that used to be Shady Hill Center until the property became too valuable to host a suburban-style strip mall.

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March 23, 2025
Two Hotels in Dutchtown

A “hotel” in the common Pittsburgh sense had rooms for rent, but probably expected to make most of its money from the bar downstairs. The rooms were there because it was much easier to get a liquor license for a hotel than for a bar or restaurant. Both these hotels were on backstreet corners in Allegheny. Above, the Hotel Reeg at the corner of Tripoli (originally Third) Street and Middle Street.

We can just make out the ghosts of the letters that used to spell out “Hotel Reeg.” But it helped that old Pa Pitt was able to guess that it looked like a hotel, and that the name “Geo. Reeg” appears as property owner on old plat maps.

Nikon COOLPIX P100; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

The Hotel Rahn, a block away at the corner of Suismon (originally Second) and Middle streets, is still very active. The rooms upstairs may be apartments now, but the restaurant and bar are a Dutchtown landmark: Max’s Allegheny Tavern, one of Pittsburgh’s top spots for German food.

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March 21, 2025
Two Victorian Rows on Craig Street

Two rows of houses that have adapted to the trendy business atmosphere of South Craig Street. The row above has been adapted with minimal external modifications.

Since old Pa Pitt is a connoisseur of breezeways, he could not neglect this exceptionally fine example.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

This row has been altered a bit more, though some care was taken to preserve its distinctive outlines.

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March 20, 2025
Hoffstot Building

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

Originally a building with five floors, built in 1886; a sixth floor was added in 1892 with considerable skill. We have more pictures of the building from two years ago; the picture above is a composite of six different photographs, so it is very big if you enlarge it.

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March 19, 2025
St. Mary’s Priory, Dutchtown

Built in 1888 to house the priests from the adjacent St. Mary’s Church, this is now the Priory Hotel.

Sony Alpha 3000; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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March 10, 2025
Arch Street, North Side

Arch Street, which is now included in the Mexican War Streets despite not bearing the name of a battle or a general, is a typical North Side combination of dense rowhouses, small apartment buildings, and backstreet stores. Here are just a few sights within one block of the street.

An exceptionally elaborate Queen Anne house whose owner has used bright but well-chosen colors to emphasize the wealth of detail on the front.

Two modest houses from before the Civil War; the brick house at left is dated 1842.

A small apartment building with a well-balanced classical front.

Some fine woodwork surrounds a front door.

The colorful dormer steals the show, but enlarge the picture to appreciate the terra-cotta grotesques on the cornice.

This little building looks as though it dates from the 1920s. Although it is quite different in style from its neighbors, it fits harmoniously by sharing the same setback and similar height.

A backstreet grocery that is currently functioning as a backstreet grocery—an unusual phenomenon in city neighborhoods these days. The apartment building above it has some interesting and attractive brickwork.

Sony Alpha 3000.

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February 24, 2025
A Walk on North Avenue in Manchester

A few weeks ago old Pa Pitt took a wintry walk on North Avenue (which used to be Fayette Street back when it did not run all the way through to North Avenue on the rest of the North Side). He took piles of pictures, and although he published four articles so far from that walk (one, two, three, four), there’s still quite a collection backed up waiting to be published. Thus this very long article, which is a smorgasbord of Victorian domestic architecture with a few other eras thrown in. Above, a pair of Italianate houses. They both preserve the tall windows typical of the high Italianate style; the one on the right still has (or has restored) its two-over-two panes.

Many more pictures…

February 15, 2025
Elias Kauffeld Building, South Side

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

A particularly splendid mid-Victorian building from 1881, as we can see by the beehive date stone in the middle of the façade.

The architect would probably have told you that the style was Renaissance, but mid-Victorian architects were much freer in their interpretation of historical styles than the next generation would be.

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February 14, 2025
Fulton Bell Foundry

This building seems to date from before the Civil War, possibly the 1850s. It was designed in the very free interpretation of Italian Renaissance that was popular at the time; later architects would have studied their historical precedents more closely, and later architects than those would have repudiated historical precedent altogether.

The building originally belonged to the Fulton Bell Foundry, which made bells for decades in downtown Pittsburgh. It’s a remnant of Victorian Second Avenue. All the remnants of Second Avenue downtown are on the south side of the Boulevard of the Allies; the street was widened in the 1920s by tearing out the buildings on the north side.

The well-preserved carved stone lintels have been lovingly cleaned.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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February 14, 2025
Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield

Carson Street on the South Side is reputed to be one of the best-preserved Victorian streetscapes in America. Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield may not come quite up to that standard, but it is probably second in Pittsburgh. The commercial district was built up in the 1880s and 1890s. Like Carson Street, it preserves many Victorian commercial buildings, along with a peppering of later styles. These pictures are all of the northeast side, because the sun was behind the southwest side.

A good example of the most basic form of Pittsburgh Rundbogenstil, the German hybrid of classical and Romanesque architecture that old Pa Pitt mentions every chance he gets because he likes to say “Rundbogenstil.” In the 1800s, before it became the most Italian of our Italian neighborhoods, Bloomfield was mostly German.

A Second Empire building from the 1880s.

This building dates from the 1890s. It probably had a date and inscription in that crest at the top of the façade, but later owners obliterated the evidence.

We saw this 1924 building before at dusk; here it is in bright sunlight. The bright light gives us a chance to appreciate the decorative details with a long lens.

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

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February 10, 2025