If you look closely, you can see that there is a seam right down the middle of the Isabella Street face of this building. It was put up in two stages: the left half in 1906, the right half after 1910.
Kerr & Snodgrass were wholesale wallpaper dealers—obviously very successful ones. They commissioned William J. Shaw of Bellevue to design this building, and it was announced in the Gazette for October 15, 1905, with a reproduction of Shaw’s rendering.1 (Note that the building grew a ninth floor by the time it was actually constructed; apparently Kerr & Snodgrass could hardly keep up with their own prosperity.) The rendering shows the front on Isabella Street and the side along Vulcan Way. According to the news story, this building was to be very similar to the one on the other side of Vulcan Way, which has since disappeared, replaced by a bigger building.
This building has prospered with the rise of the North Shore as a desirable address; it is now known as Four North Shore Center. Its next-door neighbor on Sandusky Street is the Andy Warhol Museum.
Kerr & Snodgrass were willing to spend more than usual for a mere warehouse: the two lower floors are stone, not brick, and festooned with fine carved decorations.
- “Allegheny Gets Another Fine Wholesale Business Structure,” Gazette, October 15, 1905. ↩︎
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