A few sidewalk views along North Taylor Avenue and Monterey Street to show why strolling in the Mexican War Streets is such a delightful experience.
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Sidewalks of the Mexican War Streets
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A Corner in the Mexican War Streets
The Mexican War Streets are a dense rowhouse neighborhood, and as in most such neighborhoods, each block tended to have small businesses on the corners—especially neighborhood groceries and backstreet bars. The corner of Monterey Street and North Taylor Avenue had four such businesses, one on each corner. Only one of the storefronts is occupied as a business now, but the others retain most of the original features, and each building emphasized the corner location in its own way.
This one blunted its corner to make a corner entrance.
This one did the same, but without the expensive stone trim.
This one also has a corner entrance, but the rest of the building is rectangular, with the corner held up by a stout pole—a common arrangement in small corner storefronts.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. And finally this one has its entrance in the North Taylor Avenue front, but with a display window facing Monterey Street.
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Russell H. Boggs House and Trinity Lutheran Church, Mexican War Streets
Designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow very early in their practice, this house was built in 1888. For a long time it served as the parsonage for Trinity Lutheran Church next door, which created the odd spectacle of a church whose parsonage was taller and grander than the sanctuary.
If you look for downspouts on this house, you won’t find them. Oral tradition says that Mr. Boggs, one of the founders of the Boggs & Buhl department store, hated gutters; at any rate, his architects devised a system of internal drainage that, when it works, carries runoff through channels in the walls. When it doesn’t work, the grand staircase is a waterfall on a rainy day. When the church sold the house, the buyers had to spend a million dollars refurbishing it, and making the drainage system work again was where a lot of the money went. The house is now a boutique hotel under the name Boggs Mansion.
Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.
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Allegheny YMCA, Mexican War Streets
A North Side landmark for just about a century now, the Allegheny YMCA on North Avenue was designed by R. Maurice Trimble and built in 1926. It did not hide its light under a bushel: the letters YMCA are picked out in light bulbs at the top of the North Avenue façade.
Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.
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Emich Apartments, Mexican War Streets
A grand apartment house that would have been grander before it lost its cornice in front. Another “Emich Apartments,” taller and grander, stood where Allegheny General Hospital is today; both were named for developer W. A. Emich. This one was built on the site of the old Second Ward School in the city of Allegheny.
Addendum: We are fairly sure that the architect was William Wolfshafer (sometimes spelled Wolfschaffer). Source: Record & Guide, November 8, 1899, p. 727. “William Wolfshafer, 6717 Kelly street, has prepared plans for a large apartment house, which will be erected on North Avenue Allegheny, for William A. Emrick [sic], 326 Fourth avenue. It will be handsomely finished, all modern improvements and cost about $75,000.”
Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.
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Arch Street, North Side
Arch Street, which is now included in the Mexican War Streets despite not bearing the name of a battle or a general, is a typical North Side combination of dense rowhouses, small apartment buildings, and backstreet stores. Here are just a few sights within one block of the street.
An exceptionally elaborate Queen Anne house whose owner has used bright but well-chosen colors to emphasize the wealth of detail on the front.
Two modest houses from before the Civil War; the brick house at left is dated 1842.
A small apartment building with a well-balanced classical front.
Some fine woodwork surrounds a front door.
The colorful dormer steals the show, but enlarge the picture to appreciate the terra-cotta grotesques on the cornice.
This little building looks as though it dates from the 1920s. Although it is quite different in style from its neighbors, it fits harmoniously by sharing the same setback and similar height.
A backstreet grocery that is currently functioning as a backstreet grocery—an unusual phenomenon in city neighborhoods these days. The apartment building above it has some interesting and attractive brickwork.
Sony Alpha 3000.
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A Big Man’s Tiny House
Sony Alpha 3000. This tiny house on Arch Street, which is now part of the Mexican War Streets Historic District, is one of the less distinguished houses from an architectural point of view. Crammed into a half-size lot beside a much larger house, it has nothing but a little plaque on the front to tell you that a great man once lived here. This was the home of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., when he invented the Ferris wheel.
The great wheel was conceived as an answer to the Eiffel Tower. The Exposition Universelle in Paris had attracted the admiration of the world with the world’s tallest structure. Chicago was planning the World’s Columbian Exposition: what could possibly outdo the Eiffel Tower? George Ferris, until then a moderately successful engineer in Pittsburgh, designed the great wheel, and it was a success.
A few numbers will show what a colossal construction this was. It had 36 cars. Each car had 40 seats, with room for 20 more people standing. Altogether, more than two thousand people could ride the Ferris Wheel at once.
View from one gondola to the gondolas on the other side of the wheel. Note the relative size of the people in the cars. (From the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.) The Lumiere Brothers, pioneer moviemakers, captured the wheel in motion in 1896.
George Ferris never made much money from his great wheel; in fact he believed that the fair promoters had cheated him out of his share of the profits. In November of 1896, just three and a half years after the fair opened, Ferris died of typhoid fever. He never got rich enough to move out of this tiny house on Arch Street.
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Stony Romanesque in the Mexican War Streets
This stone-fronted Romanesque house on North Avenue is decorated with intricate carvings, and Father Pitt would guess that they were probably by Achille Giammartini, who was responsible for most of the best Romanesque decoration in Pittsburgh, and who also decorated the Masonic Hall just up the street.
Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church, Mexican War Streets
R. Maurice Trimble designed this charming little church, which was finished in 1909. It is still in nearly original condition, and still owned by its original congregation.
Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.
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More Houses on North Avenue in the Mexican War Streets
A couple of blocks of North Avenue, where we can see some fine Italianate houses of the Civil War era, interspersed with some towering Queen Anne mansions. We start at the corner of Palo Alto Street, where a Queen Anne house makes the most of a tiny lot by going up to a fourth floor.
These two houses share splendid porches, probably added later, since the porches match even though the houses do not. The owners of the houses have coordinated their efforts, so that the porches match.
Three more modest houses, though their full third floors give them a generous allotment of bedrooms.
A pair of houses that were both the peak of elegance in different eras. The Italianate one on the right goes for a simpler dignity; the Queen Anne on the left pulls out all the stops to make the most picturesque composition possible. Note the relative heights, by the way: high ceilings were a feature of the Italianate style in better houses, so that the house at left adds one more floor in exactly the same vertical height.
Seventeen years ago, Father Pitt published a picture of the front door of the house on the right. The picture was taken on 120 film with a folding Agfa Isolette.
Two simple and attractive Italianate houses, one of which has grown a partial fourth floor.
Here is an interesting document of how the neighborhood has changed. The house at left was originally an Italianate residence; the corner store may have been original or may have been added later. The projecting commercial building next to it, which probably dates from about 1920, was added when the house was taken over by the United States Casket Company, later the Melia Casket Company, which still inhabited the building until about twelve years ago. Both buildings have had a thorough renovation since the casket-makers moved out.
Two different interpretations of Italianate, one of which has sprouted an inartistic dormer to give it a fourth floor.
Finally, a center-hall house in a kind of late Greek Revival style; it occupies a double lot.
Sony Alpha 3000; Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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