We’ve seen this house before, and here it is from a different angle. It sits on the side of a steep hill, and the best way to take in the front of it is to stand far away—in this case, in the South Side Cemetery.
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Fairy-Tale Cottage in Carrick
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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Sholten Arms, Carrick
Father Pitt has not been able to find the architect of this fairy-tale palace, but it is in good shape. It was built for Frank Sholten, a local newsdealer who apparently wanted to expand into the landlording business, in 1928, and a Sun-Telly photographer captured the building still under construction.
“Carrick Fourth Ward in Home Building,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, May 27, 1928, part 4, p. 12. The building has a near-twin in West Homestead, and some lucky day Father Pitt or one of his correspondents will find the name of the artist behind both of them. Meanwhile, we can appreciate the details, bathed in golden late-afternoon sun.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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The Louisa, Carrick
A typical small apartment building with storefronts that keeps many of its distinctive details, including the tiled overhang with exaggerated brackets. The windows have been replaced (although the art glass surrounding the stairwell windows is still there), and the storefront on the right has been heavily altered. But the quoins picked out in contrasting Kittanning brick still grab our attention as we walk by.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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St. Basil’s from a Distance, Carrick
Father Pitt took his new old Kodak superzoom to the South Side Cemetery to try it out. These pictures of St. Basil’s Church are not cropped; the lens has a very long range, although there are more recent superzoom cameras with even longer ranges. Herman J. Lang was the architect of the church.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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Carrick Hotel
Found at the Carrick-Overbrook Wiki. Last week we saw this picture of the old Carrick Hotel, with the Carrick Municipal Building behind it. The Municipal Building is still there, converted to a storefront. What happened to the hotel?
It’s still there, too, under decades of accretion.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. You would hardly recognize it, until you notice those distinctive dormers peering at you from behind the later overgrowth. This kind of development is typical in business districts that became prosperous but not too prosperous: prosperous enough for commercial frontage to be valuable, but not prosperous enough to make it worthwhile constructing larger buildings. Houses and other buildings grew storefronts in front, but the valuable original building remained behind the new construction. As the neighborhood aged, the commercial frontage became less valuable again, and it was adapted into offices or apartments.
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Silent-Era Theater in Carrick
This building shows up as a theater on a 1916 map, and that is all Father Pitt knows about it.
The intersection of Brownsville Road and Narrow Avenue (now Newett Street) in 1916. It is not documented at Cinema Treasures, where theater fanatics have catalogued 178 theaters in Pittsburgh, or at the expiring and impossible-to-navigate Carrick-Overbrook Wiki, so it may not have lasted very long as a theater. (And Father Pitt is only making the assumption that it was a movie theater rather than a live theater or vaudeville house, because the latter seems much less likely for the era and place.) If anyone from the neighborhood knows the story of this building, the information will be received with gratitude. The building is well kept: it has been updated just enough to be useful to its current tenant without destroying the original design of the exterior.
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Carrick Municipal Building
Carrick became a borough in 1904, and for this little all-in-one borough building hired the big-deal architect Edward Stotz.1 It must have created an impression of prosperity when it was built in 1905, and it still looks solid and respectable today, one year short of a century after the people of Carrick voted for the borough to be annexed by the city of Pittsburgh in 1926. It has been converted into a retail store, and the huge second-floor window makes an excellent display for the current tenant.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. The building originally had an elaborate baroque crest that has been shorn off. We can see it in this picture, where the municipal building appears behind the Carrick Hotel:
Found at the Carrick-Overbrook Wiki.
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Some Commercial Buildings on Brownsville Road, Carrick
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.
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Store and Apartments by Louis Stevens, Carrick
This was an early commission for Louis Stevens,1 who would be best known in his career for houses and mansions for the rich and the upper middle class. It was built in 1911 on Churchview Avenue (then called Church Avenue, but renamed Churchview when Carrick was taken into the city of Pittsburgh), just off Brownsville Road. Four years earlier, Stevens had been studying architecture in Carnegie Tech’s night school. The front of the building has been muddled a bit, but the renovations were done in a halfhearted manner that allows us to appreciate the original composition.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. - Our source for the attribution is this map of Stevens’ works created by a Google Maps user, to whom many thanks. ↩︎
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Endangered Buildings in Carrick
It is never pleasant, but old Pa Pitt feels as though he has a duty to document things that might be gone soon. Sometimes miracles happen, and we can always hope, but without a miracle we can only turn to the photographs to remember what has vanished.
“Berg Place,” a group of three apartment buildings along Brownsville Road in Carrick, probably cannot be saved. It’s a pity, because the buildings, in a pleasant Arts-and-Crafts style flavored with German Art Nouveau, have a commanding position along the street, and their absence will be felt. They were abandoned a few years ago, probably declared unsafe, and since then they have rotted quickly.
Some of the simple but effective Art Nouveau decorations in brick and stone.
These two buildings across the street from Berg Place, damaged by a fire, may possibly still be saved. At present one of them is condemned, but that is not a death sentence, and it looks as though prompt action was taken to secure the one on the corner after the fire. They are typical of the Mission-style commercial buildings that were popular in Carrick and other South Hills neighborhoods, and they ought to be preserved if at all possible. Carrick is not a prosperous neighborhood, but much of the commercial district is still lively, and with the increase in city property values the repairs might be a good investment.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS
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