Carson Street on the South Side is reputed to be one of the best-preserved Victorian streetscapes in America. Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield may not come quite up to that standard, but it is probably second in Pittsburgh. The commercial district was built up in the 1880s and 1890s. Like Carson Street, it preserves many Victorian commercial buildings, along with a peppering of later styles. These pictures are all of the northeast side, because the sun was behind the southwest side.
A good example of the most basic form of Pittsburgh Rundbogenstil, the German hybrid of classical and Romanesque architecture that old Pa Pitt mentions every chance he gets because he likes to say “Rundbogenstil.” In the 1800s, before it became the most Italian of our Italian neighborhoods, Bloomfield was mostly German.
A Second Empire building from the 1880s.
This building dates from the 1890s. It probably had a date and inscription in that crest at the top of the façade, but later owners obliterated the evidence.
We saw this 1924 building before at dusk; here it is in bright sunlight. The bright light gives us a chance to appreciate the decorative details with a long lens.
