Seminole Terrace is not included yet in the Mount Lebanon Historic Discrict, but the older part of the plan is a museum of good domestic architecture from the 1920s and 1930s—a time when the Colonial Revival, the Fairy-Tale Style, and various other fantasies of an elegant past could coexist comfortably in a newly laid-out automobile suburb. Here are some of the houses we saw on a walk along Navahoe Drive. We’ve seen some of these houses before, but we can always see them again.
The cornerstone of this church was laid in 1959, which for the moment is all old Pa Pitt knows about it. The style is the New England Colonial that became popular to the point of mania among suburban congregations with conservative tastes after the Second World War, and this is a tasteful and attractive example of it.
It is very difficult to get a good look at this building, even in the winter, on account of the lush growth of woods that doubtless makes it a very pleasant place inside. Nevertheless, old Pa Pitt felt obliged to try, since it was one of the dwindling number of landmarks with no picture on Wikipedia’s List of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks. It was put up for a women’s club in 1940; the architects were Ingham & Boyd, who also designed Mount Lebanon High School around the corner (as well as all the other schools in Mount Lebanon). For this small clubhouse, they adopted a simplified Georgian style that made it a good neighbor on an otherwise residential street—and indeed it is now a private home.
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
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.
But around the corner is a porch with two-storey columns, giving the house a secondary plantation-style front.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A view with a long lens from about three-quarters of a mile away.
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.
A row of four originally identical apartment buildings with Jacobean detailing.
This entrance seems to preserve its original details better than the others.
On the other hand, the colored tiles beside the door at this entrance are probably original, but have disappeared from the other three entrances.
