My Surprise Today: Forbes and Meyran in Oakland, Pittsburgh: The Strand Building

This morning I snapped a couple shots of serene Oakland. I posted this photo on our Facebook page.

www.facebook.com/interestingpennsylvania 

Then I opened up the portal of archived photos and found this exact photo as the first photo that I saw. I found this to be a little creepy.

Almost the exact same vantage point. This photo is from 1910 and it apparently housed the "Turkish Bath and Swimming Pool."  You can still see the old streetcar tracks on Forbes. Those tracks are still buried in the street. Sometimes you will see a large pothole and part of the track will peek out.

On the right you can see the good old Iroquois Building which now houses places like Quaker Steak, Red Oak Cafe, ACE Shoes, Radio Shack, and others. Next to the Turkish Bath building you can see a little grassy park area. Nowadays there is a building there that houses a Verizon Store. Apparently we cannot get enough cell phone stores, with at least three that I can think of on Forbes in Oakland alone. That building has switched hands several times in the last few years. It went from being a bookstore to cell phone store, partially showing where our priorities are shifting.

The Turkish Bath building is a pretty cool building these days, housing many things like Oakland's only full service supermarket, IGA, on one of the floors, along with a Chinese buffet, a tanning salon, apartments, and (I think) a video game store. At different points in this building's lifetime it has housed a bowling alley, movie theater, and clubs. The building dates back to 1898 and has seen tons of tenants.

In doing a quick news archive search I found that the names of the clubs were "Club Laga" along with "The Attic," and "The Upstage." They appear to have been part of a complex. Similar to the former Beehive up the street at the Police Department building we researched the other day, this club was also known for live music, something that has all but disappeared from the Oakland scene. It appears that the clubs housed in this old building were considered to be a nuisance, with over a dozen articles about problems. 

 It appears to have closed in 2003 as a response to the club tragedy in Rhode Island and some public pressure. The owner said he planned to turn the building into apartments, which he partially ended up doing.

At some point in the 80s the bowling alley and movie theater that were located in the building closed and a plan was made to convert the building to offices. Either the plan never went off of the ground or it failed similar to the mall plan for East Liberty's Motor Square Gardens.

Into the 80s there was a bowling alley in the building named "The Strand Bowling Alley" along with "The Strand Movie Theater." I wish they were still there! They opened in 1916

We see that in 1994, a former owner of "The Strand," Anthony Cicero, passed away. It says that he also ran a restaurant called Cicero's which I would assume was located in the place that the Chinese Buffet is now.

We now go back to 1969. The theater manager, we are unaware of who it was at this time, was arrested along with the managers of three greatly missed Pittsburgh area Drive-In Theaters for playing a move called "The Female Bunch," a mildly ridiculous and cheesy, raunchy and mildly pornographic film about some wild women who flip the roles of the men in westerns and act as criminals, independent, and not willing to be pushed around. The movie was cheesy but also very controversial. I am not exactly sure of what law they had on the books back then to book them or if this was a knee jerk reaction. This movie is very emblematic of the free spirit movement of the 1960s. It seems this theater shared the same problem with controversy as the Kings Court Theater up the street that we researched the other day. It is a shame that no theaters remain in Oakland, or bowling alleys or major league ballparks for that matter.

The following three photos are one article from 1965, I just could not get them to splice well. I always like a feel-good type story, this one regards The Strand Bowling Alley having a bowling league for the blind. That photo may be one of the only that remains from inside the bowling alley.

This article from 1943 also shows how the bowling alley worked concurrently as a theater, also known as the "Strand Theater." I wonder how the sound of a bowling ball hitting the pins during a strike intensified the thrill of seeing a film. Judging by the time period you can also assume that the movie played the news and government messages prior to the films, especially in this time period in the midst of World War II. I wonder how they managed to use all of those new materials in the midst of the World War II rationing. Many projects during this time period were either put off or stopped completely due to the rationing. A great example of this would be a Flying Turns style ride that was to be built at Hersheypark by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company but never materialized. A similar ride of this style was recently opened at Knoebels in Elysburg, PA, a place that any of you history buffs would surely enjoy, but I digress.

