Places Around Pittsburgh: A Detail

The Conestoga Building stands at Wood Street and Fort Pitt Boulevard, a work of about 1890 by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow. It has a steel frame within solid masonry walls, and its ground-floor openings have a detail that is enlivening in an almost subliminal way. The openings are squarish, and are shaped at the upper corners by little corbels flush with the picked-sandstone facing. The corbels and the lintel they help carry are not plausible as masonry bearing elements, but look good. The shaping of the corbels is particularly subtle. From bottom to top, they go out horizontally, go upward in quarter-rounds, then vertically. The edges begin right-angled, turn into quarter-rounds, then finish as right angles again. A quiet but well-considered modulation.

—Walter C. Kidney