Source: Pittsburg Press, December 18, 1905, p. 20. “Architects Alden & Harlow have plans for a $20,000 residence to be erected at Negley and Elgin avenues for A. E. Nieman.” In Margaret Henderson Floyd’s book Architecture After Richardson, the name is spelled “Niemann,” but the name is Nieman on plat maps and in city directories, and, yes, old Pa Pitt was squirrely and obsessive enough to look it up in Polk’s. ↩︎
Now St. Paul Baptist Church. Built in 1887, it was designed by Brooklyn architect Lawrence B. Valk, whose church designs can be found all over the country. (In about 1900, Valk and his son moved to Los Angeles, where they became bungalow specialists but continued turning out the occasional church.)
The tower with its huge open Romanesque arch dominates the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Penn Avenue. After the tower, the most eye-catching thing is the porch, with its even huger arch and its crust of terra-cotta tiles.
The side entrance also gets a big arch, and even the basement door gets a stony arched porch.
This rambling pile is currently divided into seven apartments (judging by a count of electric meters), but it seems to have been built as a house for C. S. Caruthers at some time around the turn of the twentieth century. It looks as though Mr. Caruthers was going for the plantation look, and the two-storey columns and pediment, with the swagged frieze, still catch attention on Perrysville Avenue. It is hard to tell how the house was originally arranged; perhaps the wing on the right side was an open porch and balcony. The house has become a muddle over the years, but its position on a curve in the avenue guarantees that those columns will be noticed.
The Carrick business district is oddly discontinuous, with several clots of commercial buildings along Brownsville Road interspersed with less densely developed areas. Here are a few buildings in the clot near the intersection with Churchview Avenue. Above, an interesting building that looks more Chicago than Pittsburgh, with some modernistic Prairie Style details and charming little round-topped dormers with oval windows that will probably cost a fortune if they ever have to be replaced. For some reason someone decided to paint the blond Kittanning brick of the front grey, which was not an ideal choice but might have been the simplest way to get rid of graffiti.
This is a building in a style we might call Provincial Renaissance. The ground floor has been remodeled, probably more than once, and while it is not a good match for the rest of the building, old Pa Pitt will admit to a sneaking admiration for the impressive glass-block bay in the front.
Here is a building that had the typical Pittsburgh problem of a three-dimensional triangle to solve, where the architect had to deal with not only an awkward angle but also a steep rise behind the building. Whoever it was solved the problem attractively.
This building preserves much of its original detail, including the date 1904 in the crest. The ground floor, uglified by siding going in random directions, would look much better painted green to match the cornice and crest; but at least it is well maintained.
Finally, this building had an expensive and tasteless modernization applied about five years ago, replacing an earlier expensive and tasteless modernization that probably dated from the 1950s and had not aged well. The terra cotta around the entrance to the second floor hints at what the ground floor might have looked like originally.
North Point Breeze is an eclectic mixture of every kind of housing from Queen Anne mansions to duplexes to medium-sized apartment buildings. A walk on just one block of McPherson Boulevard passes a jumbled assortment of styles. Since the neighborhood has not been rich in the past few decades, many of the buildings preserve details that would have been lost if their owners had been wealthier.
We begin with a Shingle Style house that has lost its shingles but retains its angular projections and low-sloped roof.
A narrow stone-fronted Queen Anne house with a square turret. For some reason the stone has been painted white. The porch pediment preserves some elaborate woodwork.
A brick house laid out like a narrow Pittsburgh Foursquare; its outstanding feature is the round oriel on the second floor.
Here is a simple but large Pittsburgh Foursquare. Many of its distinctive details have been lost, but the round bay in the dining room must be very pleasant from the inside.
An older foursquare with original shingles and elaborate woodwork.
A double house, probably from the 1920s, that keeps its Mediterranean-style tiled roof.
A small apartment building.
A matched set of duplexes with Mission-style tiled overhangs.
Finally, a double duplex that must have looked up to date when it was built. It probably had a tiled overhang along the roofline above the second-floor windows.
“Penn avenue always has been and seems to continue to be the Mecca of furniture houses,” wrote George Esterhammer in the Pittsburg Press in 1905,1 and indeed Penn Avenue between Ninth and Tenth was lined with huge furniture dealers on both sides for more than a century. (See Spear and Company, for example.) Mr. Esterhammer was the architect of this building, which was designed to the latest fireproof standards, including a 10,000-gallon tank on the roof and sprinklers throughout.
“The fireproof floors will be covered with narrow white maple,” Mr. Esterhammer continued, “thus allowing to display to better advantage the beauty of carpets and rugs. The front on Penn Avenue will be of plate glass, Cleveland sandstone, buff brick and ornamental fire flashed terra cotta. The main entrance and the stories above are a special feature, highly ornamented and will, in the opinion of the writer, be striking and attractive.”
The architect’s elevation was published with the article, so we can compare the building as designed to the building as it stands now. The crest has been lost, but other alterations have been minimal. The ground floor has been sensitively updated for a restaurant and storefront, but overall the building makes very much the same impression it must have made when it was new. “Altogether,” said Mr. Esterhammer, “Mr. Wildberg’s new building will lift up its head proud among its neighbors,” and it still does.
“Penn Avenue Improvement,” Pittsburg Press, June 18, 1905. The name is spelled “Easterhammer” above the article, but “Esterhammer” in the illustration caption and in other construction listings we have seen. He was a member of the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Techniker-Verband, and in their membership listings his first name is spelled “Georg.” ↩︎
