Father Pitt

Tag: Warren (Charles Bradley)

  • North Catholic High School, Troy Hill

    North Catholic High School from across the river

    The main building of North Catholic was put up in 1939. The architect was Edward J. Hergenroeder, a disciple of Benno Janssen, who became one of the favorite architects for Catholic institutions around Pittsburgh in the middle twentieth century.

    North Catholic High School

    From Janssen, Hergenroeder seems to have learned the art of making every line count. His style departed from the master’s, however, toward the modernistic, whereas Janssen retired to Charlottesville, the land of his favorite architect Thomas Jefferson, before he was forced to come to terms with modernism altogether.

    North Catholic High School

    The school has been given up by the Catholics, but fortunately was taken over and is well maintained as the Provident Charter School.

    North Catholic High School
    Auditorium
    Pursuit of Knowledge, by Charles Bradley Warren

    Charles Bradley Warren did the reliefs on the school. This one, Pursuit of Knowledge, shows us monks performing all kinds of scientific experiments and passing their knowledge on to children. (The same relief is reversed on the other end of the building, so that the monks are always gazing out from the top of the bluff at the vast panorama of the Allegheny valley before them.)

    Tree of Knowledge, by Charles Bradley Warren
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    A smaller relief shows a monk cultivating a bonsai Tree of Knowledge with an open Bible in his lap.

    Comments

  • Prospect School, Mount Washington

    Prospect School

    The firm of James T. Steen & Sons gave us many prominent buildings. The elder James died in 1923, but the firm flourished under his son Marion M. Steen, whose particular specialty was schools. Here is one of his finest works, built in 1931 with additions in 1937. The school closed in 2006, but it was converted to loft apartments without losing any of the glorious Art Deco decorations and reliefs.

    Addendum: The reliefs are by Charles Bradley Warren, who also did Pursuit of Knowledge on North Catholic High School.

    Main entrance

    Old Pa Pitt seldom does this, but because there are eighteen pictures in this article, he will avoid weighing down the front page of the site by placing the rest of them below the metaphorical fold.

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  • Catholic Deco

    Click on the image to enlarge it.
    Click on the image to enlarge it.

    North Catholic High School in Troy Hill was built in 1940. Its greatest claim to distinction is the set of unique reliefs by Charles Bradley Warren illustrating “The Pursuit of Knowledge.” “Unique” is a word thrown about with little regard for its etymological meaning, but here it seems descriptive. Where else will we find any similar combination of Catholic iconography, Art Deco style, and scientific progressivism? The reliefs are a little grimy from decades of heavy industry in the valley below, but they have lost none of their power to astonish a first-time visitor to Troy Hill.

    No, old Pa Pitt has not reversed one of the photographs. These are two different reliefs over doors on opposite sides of the building, identical except that they are mirror images of one another. In each relief, the monkish scientists gazing into the distance are turned to face a stunning view of the Allegheny valley and the city of Pittsburgh.

    Click on the image to enlarge it.
    Click on the image to enlarge it.