Morse School Annex, Sarah Street between Twenty-fourth & Twenty-fifth Streets, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, PA

Written data includes sketches & photocopies of maps.
Significance: The structure is a strange mixture of relatively new and daring structural concepts and a hopelessly outdated exterior shell. It is a "mule" without pride of ancestry nor hope of descendants. The use of ferro-concrete slabs between engaged steel beams had been used for the first time....only fiteen years before...The architect has used a system therefore which was advanced for its day.
...He was not as daring in his approach to the exterior...The architect could have followed either of those examples but chose not to.
Actually, the Architect failed to integrate his new structure into that of the adjoining "Main" building . There is no physical connection between the old and new buildings with the exception of a pipe tunnel through the courtyard. Circulation between the two buildings was circuitous and open air.
The building is significant because it reflects a dichotomy which would persist and still persists- the wedding of a logical structural system and a hopelessly inappropriate "shell".
Survey number: HABS PA-5199
Building/structure dates: ca. 1905 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1923 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1932 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1938 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1942 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1971 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1971 Subsequent Work