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.
In domestic architecture, Paul Scheuneman was a skillful exponent of what old Pa Pitt calls the Fairy-Tale Style: designs that emphasize a fantastically romantic vision of the past rather than historically accurate architecture.
The Arkansas Soft Pine Mansion was a demonstration home sponsored by the Pittsburgh Press and the Arkansas Soft Pine Bureau. The use of Arkansas soft pine for interior paneling, was, of course, a prominent feature of the house.
Across the street is another demonstration house designed by Scheuneman:
“The American Home” opened for inspection in 1935. It was sponsored by the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph and General Electric, and of course General Electric appliances were installed wherever electric appliances could be demonstrated.
Originally the Wallace Memorial Presbyterian Church. In 2013, Dormont Presbyterian Church closed, and its congregation merged with this one; the two congregations together took the appropriate name Unity.
The current church building was put up in 1952 in the fashionable New England Colonial style; it’s a good example of that type.
The smaller Gothic church replaced by the 1952 church is still standing next to it, now in use as a music school.
In Pittsburgh, the Egyptian style is almost always associated with the death business, so it is no surprise to learn that this little building was a monument dealer before it became Green Tree’s oddest office building. The fact that it sits directly across the road from the entrance to Chartiers Cemetery is another clue. It is right on the border of Green Tree, at the edge of a little neighborhood called Rook, which once had a station on the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, and still has a large freight yard belonging to the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway.
This enormous tower is a favorite visual landmark for small-plane pilots. It’s visible from miles away on the ground, too, depending on where you may happen to be, and it’s the most distinctive feature of the otherwise rather generic suburban borough of Green Tree.
The borough seems to have decided on spelling the name “Green Tree” as two words, but it is pronounced as one word, and the main street of the borough is still spelled “Greentree Road.”
This spectacularly odd building houses the headquarters of M. S. Jacobs & Associates, an engineering firm. But the Egyptian style, and the location right across the street from the Chartiers Cemetery, tell us that it was originally in the death business; in fact, according to the all-knowing Internet, it was built in 1920 for a monument dealer.
