Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • Rafferty Rows, Squirrel Hill

    Rowhouses on Wilkins Avenue

    These two long rows of houses where Beeler Street meets Wilkins Avenue make a striking impression now, but they must have been more striking when they were built in the early 1900s. For several years they sat out in the farmlands of Squirrel Hill, forming a strange urban island (along with two rows of three houses across Beeler Street) in the midst of the otherwise rural East End. We caught them on a dim and rainy evening.

    1910 fire-insurance map.
    Rowhouses on Beeler at Wilkins

    Note how the rhythm of the houses is made more interestingly varied by alternating the peaked and rounded fronts but running the oriels in a series of three.

    Row of houses on Beeler Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Acorn Hill

    3108 Norwood Avenue

    Acorn Hill is a little enclave in the larger neighborhood known to residents as Observatory Hill, and on city planning maps as Perry North. It has some unusually fine houses in a wide variety of styles, built up over a period of about half a century.

    Map of Acorn Hill
    Map of Acorn Hill, adapted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap, used under the Open Database License.
    3104 Norwood Avenue
    Dormer
    3104 Norwood Avenue
    3070 Marshall Road

    In any neighborhood this one would be an extraordinary house. It would not be out of place in the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony. The porch has been glassed in and the windows in the dormers have been replaced, but the house retains most of its architectural integrity. Father Pitt does not know the architect yet, but among the local architects known to have been influenced by those German and Austrian art magazines that found their way to Pittsburgh we may mention Frederick Scheibler, Kiehnel & Elliott, and Edward Weber.

    3070 Marshall Road
    3076
    7 Marshall Road
    Dormer
    Gable
    Front of 7 Marshall Road
    Side of 7 Marshall Road
    3080 Marshall Road
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • A Foursquare in Carrick

    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    There’s nothing particularly special about this house, except that it’s a good example of how an architect can vary the incidentals of the usual Pittsburgh Foursquare to produce a pleasing design. The dormer has been altered a bit, but its distinctive central arch remains, though it has been filled with a rectangular stock window.

  • Commercial Building on Fifth Avenue, Coraopolis

    941 5th Avenue, Coraopolis

    It might look better with a little paint, but this commercial building preserves some interesting details that might have disappeared if its owners had been more prosperous

    941 and 943 Fifth Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Some Houses on Standish Boulevard in Seminole Hills, Mount Lebanon

    75

    More houses from Seminole Hills, for which no excuse is needed, since the variety of styles and the imaginative designs speak for themselves.

    Turret
    (more…)

  • Collect ’Em All!

    Maywood

    This small apartment building on Overlook Drive in Mount Lebanon is the Maywood.

    Entrance to the Maywood

    If you’ve spent any time walking around in the Great State of Mount Lebanon (as Peter Leo used to call it), you might recognize it. But you might not have seen it here. Perhaps you saw it over there:

    Meadowbrook

    This is the Meadowbrook on Meadowcroft Avenue.

    Meadowbrook

    Or maybe you saw…

    140 Academy Avenue

    The Wil-O-Be on Academy Avenue. Or…

    El Ronson

    This one on McCully Street was called El Ronson, which is old Pa Pitt’s new favorite name for an apartment building.

    Entrance to El Ronson

    Or perhaps you saw…

    266 Beverly Road

    It seems that this one on Beverly Road had only its address for a name. The lintels are slightly different, and the roof is flat.

    266 Beverly Road

    And then there’s…

    The Harmon

    The Harmon, on the left. The Shirley, next to it, is the same basic design, but its variation of the detail strikes us as almost daring after all the others we’ve seen.

    We have not exhausted the incarnations of this apartment building, but this should be enough to start your collection. Now you can go out into the streets of Mount Lebanon and keep an eye open, and eventually you may be able to collect the complete set.

  • Building at Pearl Street and Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield

    4701 Liberty Avenue

    This building was put up between 1903 and 1910, and that is all old Pa Pitt knows about it. The extra-tall third floor looks like a lodge meeting hall, but it does not appear on maps as a lodge. The ground floor was a bank for many years. The building is going through a thorough renovation now, including new windows all around, fortunately the right size for the window openings.

    Pearl Street is not quite perpendicular to Liberty Avenue, so this building has the common Pittsburgh problem of an obtuse angle to solve. You might not notice the solution unless you look closely.

    Odd angle at cornice level
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Sweetgum Leaves on the Sidewalk

    Colorful sweetgum leaves fallen from the tree

  • Some Houses on Greenridge Lane, Green Tree

    1109 Greenridge Lane

    Most Pittsburghers probably think of Green Tree as the quintessential postwar dormitory suburb. The borough does have a longer history, however, and one small area near the intersection of Greentree Road and Potomac Avenue was built up with unusually fine houses in the 1920s and 1930s. Greenridge Lane is part of that little enclave.

    1109
    1126
    1126
    1126
    1127
    1130
    1130
    1131
    1134
    1134

  • Some Queen Anne Houses in Highland Park

    5655 Stanton Avenue

    The Highland Park Residential Historic District, which is coextensive with the neighborhood as defined by the city, preserves more good examples of Queen Anne houses than perhaps any other neighborhood, although Shadyside would come in a close second. Here is an especially splendid Queen Anne mansion on Stanton Avenue. (Addendum: This was the home of architect William Smith Fraser, which he designed and built for himself in 1891.1)

    Perspective view
    Through the trees
    From across the street
    807 Mellon Street

    This house gives us two common Queen Anne elements that were missing from the mansion above: a turret and curved surfaces in the gable.

    Perspective view
    Front of the house in sun
    831–841 North St. Clair Street

    Here is a whole row of Queen Anne houses bulging with stubby turrets. They lean toward the Rundbogenstil end of the spectrum, which Father Pitt mentions because he misses no chance to say the word “Rundbogenstil.”

    833 North St. Clair Street
    5657 Stanton Avenue

    This mansion on Stanton Avenue has been converted to apartments, but its basic outlines remain.

    Front elevation
    5811 Stanton Avenue

    This last one might be better classified as “Stick style,” a closely related style that preceded but overlapped the Queen Anne style. Stick-style houses have more of an emphasis on woodwork, especially boards overlaid on the siding for contrasting trim, as we see here, and less of an emphasis on curves and complexities of form.

    Front elevation
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. Franklin Toker, Pittsburgh: A New Portrait, p. 235. ↩︎