Father Pitt

Category: Regent Square

  • Modernistic Apartment Building in Regent Square

    814 East End Avenue

    This little box of apartments was probably built in the 1940s. It relies on contrasting bricks for its simple and effective decoration. Old Pa Pitt thinks those small windows must make the stairwell a dim place; but otherwise it is an attractive building that would have been even more attractive with the original windows, although the replacements are at least the right size for the holes in the wall.

    Perspective view
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    Regent Square is famous for being a single neighborhood divided among four municipalities. This building is just inside Pittsburgh city limits; the border with Wilkinsburg cuts a diagonal path through the neighborhood just a few yards to the southeast, merrily bisecting buildings as it goes.

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  • Concrete-Block Mansion in Regent Square

    Concrete-block mansion

    Concrete block was never a very popular material for houses in Pittsburgh, but we find a fair number of concrete-block houses scattered here and there. Few of them reach these imposing dimensions. This house was built for members of the same Kountz family that also owned the Second Empire mansion next door. Today it is divided into apartments, but except for the fire escape and the third-floor window, few significant changes have been made to the exterior.

    Mansion and garage

    A matching concrete-block garage with rooms above, perhaps a chauffeur’s apartment, was built later.

    Garage
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    Old Pa Pitt will admit to finding these rusticated concrete blocks unattractive, perhaps even aesthetically disturbing. Individually, each block is cast to resemble rough-hewn stone, which is all very well; but when you have a whole wall of the things, the fact that they are all identical instantly destroys the illusion, and instead rubs our noses in the fakery. Smooth-faced concrete blocks, on the other hand, can be very attractive.

  • Joseph Kountz Mansion, Regent Square

    Linn Apartments

    Take away the balconies, add a mansard top to the central tower, and you would have a classic Second Empire mansion. The house may have been built in the 1870s; as far back as 1882, according to old maps, it belonged to Joseph Kountz, who was still the owner in 1910. By 1923 it belonged to “R. Wolfinger et al.,” suggesting that the house had been turned into apartments by then.

    Linn Apartments, front elevation

    The maps show that the front was not always as symmetrical as it is now; and if you look at the front closely, you will notice that the bays behind the balconies on the first two floors on the left side are original, but the square ones on the right side, and the third-floor bay on the left side, are built from a different shade of brick.

    Truncated tower

    Much of the ornamental woodwork from the original 150-year-old house has been preserved.

    Window
    Dormers
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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