Thornburg is a small borough in the Chartiers valley where we can find what is probably the best group of Shingle-style houses in the Pittsburgh area. There is some good evidence that most of them were designed by Edward M. Butz, an architect whose most famous work is the Western Penitentiary.(1) The Shingle style is rare in Pittsburgh, and though the houses are in a wide variety of forms, they share certain quirks—the second floor overhanging the first, the use of masonry for the first floor and shingles above, the exaggerated eaves—that suggest the hand of one architect in the different designs.
Footnotes
- Source: “Sixty Dwellings for Thornburg,” Pittsburg Daily Post, March 2, 1900, p. 6: “Architects E. M. Butz & Co., Park building, have completed plans for 10 of the 60 dwellings to be erected at Thornburg, a suburb of Pittsburg, located a short distance from Crafton. The owners of the houses will be D. C. and Frank Thornburg. The houses are estimated to cost from $5,000 to $8,000 each, and the total amount to be invested is estimated at about $325,000. The houses will be modern in every detail and Butz & Co. awarded the contract yesterday to Frank Metcalf, a Pittsburg contractor, for the erection of the first 10. ¶The plans call for 10 dwellings each to stand on a plot 25×38 feet. They will be two stories high, one story of brick and stone and the balance of frame with stained shingles. The first floor will contain a reception hall, parlor, dining room. kitchen, pantry, etc., while the second floor will contain a stair hall and four chambers and a finished attic will be divided into three chambers. The interior finish will be of hardwood. This is one of the largest building projects undertaken in that section, and if there is a demand for the dwellings the promoters will erect a number of others. The contract calls for the first batch of houses to be under roof by June 15.” It is probable that the rest of the sixty were not built, although other Shingle-style houses in the borough may be by Butz. (↩)
