Father Pitt has featured this row of modest but attractive houses with Romanesque details before, but he decided to get some better pictures of the whole row while the sun was shining on the front. The composite picture above gives us a very good impression of the row as a whole, and you will probably notice that the houses are not the same width. The two at the left are wider than the rest. You might think that meant they were bigger, perhaps designed to rent for more money, but you would be mistaken. The houses are not rectangular: 24th Street marks a kink in the street grid of the South Side. The change in width distributes the area more evenly among the houses on their trapezoidal lot: the narrower houses are also deeper.
The houses were built as rental properties in the 1890s, to judge by the fact that they appear first on the 1903–1906 layer at the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, all owned by one Jonathan O. Phillips, who owned the empty lot in 1890. Mr. Phillips still owned the row in 1923, the last layer on the map where property owners are marked.
From the Fox Way end of the row. Note the extension behind the last house.
The Sidney Street end of the row, where the houses are wider but shallower: note the lack of extension behind.
From the parking lot across the street.
