Category: Mount Lebanon

  • Garage Done Right

    248 Orchard Drive

    In the 1920s and 1930s, designers of houses often made them into fairy-tale cottages, in which every detail was carefully managed to evoke picturesque fantasies of old England or France. But this was also the time when built-in garages were becoming a requirement for suburban homes. If the garage door is on the front, it often spoils the fantasy. But this house in Mission Hills, Mount Lebanon, shows us that there is an alternative: make the garage part of the fantasy.

    Front with garage

    Not only is the garage entrance a big stone arch that suggests an immemorially ancient cellar under the house, but it is also decorated with the terra-cotta rays that were a fashionable adornment of the fairy-tale style.

    Garage
    Decorative rays over the garage entrance
    Kodak EasyShare Z1281.

    Comments
  • More of Mission Hills in the Snow

    230 Orchard Drive

    Mission Hills is a neighborhood where every house is an individual work of art. It has a special charm in the snow. Here is a short stroll on Orchard Drive, taking in a wide variety of styles.

    230 Orchard Drive
    (more…)
  • Carnegie Tech Takes a Field Trip to Mission Hills

    231 Orchard Drive

    This house looks quite traditional on the outside, but inside it used the most up-to-date construction methods for 1928. Instead of the ordinary timber framing, it was built on a steel frame like a skyscraper. It was such an innovation that Carnegie Tech architecture students made a field trip to inspect the construction.⁠

    “Carnegie Tech Students Inspect Mission Hills Home”
    Pittsburgh Press, October 14, 1928.

    When a technological institute of the standing of Carnegie Tech expresses interest in a construction project to the point of sending a class to inspect the work, then it may be regarded as a certainty that the project is basically sound and worthy.

    Forty Tech students, part of whom are shown above, headed by Prof. T. D. Mylrea, assistant to the head of the building construction department of the Institute, last week made a tour of inspection of the new type, steel framed, fire proof home being built in Mission Hills, Mt. Lebanon, for W. H. Shaffer, Jr.

    This home, designed by Lyon and Taylor, New York architects, is such a departure from past methods of construction that a number of builders’ and architects’ magazines have published exhaustive articles concerning it. It is primarily a product of Pittsburgh, the National Steel Fabric Co., Steel Frame House Co. and Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. having collaborated with L. Brandt, Pittsburgh housing engineer, in working out the details of construction.

    231 Orchard Drive
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
  • Good as New in Mission Hills

    265 Orchard Drive

    The front of this house in Mission Hills has changed very little since it was new. It was sold in 1930, probably when it was newly built, and the Sun-Telly printed its picture.

    “Mission Hills Home,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, June 1, 1930, p. 48

    Forgive the blurry microfilm reproduction of what was already a photograph reproduced in halftone on cheap newsprint; it is enough to show us that, except for the filled-in side porch, not much is different in front, although the tiny sapling in the newspaper picture is a major tree now. There appears to be an addition in the back, where it does not alter the impression the house makes from the street.

    265 Orchard Drive
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Comments
  • More Fairy Tales in Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

    1025 Lakemont Drive

    A week or so ago we saw a fairy-tale palace by Paul Scheuneman in Cedarhurst Manor. That house is perhaps the grandest in the plan, but some others are not far behind. Several other fine houses went up in the 1930s; they must have been even more like fairy-tale palaces in their first years, since much of Cedarhurst Manor was sparsely settled until after the Second World War, and these houses would have loomed suddenly out of the woods. They are in different styles, but they all share that prioritizing of the picturesque that is the hallmark of what Father Pitt calls the fairy-tale style of the 1920s and 1930s. Above and below, what Pittsburghers call a Normandy, with a turret cozily tucked into its corner.

    1025
    1033 Lakemont Drive
    1033 Lakemont Drive
    979 Lakemont Drive
    979
    979
    424 Greenhurst Drive
    242 Greenhurst Drive
    424 Greenhurst Drive
    441 Greenhurst Drive

    This house is of more modest dimensions, and it is similar to many other houses that went up in the suburbs during the Depression. (Many of them were designed by Joseph Hoover, a prolific producer of fairy-tale cottages who went full-on Moderne when he turned to commercial projects: he was the architect of the first Pittsburgh International Airport.) Here we see how the fairy-tale style has filtered down to the middle of the middle class: you may be limited in your resources, but you can still have the little cottage of your childhood dreams. Father Pitt suspects the half-timbered gable has been simplified from an original that would have had more timber.

