Father Pitt

Tag: Windrim (James T.)

  • Telephone Exchange, Allegheny Center

    “Bell Telephone” inscription
    Telephone exchange

    Not only is this elegant palace of switching one of the few buildings left in Allegheny Center from before the great urban renewal of the 1960s, but it also preserves a memory of the extinct street layout of old Allegheny.

    Street signs: East Diamond Street, East Montgomery Avenue

    The architect was probably James Windrim of Philadelphia, who did most of the work for Bell of Pennsylvania in the first quarter of the twentieth century. His mission was to make these necessary industrial buildings ornaments to their neighborhoods, so that the telephone company would not face too much opposition. In the nineteenth century, it had been usual to put street signs on the corners of buildings; it was already a bit old-fashioned by the time this exchange was built, but several of the old Bell Telephone exchanges have them, and we suppose it was another way of making them seem like good neighborhood citizens. These streets no longer exist; the quarter-loop drive that turns around this corner is known as Montgomery Place.

    Montgomery Avenue façade
    Telephone exchange
    Telephone exchange
    Doorway
    Doorway
    Bracket
    Telephone exchange from North Commons
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Telephone Building, Allentown

    Telephone Building

    The Hilltop neighborhoods outgrew this telephone exchange, and a new Art Deco palace of telephony was built up the street. But the building remained standing, and has been converted to apartments.

    James Windrim, the Philadelphia architect who did all of Bell of Pennsylvania’s work for some years in the early twentieth century, supervised alterations and additions to this building in 1923 or 1924,1 but he may not have been the original architect.

    Entrance to the Telephone Building
    Telephone Building
    Telephone Building
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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  • Telephone Exchange, East Liberty

    Telephone exchange

    Inside the building was a mass of wires and electrical equipment and operators’ switchboards. But the Bell Telephone Company insisted that the outside of every telephone exchange must be an ornament to the neighborhood. They were all Renaissance palaces like this until the 1930s, and it is likely that they all came from the same architectural office—namely, the office of James Windrim, who also designed the 1923 Bell Telephone Building downtown. After Windrim, Press C. Dowler took over as the Bell company’s court architect, and the style changed to refined Art Deco.

    Bell Telephone exchange entrance
    Spiral ornament
    Cornice
    Telephone exchange, East Liberty
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens.
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  • Bell Telephone Building

    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    At the corner of Seventh Avenue and William Penn Place is a complicated and confused nest of buildings that belonged to the Bell Telephone Company. They are the product of a series of constructions and expansions supervised by different architects. This is the biggest of the lot, currently the 25th-tallest skyscraper in Pittsburgh, counting the nearly completed FNB Financial Center in the list.

    The group started with the original Telephone Building, designed by Frederick Osterling in Romanesque style. Behind that, and now visible only from a tiny narrow alley, is an addition, probably larger than the original building, designed by Alden & Harlow. Last came this building, which wraps around the other two in an L shape; it was built in 1923 and designed by James T. Windrim, Bell of Pennsylvania’s court architect at the time, and the probable designer of all those Renaissance-palace telephone exchanges you see in city neighborhoods. The style is straightforward classicism that looks back to the Beaux Arts skyscrapers of the previous generation and forward to the streamlined towers that would soon sprout nearby.

    Hidden from most people’s view is a charming arcade along Strawberry Way behind the building.