Benno Janssen (1874–1964) was one of Pittsburgh’s most prolific architects, and the monumental district in Oakland would not have been the same without him. His favorite idiom was Beaux-Arts classicism, which he came by quite honestly by studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He began his architectural career with MacClure & Spahr, and supposedly was the main designer of their Union Bank Building on Fourth Avenue. After leaving that firm, Janssen was especially in demand for luxurious clubhouses. But Janssen could carry off any project, from a skyscraper to a bridge.
As an architect, Janssen was supremely confident. There was no architectural problem he could not solve with suitable elegance. For the Mellon Institute (above), he specified the largest monolithic columns that had ever been made in the history of the world. Consider for a moment how confident an architect has to be in his own abilities to do something like that.
Yet the confidence does not seem to have translated into personal pride. We never hear stories about Janssen’s arrogance. When the Leader, one of the Pittsburgh dailies, compiled a reference book of prominent Western Pennsylvanians, in which the subjects themselves pretty clearly contributed their own articles, Janssen got a full page. But most of it was a large photograph, because this was all he had to say about himself:
Benno Janssen, well known Pittsburgh architect, was born and reared at St. Louis, Missouri.
Mr. Janssen has been the architect for many of the finest structures in Pittsburgh and vicinity, including buildings of both residential and business type and of several club houses now occupied by the leading clubs of Pittsburgh.
Janssen would eventually retire to Charlottesville to be near the works of his favorite architect, Thomas Jefferson. He died there at the age of ninety, having outlived the Beaux-Arts style by a quarter-century.
Here is an unsorted and very incomplete list of some of Janssen’s buildings:
Buhl Building
William Penn Hotel
Pittsburgh Athletic Association
Masonic Temple
Kaufmann’s addition
Mellon Institute
Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association
Horne’s addition
Washington Crossing Bridge
Twentieth Century Club
Keystone Athletic Club
La Tourelle (the Edgar J. Kaufmann house)
Longue Vue Country Club
Houses in Schenley Farms
For a longer list, see Father Pitt’s Great Big List of Buildings and Architects, which is kept up to date with old Pa Pitt’s latest research.
