This stone house makes a fine impression as you walk by on Reynolds Street. If you just glanced at it, you might miss a very unusual feature: the corner windows in the front bedrooms on the second floor. Corner windows were very popular for a while in the middle twentieth century in modernist residences: they had the very practical purpose of leaving large expanses of wall blank for furniture or decorations. But it is not common to see them on a house that probably dates from about 1900.
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We prefer not to think about it, but the unfortunate fact is that human beings have natural functions that must be attended to. If we attend to them in the street, we will be arrested. The alternative is to go to some place that is privately owned, where we are subject to the whims of the owner.
Our ancestors occasionally attempted to deal with the problem more forthrightly than we are willing to do. From a 1913 magazine:
Two new public comfort stations installed by the county commissioners at the Allegheny County courthouse in Pittsburgh on either side of the Fifth Avenue entrance have been opened for public use. There are two rooms provided, one for women and one for men. They have been finished in white marble and fitted with most modern plumbing appliances.
A rest room for women is furnished with chairs and couches, and the women’s station will be in charge of a matron from 8 a. m. to 11 p. m. Towels, soap, brushes and combs will be found in both stations free of charge. The men’s station will be open at all hours day and night.
With the opening of the new stations Allegheny County will have four public comfort stations in use in Pittsburgh, two on the Federal Street Bridge and the courthouse station.
—Building Age, 1913.
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These tiny houses on Frank Street have a historic importance far out of proportion to their cost and size. First of all, they are among the relatively few remaining works of the eccentric architectural genius and flimflam artist Titus de Bobula, the man who would have been Fascist dictator of Hungary if he had had better luck. Second, they are built of reinforced concrete, some of the very first American houses so built. Titus de Bobula was the apostle of concrete in his brief architectural career, and his influence would be hard to overestimate.
The houses have had their separate adventures since they were built, including some artificial siding. This one has had windows and front door replaced, but at least it shows the simple outlines of the design, including the bay window in front.
The house on the end may be the best preserved of the row.
Many sources say that twenty of these houses were built. Six remain, and old Pa Pitt believes there were never more than nine. The architect claimed to have built more, but we cannot rely on anything Titus de Bobula says about his work, because he was prone to exaggeration and outright fabrication.
The houses were an investment by multimillionaire newspaper magnate Eugene O’Neill, owner of the Dispatch and no relation to the playwright of the same name. He owned the land on Frank Street and along Greenfield Avenue to either side. Some architectural historians say that De Bobula rowhouses went up on Greenfield Avenue, but that is contradicted by old maps and today’s evidence.
These rowhouses on Greenfield Avenue, on the land once owned by Eugene O’Neill, were built at about the same time as the De Bobula houses, but these are standard brick. Old maps do show three more concrete houses on Lilac Street, perpendicular to the row on Frank Street, but those were replaced after the Second World War by two larger and more expensive houses:
These two houses stand where a row of three concrete houses, probably by De Bobula, stood in the first half of the twentieth century.
For more on Titus de Bobula and his very surprising career, you can see Father Pitt’s article on Titus de Bobula in Father Pitt’s Pittsburgh Encyclopedia.
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The Highland Building looms behind the tiny shops of Ellsworth Avenue.
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Above is the old Carron Street Baptist Church, which as you might guess is on Carron Street. It has not been a church for quite a while, and it has gone through some substantial alterations on its way to becoming a garage, so old Pa Pitt is not quite sure whether it ought to be added to the collection of churches with the sanctuary upstairs, or whether it simply had a high basement.
From the church that became a garage we walk just about a block to the garage that became a high-class furniture store.
This was the South Highland Garage, and as a work of architecture it is probably more distinguished than the Carron Street Baptist Church ever was. If you like, you may formulate your own sarcasm about the true American religion and our fitting sense of architectural priorities. But then you can remember that Calvary Episcopal Church and Sacred Heart are just a short stroll away, and your sarcasm will wither on your tongue.
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This row of Queen Anne houses on Negley Avenue in Shadyside surely strikes every passer-by, if for nothing other than their turrets with witches’ caps. The other details are also worth noticing: the ornamental woodwork and the roof slates, for example. The houses are just detached enough that we can see that the sides are made of cheaper brick rather than the stone that faces the street.
The last one in the row lost its cap many years ago, but in compensation has been ultra-Victorianized with extra polychrome woodwork, as we see on the dormer below.
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One of many bridges around here designed by George S. Richardson, the Liberty Bridge opened in 1928, connecting the Liberty Tubes (which had opened four years earlier) directly to downtown. Here we see it from the south shore of the Mon.
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This house probably dates from the 1870s, making it much earlier than the city neighborhood that filled in around it. Because Point Breeze is such a desirable neighborhood (this house is just around the corner from the Frick Art Museum), it has been worth the expense to restore this house to something like its original appearance.
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