Father Pitt

Why should the beautiful die?


Some Queen Anne Houses in Highland Park

5655 Stanton Avenue

The Highland Park Residential Historic District, which is coextensive with the neighborhood as defined by the city, preserves more good examples of Queen Anne houses than perhaps any other neighborhood, although Shadyside would come in a close second. Here is an especially splendid Queen Anne mansion on Stanton Avenue. (Addendum: This was the home of architect William Smith Fraser, which he designed and built for himself in 1891.1)

Perspective view
Through the trees
From across the street
807 Mellon Street

This house gives us two common Queen Anne elements that were missing from the mansion above: a turret and curved surfaces in the gable.

Perspective view
Front of the house in sun
831–841 North St. Clair Street

Here is a whole row of Queen Anne houses bulging with stubby turrets. They lean toward the Rundbogenstil end of the spectrum, which Father Pitt mentions because he misses no chance to say the word “Rundbogenstil.”

833 North St. Clair Street
5657 Stanton Avenue

This mansion on Stanton Avenue has been converted to apartments, but its basic outlines remain.

Front elevation
5811 Stanton Avenue

This last one might be better classified as “Stick style,” a closely related style that preceded but overlapped the Queen Anne style. Stick-style houses have more of an emphasis on woodwork, especially boards overlaid on the siding for contrasting trim, as we see here, and less of an emphasis on curves and complexities of form.

Front elevation
Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
  1. Franklin Toker, Pittsburgh: A New Portrait, p. 235. ↩︎

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