Alpha Terrace, a set of unusually fine Victorian rowhouses designed by James T. Steen1 in an eclectic Romanesque with bits of Second Empire and Gothic thrown in, is a historic district of its own. The houses are on both sides of Beatty Street in East Liberty. The row on the northwest side of the street went up in about 1885.
The houses on the southeast side of the street are a few years newer, probably from about 1894, and they incorporate more of the Queen Anne style, with shingles and ornate woodwork.
The rest of our pictures are from the sunny side of the street, for very practical photographic reasons. We’ll return when the light is better for the houses on the southeast side.
Separate ownership is not always kind to terraces like this, but the aluminum siding on the roof is about the worst alteration Alpha Terrace has suffered.
- Old Pa Pitt is nearly certain of this attribution. The Wikipedia article, possibly following the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, attributes the design to Murphy & Hamilton, but Father Pitt is fairly sure that Murphy & Hamilton were contractors, not architects; they probably built the terraces. Alpha Terrace is attributed to Steen in a Historic Resource Survey Form for another of his buildings that was demolished anyway (PDF). The style of Alpha Terrace is very similar to the style of Steen’s downtown YMCA (demolished long ago), which, though it was on a much grander scale, used the same prickly witch’s caps and squarish dormers; it was pictured in the American Architect and Building News for February 10, 1883.
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