Except for the replaced and filled-in porch, this house is in remarkably good shape, with most of its characteristic details intact. By chance the Pittsburgh City Photographer happened to capture it on May 27, 1910, while it was still under construction, so we can compare its current state to what it looked like when it was new.
In the dense back streets of Oakland, now mostly given over to student housing, these elegant double houses stand out. They were built in the late 1880s as Coltart Square, which seems to have been conceived by a Philadelphia developer named Wood. Construction began in 1887, with four doubles (eight houses) on Forbes Avenue and thirteen (twenty-six houses) on Coltart Square, now Coltart Avenue. The ones on Forbes have long since disappeared; eleven of the original thirteen remain on Coltart Avenue.
An item in the Commercial Gazette for March 5, 1888 gives us a thorough description of the houses as they were built.
Seeing the need of good, serviceable and complete houses, thoroughly improved and of latest style of architecture, at reasonable prices and in desirable locations, Mr. Wood, of Philadelphia, Pa., came here and had erected on Forbes street and Coltart square, in the most desirable part of Oakland and one of the very beautiful sections of our city, complete and desirably-arranged brick houses of 11 and 13 rooms, with cement cellar, heater, steel range, open grates all fitted for natural gas, cabinet mantels of choice woods and designs, crystal gas fixtures, electric gas lighting and electric bells, bathrooms, all artistically decorated with fine paper and stained-glass, and compactly built and with abundant closets, showing complete and thorough workmanship, streets and sidewalks well improved and good sewerage, within one square of the cable line [cable cars had just begun to run between the East End and downtown] and on the best drives to and from the city. The lots front Forbes street 23×150 feet and Coltart square, which is 50 feet wide, 35×90 feet. These houses are being sold at a very reasonable price and on very easy payments, and the agents, W. A. Herron & Sons, report that two of these houses have been already sold, one on Forbes street and one on Coltart square. A few will be rented to prospective buyers. Any desiring to purchase a complete house at low figures should call at W. A. Herron & Sons, 80 Fourth avenue, and examine plans and gain full particulars.
The houses have been under separate ownership from the beginning, so they are in varying states of preservation; but several of them retain some fine original details.
It seems that the houses sold quickly, and for a while the Coltart Square community was the haunt of well-to-do upper-middle-class families whose names were often mentioned on the society pages. Not until the second quarter of the twentieth century did the rest of Coltart Avenue become the densely crowded line of rowhouses and small apartment buildings it is today. But this one block still retains an echo of its High Victorian elegance.
The Hall of Sculpture in the Carnegie (as seen by the ultra-wide auxiliary camera on old Pa Pitt’s phone, so don’t expect too much if you enlarge the picture), designed in imitation of the interior of the Parthenon.
The former College Club, designed in 1931 by Lamont Button, now in use as Whitfield Hall of Carnegie Mellon University. This is a phone picture from a few weeks ago, with the usual exaggerated colors that come from using the default Samsung camera app. In fact old Pa Pitt toned down the radioactive greens considerably, but the picture still looks a bit clownish. However, the colors of the trees and bushes were at least almost as bright as they appear, and you might as well have the picture, clown makeup and all.
We have more pictures of the College Club in slightly more subdued colors.
The vestibule at the original entrance to the Carnegie Institute building, seldom used now because visitors come in through the modernist Scaife Galleries addition. This picture was taken hand-held in dim light with the ultra-wide auxiliary camera on old Pa Pitt’s phone, so please forgive its obvious flaws.
The lantern of Hamerschlag Hall seen across the rooftops from the other end of Oakland.
Father Pitt is not sure whether these three buildings were originally built as apartments or as single houses, but he is almost positive they were built as rental properties. Old maps tell a clear story: at some point a little before 1910, T. Herriott, who owned a house to the right of these buildings (where the Mark Twain Apartments are now), bought his neighbor’s large lot, demolished the frame house on it, and had these three buildings put up, which he continued to own at least through 1923. They obviously had porches, since the scars where the porch roofs were removed are covered with vertical clapboards.
The Flemish-bond brickwork is arranged with the headers in a different color, so that it looks surprisingly like Wikipedia’s color-coded diagram of Flemish bond:
In the boom years after the Second World War, new housing couldn’t be built fast enough to satisfy the demand. Architects were busy, and modernism was the rage. The Mark Twain and the Stephen Foster brought clean modern lines to Neville Street and doubtless filled up as soon as they were opened to eager renters.
A typical view of Oakland: cranes as far as the eye can see. The building going up in the near distance will be student apartments.
