North Avenue between Federal Street and Allegheny General Hospital is a mixture of domestic buildings, with a couple of commercial buildings thrown in. We begin at Federal Street with a building that seems to have a story to tell us. Thirty years ago, this corner was the sort of place that Pittsburghers warned each other to stay away from. Now there’s a branch of Yinz Coffee here, and the district is filling in with shops and residents. But this building is only a quarter of its old self: old maps show a building with four floors here, and this is almost certainly that building with three of its floors amputated.
There was construction going on along the street when old Pa Pitt took his walk there, so you’ll have to forgive some debris in the pictures.
This building has apparently lost some elaborate Italianate trim around the windows. Ordinarily, Father Pitt prefers to see bricks left unpainted, but here is a case where painting the front would eliminate some ugly scars.
This looks like a narrow house that was early on extended by one bay, possibly when it was converted to apartments.
Now we come to an eclectic row of houses in a number of different styles from different eras.
This stone-fronted Romanesque house (it’s brick on the sides that don’t face the street) literally stands out in its row, thanks to a big turret that bulges out beyond the front walls of the rest of the houses.
The Aberlie house, which was probably built in about 1880, has its own Wikipedia article, which tells us that it is the Abelie House and was probably built in about 1880.
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