Benno Janssen was Pittsburgh’s favorite club architect: he gave us the Twentieth Century Club, the Keystone Athletic Club, the Masonic Temple, the Pittsburgh Athletic Association, the Longue Vue Club, the Rolling Rock Club, and the Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association. For this last club he designed a magnificent Renaissance palace with an enormous arch for the main entrance, and what is a Renaissance arch without a massive cartouche for a keystone?

Our friend Father Pitt supplies us with this picture. Have a look at it and try to imagine the story behind it. What do you think happened to bring it to its present form?

Father Pitt says that he imagines it this way: he sees the sculptor spending months interweaving the letters Y, M, W, and H in the most artistic manner, finally finishing it and presenting it to the discriminating eye of Mr. Janssen, and being told, “You left out the A.”