This little house in the Dutch Colonial style caught Father Pitt’s eye as he was wandering in Mount Lebanon.
The materials and colors (though certainly not the roofline) reminded old Pa Pitt of a Dutch colonial house in Hurley, New York: the Bevier house at 25 Main Street, built in about 1720.
This picture was taken in 2000, but not much has changed, according to photographs on line.
Some time ago old Pa Pitt announced his ambition to photograph every house in Schenley Farms. The project is nearly complete; we have the exterior of just about every house in the Historic District. Instead of dumping hundreds of pictures in these pages, Father Pitt will simply refer you to the category Houses in the Schenley Farms National Historic District at Wikimedia Commons, where he has donated all his pictures and organized them by street. That way we can limit ourselves to occasional highlights here.
On Aline Street, Mount Washington.
A striking modernist Gothic church whose clean lines are lovingly preserved by the congregation. Below, we add some bonus utility cables to prove that this is Pittsburgh.
Virginia Manor is where the rich rich people live in Mount Lebanon. It’s full of houses designed by some of the most distinguished Pittsburgh architects of the 1920s and 1930s. Osage Road has some of the grandest houses, so here is your look at how the other half lives—unless you are the other half, in which case here is your hand mirror.
Under the Bell Telephone Company building.
This whimsical fairy-tale cottage is even more amusing when we know its history. According to architectural historian Franklin Toker, it was built on land owned by Edgar Kaufmann’s Kaufmann Development Company, so the architect, Theodore Eichholz, decided to make a parody of the Kaufmann mansion in Fox Chapel—La Tourelle, designed by Benno Janssen and named for its exaggerated conical turret.
In 2016, an architecture student (since graduated) named William Aldrich made a detailed model of La Tourelle in wood, which is probably the most thorough way to experience La Tourelle on line. You will see immediately what Eichholz was parodying.
The jumbled brickwork all over the front makes us suspect that Mr. Eichholz might be our Master of the Jumbled Bricks.
