Henry Gilchrist designed many fashionable mansions for the rich and the upper middle classes. This 1904 Tudor house on Callowhill Street is typical of the “English style” of the time, but the details of the half-timbering are unusually rich. The house is very similar, but not identical, to one Gilchrist designed two years later in Schenley Farms. In this house, though, the small-paned Tudor windows have been preserved, and they add to the picturesque old-English effect.1
This HDR picture of the house, made up of three different exposures, looks a bit artificial but brings out the details in the woodwork.
Source for the attribution: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, August 31, 1904, p. 563. “Mr. E. E. Arensburg will erect a dwelling on Callowhill street, from plans prepared by Architect H. D. Gilchrist, Frick Building.” Confirmed by a 1923 plat map, where the house belongs to “M. Arnesburg” (note spelling). ↩︎
Paul Irwin designed this house for R. P. McAllister; it was built in about 1920. (Father Pitt knows this information because the owners of the house helpfully inscribed it on a bronze plaque around the corner at the delivery entrance.) Though it is eclectic in its influences, everything works in harmony, from the Georgian front door to the Japanese eyebrow in the roofline to the surprising outbreaks of half-timbering in the rear.
The late Franklin Toker believed that these houses were probably designed by Frederick Scheibler. He was following the original scholars of Frederick Scheibler, Shear and Schmertz, who brought poor old Scheibler out of obscurity in his old age in time to see himself hailed as a prophet of modern architecture.
Father Pitt hates to contradict Dr. Toker, whose encyclopedic knowledge of Pittsburgh architecture was probably unmatched; but Toker has been wrong before. Martin Aurand, whose biography of Scheibler will probably remain the definitive one for generations to come, lists these houses under the “misattributions.”
Old Pa Pitt himself is of the Aurand opinion, and in fact Father Pitt has probable grounds for attributing these houses—without, however, claiming complete certainty—to Benno Janssen. His reason is that there is a very similar terrace in Oakland (368–376 McKee Place) that is almost certainly by Janssen & Abbott. Father Pitt hopes to have pictures of those houses soon; meanwhile, you can take his word for it—or look them up on Google Street View—that it would be odd if one of these terraces were by Janssen & Abbott and the other by Scheibler.
These houses are yet another clever answer to the question of how to design a terrace of relatively inexpensive houses so that they are architecturally attractive and distinctive—so that, in other words, they make potential tenants think they’re getting something special. Compare them, for example, to the row just next door to the left, which was built on a lower budget to a much more ordinary design.
The 1100 block of Portland Street was built by a company that included the architects Robinson & Winkler, to whom we therefore attribute these unusually florid houses.1 In plan the houses are the usual Pittsburgh Foursquare, but varied with unusual details that make the changing scene a constant delight as we walk up the street.
Just the dormers could form an album for the instruction and amusement of other architects.
Source: Pittsburg Press, September 29, 1905. “The Highland Realty Co. has applied for a Pennsylvania charter. The company has been organized by Architects Charles M. Robinson and George Winkler, Contractors D. M. Fair and the East End Attorneys J. E. Wise and W. E. Minor. Its primary purpose is the building of high-class houses in the East End. Six such residences, to cost about $10,000 each, have already been started by Mr. Fair on the west side of Portland Avenue, near Hampton street, in the North Negley district.” All the houses on both sides of the 1100 block of Portland Street, north of Hampton, are of the same dimensions, with flamboyant details that mark them as probably all the work of the same designers. They appeared between the 1903–1906 layer and the 1910 layer at Pittsburgh Historic Maps. ↩︎
Three similar houses in a row, Pittsburgh Foursquares with dignified classical detailing, and all three in beautiful shape. Father Pitt has was told by the owner of one of them, an architect and community activist, that they were designed by Ulysses J. L. Peoples.
Although the houses clearly go together, window placements and other details vary.
“Modern Ionic” capitals—the kind where the volutes (the spiral things) stick out at the four corners, as opposed to classical Ionic capitals, which are meant to be seen from the front and have pairs of volutes rolled up like a scroll.
A trio of bay-fronted apartment buildings on Jackson Street. The design is not out of the ordinary, but it is a neat and elegant implementation of the ordinary. The bays, as Father Pitt likes to point out, are not mere decoration: they really do suck in the light, which is valuable for people who like natural light.
Perhaps the best way to describe the architect Frederick Sauer is to say that he was a high-functioning mad genius. He produced some very respectable church designs—St. Stephen Proto-Martyr, St. Stanislaus Kostka, and St. Mary of the Mount, to name three. Meanwhile, he went home every evening and started pulling rocks out of his back woods and piling them up into whimsical buildings with his own hands.