Our next stop takes us to 1944 when some bandits failed to rob money from the bowling alley due to a safe. As we saw in the previous research about the old Police Station, there was not a chance that the local police would have stopped this crime.

This one from 1946 cracks me up. This is a situation that would likely not happen today due to the need for outward pushing doors for fire code. Funny situation

They really needed some MEN PIN SETTERS in 1946. I guess they thought women were incapable of lifting and placing bowling pins. You are always bound to find something ridiculous that is either sexist or racist when you look in old newspapers.

A few years prior it seems that the owner of the bowling alley was accused of unfair labor practices. It seems this dropped action did nothing. I wonder what the case was about because I cannot find any information about it. I would stand it had something to do with discriminatory practices judging by the sexist want ads a few years later. Granted that practice was acceptable at the time though.

You can see how hardcore folks were for bowling leagues back then. While the leagues are still around, they are definitely not as popular as they were back then. I wish more of these neighborhood alleys still existed.

I am imagining this bowling alley like the elegant and amazing Arsenal Lanes in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. This is the view from inside that alley. 

Judging by the dimensions of the building, I would assume that the alley was similar in size to Arsenal. This is in the back bowling alley area of Arsenal. It is a really great place that I recommend everyone check out. The configuration and dimensions of the bowling alley mirror that of the IGA grocery store there today. 

This December 1929 editorial is funny to look at today. It ends up being the exact opposite of what would end up happening. Instead the opposite would end up happening, with the giant movie houses being split into smaller theaters and new theaters being built small and with many screens. I like the idea of discount in bulk, especially for the tough times that were starting  and would last for a very long time since the Depression had just started. While the Strand could not compare to the absolute giant movie houses, many of which are either gone today or would close not too far after this column was written, the Strand Theater would live on up into the 1980s and the size of it is pretty similar to the theaters that would be made in the future and today. It seems his perspective was still influenced by the Roaring 20s mentality with the grand movie houses like the old Warner Theater in Pittsburgh, the Michigan Theater in Detroit, Proctor's Palace in Newark, and countless others. The following like is a cool, yet sad, page of photos from inside some of these great Roaring 20s type theaters. Article showing photos from old Movie Houses. I wish his prediction was right, but the smaller theaters in large quantities would end up winning out with the growth of Hollywood. Even though the strand was smaller and more utilitarian and the Roaring 20s Movie Houses would outshine it in beauty, after this time period I would say that our movie going experience regressed in regards to viewing venues. I would take an old moviehouse over a megaplex any day. 

That is exactly why my theater of choice is the Manor Theater in Squirrel Hill. It is less expensive, more awesome, has charm and leather reclining seats. I take local and unique over bland big-box type megaplexes. They recently restored the Manor and removed the many renovations to reveal the original marble and decorations. This beautiful lamp hangs in the lobby

Back to the Strand theater that we were talking about, according to discussion on Cinema Treasures, the original operator of the theater was Warner Brothers. They put the air conditioning system underneath the theater in the original pool area on the ground floor, where the tanning salon is located today. The grocery store floor was the theater area, which later on would become the "Upstage" club which closed in 2006. 

Here are some pictures of the Grocery Store floor today. The first photo would be looking diagonally across the theater. The screen would be located right behind where I was standing. 

This photo is a view looking towards where the back of the theater would be.

Below is the way the front of the building looks today. Notice the beautiful attention to decorative detail. That is all from the original "Turkish Bath and Swimming Pool" usage.

Below you can see the awesome Mr. Rogers mural that was part of a Sprout Public Art Project by Jonathan Laidacker. You also can't see in this shot, but on the side of the building you can see a little outline of an old mural that says "Bowling Alley," giving a hint to a previous use. 

