As Father Pitt has remarked more than once, the variety and quality of designs in the Mount Lebanon plans like Mission Hills are constantly delightful. Here is a short stroll down Parkway Drive in Mission Hills.
This one, unusually for the neighborhood, has had paste-on shutters applied to add sophistication to the home. Our friend Dr. Boli wrote an essay about those that generated some interesting responses from his correspondents.
Here is one that has real shutters, with hinges and everything.
Old Pa Pitt is always pleased when an architect understands that a house is a three-dimensional object, not just a façade with a box behind it, and gives it rewardingly different appearances from different angles.
And, finally, here is a bit of good news for the neighborhood and the metropolis:
This new house is replacing a house that vanished a few years ago (for reasons unknown to Father Pitt, who does not always keep up with the news, and perhaps a neighbor can inform us). It has reached the stage where we can judge the design, and it is a good one. Individually it may never be Father Pitt’s favorite house, but as a citizen of the neighborhood it gets everything right. It is of similar height and size to its neighbors, and it honors the historic styles around it—look at those three-over-one Craftsman-style windows—while still being distinctly its own 21st-century self, just as all the other houses in Mission Hills are distinct and original. This is a demonstration of how new buildings can be added to historic neighborhoods.
Cameras: Nikon COOLPIX P100; Sony Alpha 3000 with a 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens.
