William Lee Stoddart was the architect of this bank, whose colossal arch is its distinguishing feature. Stoddart was mainly known for hotels, but he could also turn out a bank, or a large office building like the Nissen Building in Winston-Salem, which old Pa Pitt has also photographed.
The bank has been abandoned for years; like many things in Braddock, it stands empty because no one has the will to restore it or the money to take it down.
A well-kept apartment building that retains its original art glass in the stairwell, though the apartment windows have been filled in with smaller substitutes.
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.
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.
A. Vernon, based across the river in Homestead, was the architect of this church, built in 1907 for a Croatian parish.1 The steep lot required the architect to make some interesting adaptations, setting the building on a stone platform so that the basement is at ground level on the downhill side. For a while after the congregation left, the building was a restaurant and wine bar, but it was up for sale when old Pa Pitt visited. It is in good shape, and would make a good restaurant again, or a fine studio for some artist.
Pittsburgh’s own Harry H. Lefkowitz was the architect of this futuristic tower of furniture, which was built in 1941. The building is one of the chief landmarks of the moderne style in the Pittsburgh area, and by sheer luck it has not been too much damaged over its eighty-five years of existence. It is an astonishing thing to come across while walking or driving through the almost deserted business district of Braddock. Now, at last, it is appreciated: it has been restored, complete with its spectacular sign, as artist residences, and as much of the original modernistic appeal as possible has been kept intact.
Old Pa Pitt has been wandering in Braddock, and we’ll see many pictures in the next few weeks. Some of what we’ll see is sad, so we begin with good news to show that there are people who love Braddock and have hope for its future.
Earlier known as the Deniston School, and now known as the Swissvale Schoolhouse Condominiums. Rieger & Currier (whose name is misspelled Courrier, Carrier, and any number of other ways in construction listings, but Currier is the spelling he used in his own signature) were the architects of this square Georgian school, built in 1902.
The best old Pa Pitt can say about those outsized dormers that sprouted on the front recently is that they could be worse, and they could be scraped off in a future restoration with minimal damage to the appearance of the building.
This is what we think of when we hear “Victorian house”: turrets and angles everywhere. The picturesque arrangement also creates interesting and versatile spaces inside.
This little house is one of the few survivors from the days when much of Carson Street in East Birmingham was residential. It preserves most of its fine mid-Victorian Italianate detail, so it is worth a closer look than most pedestrians on the busy sidewalk of Carson Street usually give it.
One unfortunate change is the entrance. Instead of double doors with an art-glass transom, we have a stock door from the home center and pieces of plywood around it. But the elaborate woodwork surrounding the entrance is still intact.
It is typical of Italianate houses that the downstairs windows are very tall. This is the bright and cheerful branch of Victorian domestic architecture.
The windowsills rest on ornate iron brackets.
The cornerstone of this church was laid in 1959, which for the moment is all old Pa Pitt knows about it. The style is the New England Colonial that became popular to the point of mania among suburban congregations with conservative tastes after the Second World War, and this is a tasteful and attractive example of it.
This church was built in 1897 for a congregation known as the East End Presbyterian Church. The architect was E. B. Milligan of Wilkinsburg. The congregation later became known as the Waverly Presbyterian Church (because it was on Waverly Street), which in 1929 built a much larger church a few blocks away. The Refuge Church of God in Christ now lives in this building.
An illustration published when the church was dedicated in 1897 shows a cap on the tower that has since disappeared.
The stone porch is the most remarkable thing about this church; it seems to lift the whole building out of the residential streets around it and into a different world.
