Trowbridge & Livingston, Andrew Mellon’s favorite architects, designed this block-long palace of finance. The legendary interior was destroyed in the 1990s for a blink-and-you-missed-it department store, but the exterior is almost completely unchanged from the day the building opened in 1925.
A good example of how an old building can be updated on a limited budget without too much damage to its appearance. Front porches are gone, and vinyl siding and new windows lost some of the Victorian detail. But the windows are framed appropriately if simply, and distinctive woodwork on the third floor has been preserved and restored. Now five apartments, the double house is still an attractive building; and if old Pa Pitt would prefer to have seen it restored to its original Victorian appearance, he nevertheless recognizes and applauds a tasteful effort to balance restoration with profitability.
A row of four originally identical apartment buildings with Jacobean detailing.
This entrance seems to preserve its original details better than the others.
On the other hand, the colored tiles beside the door at this entrance are probably original, but have disappeared from the other three entrances.
Now known as Holy Ghost Byzantine Rite Catholic Church. Carlton Strong, best remembered for Sacred Heart Church in Shadyside, designed this Byzantine church and the somewhat similar St. Mary’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the McKees Rocks Bottoms.
Kathleen M. Washy, an expert in the history of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, wrote a long article on Carlton Strong (download the PDF here) for Gathered Fragments, the magazine of the Catholic Historical Society, so old Pa Pitt will send you there for more about this fascinating artist. Here we’ll just look at pictures.
In the shadows of the ever-encroaching university and hospital buildings, these tiny rowhouses still survive in a little alley in the back streets of Oakland.
Houses in the Grandview Plan lit up by golden winter sun, as seen with a long lens from Beltzhoover. We have seen some of the houses on Edgemont Street from a little closer; for example, the wide house with three dormers at lower left is the one we identified as designed by Henry Gilchrist.
The front of green terra cotta is unique in Pittsburgh. Frederick C. Sauer designed this building, and when it was done he moved his office into it. It is the only one of Sauer’s buildings, as far as old Pa Pitt knows, that bore his name on the building itself, though at some point some workman, doubtless thinking he was doing a splendid job of renovating the building, did his best to obliterate the letters:
Somehow the line for the Mount Lebanon Historic District was drawn just to the left side of this building, leaving it unhistorical, though taking in a much more pedestrian postwar apartment building across the street. Fortunately, historic district or no historic district, most of the details have been preserved, although the original windows would have added a layer of artistry that their simpler modern replacements lack.
The art glass in the stairwell has been preserved.
The front door is a work of art in itself. Enlarge the picture and admire the door pull.