In Pittsburgh, a “rowhouse” is generally any house that shares a wall with its neighbors. But there are rowhouses in a stricter sense: rows of houses built all at once, as more or less one building divided into individual residences. One such row is in the 1800 block of Carey Way, a row of modest Italianate alley houses all put up at once. If he had to guess, old Pa Pitt would date it to the 1870s. One of its remarkable features is its breezeway. Most breezeways in Pittsburgh are narrow passages between houses, but this row has one breezeway in the middle big enough to drive a wagon through. That is probably the point: it leads to a courtyard from which deliveries of coal and other staples could be made to the backs of all the houses. Under separate ownership, the houses have ceased to be entirely identical, but their common origin is still apparent.