    441 Greenhurst Drive
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
    Comments
  • A Monochromatic Stroll on Firwood Drive in Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

    1050 Firwood Drive

    Cedarhurst Manor began to fill up in about 1930, though much of it was empty until after the Second World War. The block of Firwood Avenue just off Bower Hill Road has a representative mixture of houses from the 1930s and early 1940s. Since it was a dim day anyway, we present these pictures in black and white, which makes it easy to compare the forms and masses of the houses without being distracted by details of color.

    1050 Firwood Drive
    1013 Firwood Drive

    This house seems to have been a builder’s standard design; it is almost identical except in material to the house next to it.

    1019 Firwood Drive
    1019 Firwood Drive
    1014 Firwood Drive
    1014 Firwood Drive
    1025 Firwood Drive
    1031 Firwood Drive
    1031 Firwood Drive
    1038 Firwood Drive
    1044 Firwood Drive
    1044 Firwood Drive
    1056 Firwood Drive
    1062 Firwood Drive
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    Comments
  • Fairy-Tale Palace in Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

    418 Greenhurst Drive

    This fairy-tale palace, finished in 1930 or 1931, was designed by Paul Scheuneman, whom old Pa Pitt has already pointed out as a skilled practitioner of what we call the fairy-tale style—see these two houses in Green Tree. This one was featured in the Sun-Telly on Washington’s Birthday in 1931:

    Finish Cedarhurst Manor Home. English Design—Caste Brothers, builders, have recently completed this home in Cedarhurst Manor, new residential park on the outskirts of Mot. Lebanon. The architect was Paul R. Scheuneman. Several more homes are being planned.
    Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, February 22, 1931. Note how much lighter the stones were when they were new.

    English Design—Caste Brothers, builders, have recently completed this home in Cedarhurst Manor, new residential park on the outskirts of Mt. Lebanon. The architect was Paul R. Scheuneman. Several more homes are being planned.”

    418 Greenhurst Drive
    Front porch
    House by Paul Scheuneman
    418 Greenhurst Manor
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
    Comments
  • A Stroll on Vernon Drive in Washington Park, Mount Lebanon

    68 Vernon Drive

    Washington Park is one of those 1920s plans in Mount Lebanon that filled up with houses by different architects in different styles, until—like the others—it became a museum of the styles of the era. It’s part of the Mount Lebanon Historic District. This collection is the product of two walks on Vernon Drive, one just yesterday, and one back in May, so don’t be too surprised to see the seasons changing as we stroll.

    We begin with an outlier: a Mediterranean villa in a neighborhood where most of the houses range from Georgian to fairy-tale Northern European.

    68 Vernon Drive
    2 Vernon Drive
    20 Vernon Drive

    We have dozens more pictures to show you, which we’ll put below the metaphorical fold to keep from weighing down the front page.

    (more…)
  • Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

    505 Greenhurst Drive

    Cedarhurst Manor is a plan where many of the houses date from the Depression era—a time, as Father Pitt has pointed out before, when there was a good bit of home construction going on, because conventional wisdom held that, if you had the money for a house, it was more economical to take advantage of low labor and materials costs and build a new one than to buy an older house. The plan is not included in the Mount Lebanon Historic District (at least not yet), but many of the houses are distinguished architecturally and well preserved.

    509 Greenhurst Drive
    (more…)
  • Martha-Marion Apartments, Mount Lebanon

    Martha-Marion apartments

    This fairy-tale palace on Ralston Place preserves most of its charming original details. You will notice right away the most outrageously tall and pointy front gable in the tri-state area (cleverly echoed to give more of an illusion of depth), but after that pause to appreciate the original windows, seldom preserved in apartment buildings of this age, and carefully chosen to balance the other details of the building.

    Entrance

    We have some reason to suspect that the plans came from the office of architect Charles Geisler, prolific producer of small and medium-sized apartment buildings in Dormont and Mount Lebanon, as well as Squirrel Hill and elsewhere. If old Pa Pitt finds more specific documentation, he will confirm or revise this attribution.

    Porch
    Arch
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.