Father Pitt

Tag: Washington Road

  • Washington Square, Mount Lebanon

    Washington Square

    Since we saw the Washington Square apartments from the Florida Avenue side a few days ago, it would almost be neglectful to leave out the Washington Road face of the complex. It makes an attempt to fit into an urban streetscape by setting the high-rise apartment tower back from the street, with a low row of shops or offices in front along the sidewalk.

    Bank in front of Washington Square

    In Father Pitt’s opinion, the attempt is not entirely successful. The modernist style of the shops is uninviting in the most unfortunate sense: it is hard to tell how one is supposed to get into them. Is the entrance in front, or do we drive into a parking lot between them and enter from the lot? But wait—the drive between the shops is an exit only. Can we find the entrance? Should we find the entrance?

    Washington Square apartments
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Because of the precipitous lot, the Washington Avenue side of the main building is shorter than the Florida Avenue side by several floors.

  • Some Houses on Washington Road, Mount Lebanon

    822 Washington Road

    Four houses at the southern end of the Uptown business district in Mount Lebanon. First is what we might call a center-hall foursquare—the basic foursquare design, but widened to place the reception hall in the center and add a library or second parlor to one side.

    Window detail
    Chimney
    822 Washington Road
    814 Washington Road

    It is fairly unusual to find a brick-and-shingle house with the wood shingles still intact, even in a rich neighborhood. Here is one with its original roof, its original shingles, and either its original shutters or good replacements.

    806 Washington Road

    Here is a kind of Tudor or English Manor design with a very vertical idea of half-timbering.

    806
    Corner view of 806
    Side of 806
    782

    Finally, a house of a later generation, probably the late 1920s. Father Pitt does not know the architect, but the second-floor oriel in a front-facing gable was a favorite device of Lamont Button.

    782

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Southminster Presbyterian Church, Mount Lebanon

    Southminster Presbyterian Church

    Two grand Presbyterian churches stand at the two ends of Uptown Mount Lebanon. But they are different kinds of Presbyterians. The one to the north was the United Presbyterian church, but it has now become Evangelical Presbyterian. This one is now Presbyterian Church (USA).

    “In these days of mergers,” James Macqueen (himself one of our notable architects) wrote in the Charette in 1930, “one wonders why theological differences stood in the way of unity, and that these Presbyterians did not build one great building in this community instead of two with their attendant extra overhead involved. However, both of these two churches are worthy of a visit, as they show the great advance that has been made in Church work during the past few years…”

    Southminster was designed by Thomas Pringle and built in 1928.

    Southminster Presbyterian
    West front
    Front door
    West front
    Side entrance
    Quatrefoil tower ornaments

    These quatrefoil ornaments at the top of the tower can be properly appreciated with a very long lens.

    Southminster Presbyterian
    Office and education wing

    The office and education wing is done in a complementary Jacobean style. The arcade makes both a visual and a practical link to the main church.

    Office and education wing
    VDMA

    Appropriately for a building dedicated to Christian education, the Reformation slogan VDMA—Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum (“The word of God endureth for ever,” 1 Peter 1:25)—is engraved in an open book.

    We have more pictures of Southminster Presbyterian from a couple of years ago.

    Cameras: Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • 633 Washington Road, Mount Lebanon

    633 Washington Road

    This is a building you walk right past without even noticing it. One of old Pa Pitt’s favorite things to do is to show people how interesting the things they walk right past can be. This building was the subject of an article in the Charette, the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, so we know quite a bit about it, including that it looked like this when it was just finished in 1952:

    The architect was Vincent Schoeneman, known as “Shooey,” who had a flourishing practice in the middle of the twentieth century. He was “given carte blanche” on the design, the article tells us, but put some effort into making the building fit with its prewar neighbors. Thus the curious combination of modernist and Colonial elements.

    Perspective view

    Some things have changed. The windows have been replaced, trading the twelve horizontal panes on each side for three vertical sheets of glass, which is not an improvement. The signboard that once displayed the address in letters that managed to be both modest and large has been covered with aluminum (with a dark stripe that would be perfect for the words “633 WASHINGTON ROAD” spelled out in white letters). The wooden planters are no longer there, but they have been replaced by stone benches or shelves that match the side walls. The Colonial doors have been replaced with more ordinary stock doors. Still, a good bit of the original detail remains.

    Entrance

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    The whole text of the Charette article follows, reproduced here under the assumption that the copyright was not renewed.

    (more…)

  • Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church, Mount Lebanon

    Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church

    Built in about 1930, this rich stone Perpendicular Gothic church was designed by J. L. Beatty.

    Front of the church
    Left-hand entrance
    It was not old Pa Pitt who left that tripod sitting around by the entrance.
    Lantern
    Entrance from the side
    Oblique view of the front of the church
    Front of the church
    Transept
    Transept
    Transept window
    Rear of the church
    Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church

    Cameras: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6; Canon PowerShot SX150IS.

  • St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Mount Lebanon

    St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

    A richly stony church built for the ages in a tastefully modernized Gothic style.

    Anno Domini 1930
    Plaque: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, with service times
    Side entrance
    Wing
    Rear of the church
    St. Paul’s
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

  • Fairy-Tale Fantasy in Mount Lebanon

    1247 Washington Road
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

    What old Pa Pitt calls the Fairy-Tale Style was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s. The mark of the style is an exaggerated historicism in which the historical elements are rendered less as accurate reproductions of historical styles and more as if they were illustrations in a children’s book. This house in the St. Clair Terrace plan in Mount Lebanon is a perfect representative of the style.

    1247 Washington Road
    Washington Road end of the house
    St. Clair Place side of the house
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • St. Bernard’s Church, Mount Lebanon

  • Two Kinds of Spanish Mission

    Historical Society of Mount Lebanon

    Two houses in the Spanish Mission style sit side by side on Washington Road at the southern end of the Uptown Mount Lebanon business district, and they implement the style in two interestingly different ways. This one, which is now the home of the Historical Society of Mount Lebanon, takes the style fairly seriously. A real Spanish house, in the New World or the Old, turns inward. It shuts the public out, presenting almost blank walls to the outside world. Of course Southwestern houses are also notable for their flat rooflines. In this house we have large expanses of stucco wall facing the street (although the architect has conceded some generously large front windows to Eastern sensibilities) and the flat roof characteristic of Spanish colonial architecture in the Southwest.

    The other house is much more an Eastern house with decorative borrowings from the Spanish Mission style:

    Spanish Mission house on Washington Road

    You could take the basic shape of this house and turn it into an English cottage or an Italian Renaissance palace by changing the details. The stucco, the arcaded porch, and the tile roof are the main things that carry the “Spanish Mission” message.

  • Southminster Presbyterian Church, Mount Lebanon

    Southminster Presbyterian Church

    This tasteful Gothic church, finished in 1928, anchors the south end of the Uptown Mount Lebanon business district. The architect was Thomas Pringle, who also gave us the Salvation Army Building downtown.

    West entrance