Father Pitt

Category: Mount Lebanon

  • Triple-Insulated Model House, Mount Lebanon

    Triple-Insulated Model House

    Thomas Benner Garman, one of the leading architects of Mount Lebanon, designed this as a builder’s “Triple-Insulated” model house. It was promoted by the Sun-Telegraph as it was going up in 1937. “Triple-insulation, the builder explains, means the use of materials to armor the house against fire, water and weather.”1

    Triple-Insulated Model House

    Given a corner lot, Garman responded by giving the house two fronts. The front door is on a typical Colonial Revival façade of the sort that we see hundreds of in Mount Lebanon—many of them designed by Garman.

    Triple-Insulated Model House

    But around the corner is a porch with two-storey columns, giving the house a secondary plantation-style front.

    Triple-Insulated Model House
    Triple-Insulated Model House
    Triple-Insulated Model House
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
    1. “Insulated House Framework Up,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 10, 1937, p. 29. ↩︎
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  • Three Variations on a Colonial Theme in Twin Hills, Mount Lebanon

    885 North Meadowcroft Avenue

    By the time these houses were being put up, probably in the late 1930s or early 1940s, the “Colonial” style had grown almost to a mania. It would take over the housing market in the second half of the twentieth century to such an extent that nine out of ten houses in real-estate listings of the 1990s were described as “colonial,” though most of them bore little resemblance to any architecture known from before the American Revolution.

    These three houses are all built on the same basic plan: the rooms arranged around a small center hall with stairway. The house above proclaims its Colonial ambitions with a front door surrounded by a simple and attractive classical frame.

    889 North Meadowcroft Avenue

    The main house is on the same plan as the previous house, but here a front porch is added, and a charming garage with miniature cupola plays up the Colonial theme.

    905
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    Once again the same basic layout, but here the second floor is done in siding (wood originally) instead of brick, and a small vestibule is added at the front entrance.

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  • Castletone Apartments, Mount Lebanon

    Entrance to the Castletone Apartments

    A modernist building typical of the postwar apartment boom, including the tall stairwell light made of glass blocks—a Pittsburgh product much employed in the middle twentieth century. To old Pa Pitt’s ears, “Castletone” sounds like the name of a third-string record company, but the apartments are in a very convenient location, just down the street from the Mount Lebanon subway station on the Red Line.

    Castletone Apartments
    Castletone Apartments
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Fairy-Tale Cottage in Virginia Manor, Mount Lebanon

    380 Morrison Drive
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    One of those visions of a fantasy past that resemble storybook illustrations more than they do any real historical architecture. This one is exceptionally fine, the fantastical elements carried out with good taste, and of course the snow added to the fairy-tale effect.

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  • Mount Lebanon Presbyterian Church

    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    A view with a long lens from about three-quarters of a mile away.

  • Some Houses on Roycroft Avenue, Mount Lebanon

    45 Roycroft Avenue in the snow

    This side of Roycroft Avenue—which was the sunny side yesterday afternoon—is in the St. Clair Terrace plan (the other side is part of a different plan). As with many of the plans in the Mt. Lebanon Historic District, the lots were sold off to buyers who would hire their own architects to design their dream houses. The result is a pleasingly eclectic collection of houses whose designs are all of high quality. We’ve seen some of these houses before, but the deep snow added an irresistible picturesqueness.

    49
    55
    57
    61
    73
    77
    81
    85
    89
    93
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Row of Apartment Buildings on Shady Drive East, Mount Lebanon

    777 and 779 Shady Avenue East

    A row of four originally identical apartment buildings with Jacobean detailing.

    Row of apartment buildings on Shady Avenue East
    781 and 783
    Entrance
    Entrance

    This entrance seems to preserve its original details better than the others.

    A different entrance

    On the other hand, the colored tiles beside the door at this entrance are probably original, but have disappeared from the other three entrances.

    The whole row
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Fairy-Tale Apartment Building in Mount Lebanon

    189 Castle Shannon Boulevard, Mount Lebanon

    Somehow the line for the Mount Lebanon Historic District was drawn just to the left side of this building, leaving it unhistorical, though taking in a much more pedestrian postwar apartment building across the street. Fortunately, historic district or no historic district, most of the details have been preserved, although the original windows would have added a layer of artistry that their simpler modern replacements lack.

    Upstairs window

    The art glass in the stairwell has been preserved.

    Entrance
    Front door

    The front door is a work of art in itself. Enlarge the picture and admire the door pull.

    Entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Double Houses on Shady Drive, Mount Lebanon

    700 Block of Shady Drive East

    A long stretch of Shady Drive is lined on the southwest side with two rows of double houses, identical except that one row is built of sand-colored brick and the other of sooty dark red brick. Individually the buildings are attractive examples of the typical small Pittsburgh terrace with Mission-style details; as a whole row, they add up to something more impressive. Light snow was falling when we took these pictures a few days ago.

    738 and 736
    700 block
    700 block in dark brick
    774 and 772
    742 and 740

    Some of the houses have had their front yards scooped out to make driveways, and a few have added garages in the basement.

    746 and 744

    We may take it as admitted that the overhangs that decorate the upstairs windows have no practical use at all, since in half the buildings they hang over the bedroom windows and in the other half those are left naked, with an overhang over the small windows that probably look out from the bathrooms. The decorative crests similarly alternate.

    700

    The alternating placement of the overhangs and the crests of the buildings actually creates a more regular rhythm in the row, taking into account the spaces between the buildings.

    Sand-colored row
    Dark red row
    Sand-colored row
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • A Few Houses on Parkside Avenue in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon

    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon

    Sunset Hills is a middle-class plan, compared to the upper-crustier Mission Hills or Beverly Heights, but many of its more modest homes were designed by well-known architects, and they form a museum of middle-class styles of the 1920s and 1930s. Here are just a few houses across from Pine Cone Park, a little triangular parklet at the irregular intersection of Parkside Avenue and Sunset Drive.

    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    House in Sunset Hills, Mount Lebanon
    Canon PowerShot S45; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.