We can now see how this building has evolved over the years. Now the use is more utilitarian and serves a great purpose as a grocery store, Chinese Buffet, and more. We can also see that the uses in the past were quite a bit more fun. I believe that we need to support our local movie theaters such as Squirrel Hill's Manor Theater and others. Every time we lose a place like a movie theater, roller rink, bowling alley, amusement park, and other places where folks go to relax, we lose places that bring the community together. Support these types of places. I am at least glad that this building is fully utilized for something useful, unlike the former Police Station/Kings Court theater up the street. 

3805 and 3807 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh: Former Kings Court Theater and Beehive Coffeehouse Part II: The last 60 years

So we left off yesterday in 1952 with the building being considered for sale. It would eventually get sold for something more fun than a police station. This would be the start of things looking up after some of the tragedy this building has seen and hopefully the start of a turned corner for what appeared to be a lousy team of folks that ran the station. We are left knowing that the building was roughly 60 years old, leaving the building to have been built in the 1890s.

This listing for a 1940 Hudson is from 1952 and Schenley Auto. The address is the building that was once a house on the corner of Forbes and Bouquet. This plot of land is now a grassy park area. We know that the former Schenley Auto had some operations in that spot.

Below we see that there was a jeweler, Binstock Jewelry, located in the spot that is now "Noodles." Apparently they were also an authorized Toro dealer. One stop shop, pick up your wedding rings, some earrings and a new snow thrower. This was from 1964. That snow thrower in inflation dollars would be $681.00.  Considering that today's state of the art snowblowers market for that much or more these days, that is about right. The basic Toro unit is still pretty much the same and runs in the 300 dollar range, making it about 40 bucks in those days. 

Anyways, Binstock was an Oakland fixture in jewelry for over 30 years. His Obituary has him passing away in 1986 at Oakland's Montefiore Hospital. I am not sure where he operated a store through all of those years because this address housed different things later on. 

We will flash back to the modern day photo of the building. The Noodles Storefront is where the jeweler was located. The black awning is where the entrance was located for the theater we will talk about next.

In a victory for preservation, a lesson that we should take to heart when it comes to these old buildings in regards to creative re-use. Also a victory for the community, this historically bad police station, fire department, and jail would turn into a first run movie theater. Oakland could use a movie theater and other types of healthy socialization places. I know this is the age of movie megaplexes, but I prefer going to the little Manor Theater in Squirrel Hill with leather reclining seats, a bar, and cheaper tickets, to spending my money at a drab, big box, and sanitized place like the Waterfront and other megaplexes.

Anyways, you can see the movie opened at the same time as the Julie Andrews classic "The Sound of Music," a movie you will probably see on repeat at some point during this Easter season. The way they describe the decorations make this place seem like it was pretty neat. Nothing beats the character of an old movie house. 

Below photo from Robert Dorsett/Flickr

You can see the classic "White Tower" burger joint that is now that little grassy park. White Tower was based out of Milwaukee and considered to be a knockoff of White Castle, which was proven in a court case. This photo is from 1972. You can also see Presbyterian Hospital peeking out of the top right corner. In between White Tower and the theater you can see another bastion of the old days, a Kodak store. I wonder if I would be as into photography if I had to pay a ton for film. The loss of film put a lot of people out of work though. Trade-offs I guess. 

Kings Court Photos from Cinema Treasures

The adjoining storefront appears to have held on as a jewelry store. I am not sure if this is the same store as Binstock, but apparently someone stole a case with 30 rings. I wonder if they snuck it out with a snow blower like a Trojan horse ;-)

Now all of the hints about the building's past, specifically the hints that this building was a Police station:

and the hints that this was a movie theater including the awning and the addition off of the back.

This was a jail, police and fire station that could not respond to emergencies in an expedited manor due to the traffic from the nearby Forbes Field baseball park and the University of Pittsburgh. It goes from that to a movie theater. I call that a victory. I would not mind if it switched back to a theater.

