Father Pitt

Why should the beautiful die?


The P. W. Hamilton Apartments on Bailey Avenue

312–318 Bailey Avenue

If you walk along Bailey Avenue on Mount Washington (a pleasant walk, by the way), you may notice some similar-looking apartment buildings scattered along the south side of the street. The double duplex above is one of them; we see it head on below.

312–318

You might also notice a distinctive ornament at the peak of the roofline:

312–318

Old Pa Pitt noticed it and made a not-too-outrageous guess that it was the initial of the owner. That turns out to be correct. These buildings were all owned by P. W. Hamilton, as we see on a 1923 plat map:

P. W. Hamilton Apts. on a plat map

Here are two of them a few doors apart—the one we saw above, and this one:

292–298 Bailey Avenue

These buildings have recently had a lot of spiffing up, and they look like very attractive places to live.

Open doors and stairways

With these two doors open, we can see how, as is usual with Pittsburgh duplexes, the doors to the upstairs units lead straight to a stairway.

There are three of these double duplexes, all the same design. Then, as we come to the eastern end of the street, opposite Grandview Park, we find the same design on a larger scale:

446–460 Bailey Avenue

It’s a double double duplex.

454–460
446–452
Wreath ornament

The H ornament is not here; instead we get little lunettes, one of them blank and one with a wreath ornament. But the building was owned by P. W. Hamilton, and its outline on the plat map shows how it is made by smashing two of the double duplexes together.

P. W. Hamilton apartments on a plat map
446–460

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