Ivy Residences at Triangle Building
701 Smithfield Street
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SAT: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
SUN: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
YOUR EXPERIENCE
Minimal common area and the potential for viewing a residential unit.
Wheelchair-Accessible Entrance: YES
Wheelchair-Accessible Restrooms: NO
Public Restrooms: NO
Photography Allowed: YES
ABOUT THIS BUILDING
926-934 Liberty Avenue is a 6-story red brick commercial building in downtown Pittsburgh. It is a masonry bearing wall building augmented by iron or steel cross beams. The most remarkable element of the building is its triangular footprint, with elevations on three major downtown streets. The footprint is a right triangle, with the 90-degree corner of the building at the northwest corner of the intersection of east-west Smithfield Street with north-south Seventh Avenue. The Seventh Avenue and Smithfield Street elevations are almost exactly equal in length at 88 and 89 feet, respectively. The mathematical formula a² + b² = c² for determining a right triangle’s hypotenuse results in the 125’ length of the Liberty Avenue elevation, which carries the building’s primary addresses. There are four bays each on Smithfield and Seventh, and five on Liberty Avenue.
Downtown Pittsburgh is also triangular in plan and has two grids of streets, one parallel to the Monongahela River, and the other parallel to the Allegheny River. 926-934 Liberty Avenue is where the two grids meet, resulting in sharply angled intersections, and the site of this free-standing triangular building. The building is identified as contributing to the Pittsburgh Central Downtown National Register Historic District Expansion nomination of 2012.
The lower four floors likely were constructed in 1868, and the upper two floors in 1884. The applied decorative elements of especially the lower four floors are representative of the mid-late Victorian era, and the upper floors have little exterior decoration. In style it is commercial Italianate. The 1884 remodeling probably included the installation of an elevator. The commercial spaces on the first floor apparently were divided perpendicularly from Liberty Avenue. Maps of different vintages show three, four, and five separate spaces; the interior of the building shows evidence of frequent remodeling.
There are storefronts on all three elevations, although they are not continuous. The two acute corners at either end of the Liberty Avenue elevation are chamfered, and have cast iron columns supporting an elaborate projecting entablature. The building is curved through the 90-degree corner at Smithfield Street and Seventh Avenue. The curved corner has a three-bay cast iron storefront below a projecting stone course at the second floor level. There is a makers plate on the cast iron at the Smithfield and Liberty corner reading Morris, & Marshall Pittsburgh. Little has been discovered about the company. The storefront areas between the elaborate corner entries are single, thin, square iron columns, evenly spaced in openings between brick piers. Remodeling has claimed the transoms, original glass, and original wooden storefront components. All have been replaced with modern aluminum storefront construction. The upper storefronts / transoms are covered with modern material. The entry to the offices is on Smithfield Street, flanked by wider and more elaborate cast iron sections. The chamfered corners and curved bay have columned entablature around the second floor windows, with the decorative elements decreasing on the third and fourth floors. A flat band of stone connects the window hoods on each of these floors. The bays have two or three vertical window openings each, with 1/1 double-hung wood sash. The top two floors lack some of the lower floor decoration, including the stone band connecting the window hoods. A brick corbeled cornice caps the composition. The added upper two floors are constructed of a darker red brick than the lower floors. The slightly sloping roof is behind a low parapet.
The 1884 remodeling of the building occurred the same year as the laying of the cornerstone for H.H. Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse. The facades of the city’s commercial architecture of the late 1880s and 1890s would incorporate Romanesque arches rather than the applied decoration of the Liberty Avenue building.
The interior of the building has been frequently remodeled. The triangular plan creates many odd-shaped interior spaces. There is an elevator near the center of the Seventh Avenue elevation with stairs adjacent to it. The stairs are discontinuous, with the basement to second floor stairs west of the elevator and the second through sixth floor stairs east of the elevator. The elevator and both sets of discontinuous stairs appear to date from 1920 or later. On some floors a short east-west hall, parallel to Liberty Avenue, connects the stairs and elevators to suites of offices around the building perimeter. Most of the spaces have been repeatedly remodeled, and have mid-20th century paneling, floor tile, suspended ceiling tile, and etc. There are a few windows with 19th century casing, and two offices with chair rail connecting the 19th century window trim.
926-934 Liberty Avenue likely was constructed as a 4-story building in 1868 by Thomas McCance, a merchant tailor. McCance’s family settled in the City of Allegheny in 1818 when Thomas was two years old. He started his tailoring business in 1844, partnered with his brother J.T. McCance. An 1868 Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette article briefly describing the new building states that McCance carried clothing, gentlemen’s furnishing goods, etc.
The four-story building is on Pittsburgh’s 1872 Hopkins Atlas, labeled as the McCance Block, and is shown on the 1884 Sanborn Atlas as a 4-story building, with a tailor shop on the first floor.
According to the Pittsburgh Central Downtown National Register Historic District Expansion nomination of 2012, the Triangle building was designed by Pittsburgh architect Andrew W. Peebles in 1884. In fact, Peebles probably remodeled the four-story building and added two new upper floors. Peebles was a well-known Pittsburgh architect, and in 1882 designed the initial remodeling of steel magnate Henry Clay Frick’s home in Pittsburgh’s East End (Frick’s home would be named Clayton after a comprehensive 1890s remodeling by Pittsburgh architect Fredrick Osterling, and survives as a house museum complex). The 1893 Sanborn Atlas indicates that the building was six stories tall, as does the 1905 Sanborn Atlas. These post-1884 maps show an elevator in the building.
A 1929 Real Estate Plat Book of downtown Pittsburgh still lists the building as the McCance Block, owned by F.K. McCance et al.
Through much of its existence, the McCance / Triangle building’s signature address and storefront was the curved front on Smithfield Street and Seventh Avenue, facing Pittsburgh’s Central Business District to the south. Liberty Avenue had a major rail line on the street well into the 20th century. Liberty Avenue is a wide street, and its prominence increased after the railroad was relocated. The utility of the Triangle Building’s curved front decreased after the internal placement of the stairs and elevator reduced the usable space behind the front.
After the McCance family’s ownership ended, the building name fell into disuse and it became known as the Triangle Building. In the middle third of the 20th century, Pittsburgh’s Penn-Liberty district declined as a wholesale and retail location, and it became a backwater of dingy businesses and nefarious activity. The three-street prominence of the McCance / Triangle building, and the relatively small size of the retail and commercial spaces in the building aided in keeping the building occupied in the difficult decades.
The building has always housed small businesses, including McCance’s tailor shop, restaurants, shoe, shops, etc. Likewise, the upper floors have always housed offices. The size of the available commercial spaces and configuration of the upper floors limited the building’s appeal. The difficult-to-use plan was not suitable for larger businesses.