We learn that in the 80s the jeweler became a TCBY. I remember those. Expensive frozen yogurt but it was good. The chain became a victim of the weak economy in the early 2000s.

The next article is something that I find to be completely ridiculous. I always say that if you do not like something, do not watch it and go on your way. 4,000 protestors? A slashed screen? A stolen film reel? Really? Grow up for starters. If you do not like something do not do it or watch it. Simple stuff that should be easy to comprehend. This story is from 1988.

The theater would eventually go out of business in 1990. Here you can see the way the Kings Court Theater sign looked along with the neighboring TCBY Frozen Yogurt.

The theater was known for having the classic "Rocky Horror Picture Show" cult showings. Given the location in a college neighborhood I can see how it would have taken off at this theater.

The fun was not over for this building quite yet. An eclectic place called "The Beehive" opened up in the building in the early 90s. This was said to be Pittsburgh's first coffeehouse. They had a second location in the South Side which still exists today. I highly recommend checking out that coffeehouse for they have great coffee, desserts, and a wonderful social setting. I wish they still had an Oakland location. The place held many artistic events as you can see throughout these next few clippings. In the first clipping you can see that Oakland seemed to be a more fun place back then.

The following shows a video from 1992 of a very grunge type, Nirvana-ish type group. Very representative of the area. Oakland once had a thriving live music scene. Now there is pretty much nothing which is pretty depressing. I am not sure exactly of what is going on in the video but it looks like the folks are having a good time.

Unfortunately the coffeehouse would only last for just over a decade due to skyrocketing rent. The same problem that did in the theater, 

Thank goodness for those skyrocketing rents though! What community needs places where folks can socialize when you can put in a T-Mobile and the hipster capital store American Apparel. The latter closed and stayed vacant for a few years until it was replaced by the Noodles Restaurant. This restaurant is popular and serves decent food, but we lost several irreplaceable places like the coffee house and movie theater. The are places where folks can have clean fun, socialize, and bind as a community. Oakland is not necessarily falling apart by any means, but we can look at communities that are falling apart and see that the places where folks went to have good and clean fun are long gone. Those places are where folks bond socially as a community. We cannot keep losing places like movie theaters, drive ins, coffeehouses, roller rinks, amusement parks, and other places where folks can go and have good and clean fun for they are the glue that keeps communities together.

A shot from 2006. Apparently both storefronts were vacant at this time. This is right before the building was fully sanitized and big box stores came in. Apparently the Beehive kept the old Kings Court sign. Photo credit to Cinema Treasures

Now we time travel back to the yawn inducing present after seeing the eclectic past that this pretty much forgotten building had. 

My final message is to preserve the landmarks that we have, the buildings that make our communities what they are and how we can better utilize them for the betterment of everyone.

3805 and 3807 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh: Former Police Patrol Station No. 4 Part I: The first 60 years

Pretty much daily I stumble upon old buildings that are underutilized or now used for something boring. You can tell just by looking at the buildings that at one point they were nice places or had some alternate usage. When you get into a neighborhood like Oakland in Pittsburgh, pretty much every building in the neighborhood was something else at some point. When you see a grassy plot, you know a building once inhabited that spot because you can see traces on the side of an old building that something was once connected to it. Near the corner of Forbes and Bouquet, directly across Bouquet from the legendary O (Original Hot Dog Shop) is a building that almost looks like a castle/dungeon. It is a strange building. Some traces point to previous uses.

T-Mobile Store and Noodles occupy this building today....BLAHHHHH yawn. Noodles is not bad. Just by looking at the building, there are several hints that say this building was once something exciting. The first hint is that black awning. It looks as if it were once a Movie Theater. The next hint comes from the top of the building.

So we know it was a Police station at one point. That is where this whole thing gets murky. It looks as if there were several prior uses. This building is surely over a century old. Investigating these old buildings is fascinating to me, it is almost like putting together a puzzle. 