When he designed a private residence, Sauer sometimes pushed the limits of current styles. Here is a big stony house built from his design in 1893. It hits some of the fashionable Romanesque notes, but that immense crowstepped Flemish gable makes a big impression on the neighbors. (The high-pitched roof and big gables also give the house a roomy third floor.)
When we last saw this triple building, it was getting a fresh coat of paint. The new color scheme looks much better, and old Pa Pitt offers his congratulations to the people with taste at Mozart Management.
The three connected buildings were put up in 1901 as the Howard, the Delaware, and the Norfolk, and we can just barely make out the ghosts of the inscriptions above the entrances. The architect was William E. Snaman.1 The Norfolk, above, preserves the original appearance. In the other two, the balconies have been filled in to make closets, and they looked forbiddingly blank with the old paint scheme; the more artistic new scheme at least emphasizes the surviving trim.
Source: Pittsburg Post, September 25, 1900. “It developed yesterday that ex-Mayor Bernard McKenna and a syndicate of local capitalists will be the owners of the three apartment houses now in course of erection in the Highland avenue residence district, particulars of which were announced in this column last week. They were designed by Architect William E. Snaman, and the contract for their erection has been let to L. E. Umstead, of Allegheny. Each will stand on a lot 40×100 feet each at Highland avenue and Bryant street, and will be of brick and stone, and three stories high. When completed and ready for occupancy the houses will represent an investment of over $100,000.” Thanks to David Schwing for finding the clipping. ↩︎
Designed by Tasso Katselas, this 22-storey apartment tower opened in 1962. It has reverted to its original name, Highland House, after some years as “the Park Lane.”
Many projects for skyscraper apartments or hotels were proposed for Highland Park, but this is the only one that ever succeeded. “A dramatic use of the Miesian glass cage formula applied to a 22 story apartment house” was how James D. Van Trump described it in “The Stones of Pittsburgh.” “Located on the edge of Highland Park it seems to float above a nearby reservoir.”
Miesian is a good term for it: the building adopts the colonnade of stilts that became the signature of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Many imitators of Mies seem to lose courage and make the peripteral colonnade a narrow and useless space; see, for example, the Westinghouse Building. Katselas, on the other hand, if anything exaggerated the width of the porch, so that the ground floor is reduced to a little entrance cage, leaving a big broad outdoor space under the shelter of twenty-one floors of steel and glass.
This is a big apartment complex, but it is not nearly as big as it was meant to be.
In the beginning of 1939, an apartment complex was proposed for this land. it would require zoning changes in an area that was mostly single-family houses and mansions, and when residents saw the designs by architect Clifford Lake, there was much loud protest.
“Mercer Plans Big Apartment,” Pittsburgh Press, January 12, 1939, p. 5.
It would be a huge complex of interlinked towers, nine storeys high, that would completely change the character of Negley Avenue. “It will be necessary for City Council to change the district from a Class A to a Class C zone before work can be started,” the Press reported.
It was obvious from the reaction that the plans had been far too ambitious. By May, the plans had shrunk. “Original plans for the structure have been scaled down from a nine-story 623-family apartment to the present six-story building, Mr. Lake said.”
But many of the residents nearby were still not satisfied. Give them an inch, they thought, and who knows how many ells they might take?
“You well understand,” said an attorney for the opposing property owners, “that it is impossible under the law to negotiate what kind of structure will be built after the zoning ordinance is passed.
“They propose to change the law so that hotels, educational and charitable institutions, jails and commercial businesses can be placed in a district where these people have built homes.”
It was not until a year later, in 1940, that a building permit was applied for. But the fight wasn’t over. When the zoning law was changed, residents went to court, and they won. Then came the Second World War, which was an even bigger fight than the zoning battle.
Finally, in 1946, the zoning law was changed to permit three-storey apartments in the area, and construction of the reduced complex begin in 1947, finishing in 1948.
Perhaps because of the long fight, the complex makes a surprisingly modest impression from the street. The landscaping is lush and park-like: this complex, like Gateway Center, makes good on the promise of “towers in a park,” although “towers” is a bit generous for buildings with three floors and a high basement.
The buildings themselves are fairly ordinary, not the dream towers Mr. Lake envisioned in 1939. The entrances, however, are decorated in late-Art-Deco fashion to maintain the impression that you are approaching something special.
The sides of the buildings facing the garden court have been given ridiculously narrow cartoon paste-on shutters, which do them no favors. The sides facing the side streets have no shutters and look the way Mr. Lake meant them to look.
