Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club

    Allegheny HYP Club

    Some of the very few small houses left in downtown Pittsburgh were taken over in 1930 by the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club, which hired big-deal architect Edward B. Lee to transform them into an elegant clubhouse. The club survives, having absorbed two of Pittsburgh’s most prestigious other clubs—the Pittsburgh Club and the Allegheny Club—to become the Allegheny HYP Club. We note also that the club survived the construction of the Alcoa Building, which has a notch cut out in the back to accommodate its small but powerful neighbor.

    Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club

  • Houses by Janssen & Abbott on Schenley Farms Terrace

    Most of the houses in Schenley Farms were built singly: usually the property owner chose an architect, though the land company built a few houses to sell on spec. But on Schenley Farms Terrace, Janssen & Abbott were hired to design a row of seventeen houses all at once. The result is one of those rare tract-house developments where the houses are little masterpieces that combine to make a beautiful and well-thought-out streetscape.

    Schenley Farms Terrace

    (The house at extreme left with the colonnaded balcony is not part of the Janssen & Abbott row.)

    Similar developments stick to one style, but on Schenley Farms Terrace you come across a Colonial Revival house, and then a crisply modern cottage, and then a Pittsburgh Foursquare, and then a French farmhouse. Somehow they all look comfortable together.

    Again, similar developments stick to one scale, but Janssen uses differences in height to make a streetscape that feels as though it just grew there.

    We have quite a large number of pictures here, so we put them behind a “more” link to avoid weighing down the front page.

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  • More Crocuses

    Crocuses
    A bunch of crocuses

  • Hampton Hall, Oakland

    Hampton Hall

    We have seen this Tudor palace before, but there is no reason we should not see it again, with some different details this time.

    Entrance and light well
    Lobby

    The entrance lobby. The interior is filled with richly colored tiles, some with decorative figures like this griffin.

    Griffin tile
    Stairway

  • Siberian Squill

  • Mattern Avenue, Dormont

    2943 Mattern Avenue

    Mattern Avenue is a short street that illustrates what Father Pitt calls the Dormont Model of Sustainable Development. In population density, Dormont is number 119 out of tens of thousands of municipalities in the United States, and it is the most densely populated municipality in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area—denser than Pittsburgh.1 Yet the streets do not feel crowded. Mattern Avenue has a mixture of large houses designed by prestigious architects, smaller single-family houses, duplexes, and an apartment building, so that a fairly large number of people are housed in a small area, but without piling them up into concrete warehouses. Instead, we get a pleasantly varied streetscape and a quiet residential street that feels roomy.

    The house above and below is by far the most original composition on the street. It seems as though the architect was told, “I want a bungalow, but with three floors.” So that was what the client got: a mad bungalow with some sort of growth disorder.

    2943
    Third-floor oriel
    (more…)

  • Forsythia

    Forsythia flowers

  • Store and Apartments by J. E. Cole, Hill District

    2909 Centre Avenue

    So far this is the only building old Pa Pitt has identified as designed by J. E. Cole, about whom he knows nothing other than that Cole designed this building. The storefront has been modernized, but otherwise the building is in near-original condition. The corner is an obtuse angle, and Father Pitt wonders whether the unusual seam at that corner was the result of the architect’s original plan, or of the low-bidding contractor’s refusal to trim the bricks properly without an extra payment. It was imitated many years later by whoever added the modern storefront.

    Dwelling House Savings

  • More Crocuses

    Crocuses
    A single crocus

  • Cathedral of Learning From Centre Avenue

    Top of the Cathedral of Learning
    Cathedral of Learning through winter trees