The next hint that this was a movie theater is seen in this shot. It looks like that back area was added onto the building at some point. There was also clearly a building connected on this side at one point. Now this is a nice grassy area with benches. The perfect place to take a small picnic lunch from the O. I am sure you are getting hungry just thinking of the fries and hot dogs right now. 

So now we will start investigating. My favorite approach is to look in the old newspaper archives. I looked through the Post-Gazette, Toledo Blade and Beaver archives. the earliest mention of the building that we can find goes back 113 years ago to 1901. We find proof that this was a Police Station, as the sign at the top of the building suggests. We find quite a bit of racism against Blacks and Native Americans and some of the contributing narrative we saw towards the "urban renewal" theme of the 1960s in which thousands of Black families were displaced. We looked into that pretty in depth last week when we went over East Liberty.

The last part of the article has nothing to do with the building, but I found it ridiculous how much racist stuff was just in one column in the 1901 newspaper. I am glad that we no longer read in the paper "the room filled with colored people." I also find it amazing how much our culture has changed in 113 years. Anyways...now we have a piece of the puzzle with a vision of a horse stable and the police riding around in horse drawn wagons. I still cannot find the date this building was built, but now we have an idea of the scope of just how old this building is.

This article from 1952 guesses the age of the building to be around sixty years old. 

In 1903 we found the Pittsburgh Police force miss a few brazen thieves stole some hams.

The photo below is the place that was robbed. This photo from 1937 is absolutely spectacular. you can see an old Coca-Cola truck delivering the goods, along with the hospital in the background. this building is currently the GNC. The coolest thing about this shot is that no matter how things change, they still stay the same. This view is almost the same today, except with different stores and store fronts....except for one. This one remaining store is Gida's Flowers, a still family owned small enterprise. This is my flower shop of choice for getting Brit flowers. The folks there are wonderful and it shows why this family business is still around, at least 76 years later. Incredible to think about. This photo is from the great Retrographer.com 

Next we see the crack team of officers at this station make another blunder in 1903, this time with deadly and stomach turning consequences. A bunch of people would end up electrocuted due to no action being taken by the police. One person would be shocked by a fallen trolley wire from a storm. Subsequently no officers would block off the area and a bunch more people would die. I find this especially creepy in that I have ducked underneath that building's awning during really powerful storms.

This is likely similar to what the area looked like. This shot was from 1920. You can see the streetcar tracks and wiring. On the right you can see a house-like building where the current plot of grassy land is and the police station immediately next to it. 

In the 1914 it was the place that local residents practiced their Democratic right to vote in the midterm elections for President Woodrow Wilson.

This letter to the editor section from 1930 has something about cottage cheese regarding the address of the police station. I am not sure if this was an insult to the force or some sort of business that was located in the building. We have to remember that the view on the opposite corner would be of the classic Forbes Field ballpark. The thing that shocked me the most about this page was the ridiculously sexist letter on the left hand side of the page. I think women would take offense to being told that they "have to leave to let a man take their job" if they made a decent sum of money. This was the start of the Depression. You see how folks use a crisis as a springboard into pushing some stupid agenda. Nothing has changed there.

Considering the way it seems the city handled Oakland's business, it is no wonder they threw the idea of seceding out there. It looks like the wheels were in motion to create better city services for the neighborhood. This old building, which was even old at that time, had an uncertain future.

It appears that the police station and adjoining the fire station that was built on the grounds of the stables,were relocated to its current location on McKee Place in 1947. The building looks identical today. I am not sure where the Police station is now because the building that housed it is now a job center. The fire station is still housed in the same building.

Tomorrow we will look at the second half of the building's 120+ year history and how it eventually ends up being a boring T-Mobile and a Noodles Restaurant. I guess those are an upgrade from the first 60 years of this building though. Trust me when I say that the next 60 years are more positively exciting.