Category: Sewickley

  • Two Houses on Centennial Avenue, Sewickley

    106 Centennial Avenue

    Two houses on one of Sewickley’s toniest streets. First, a house with the simple dignity of the Greek Revival.

    106 Centennial Avenue
    106 Centennial Avenue
    114 Centennial Avenue

    This house has the form of what old Pa Pitt calls a center-hall foursquare, with details taken from colonial New England.

    114 Centennial Avenue
  • Some Houses on Maple Lane, Sewickley

    707 Maple Lane

    Three houses on one of the many pleasant residential streets in Sewickley. First, a late-Victorian fantasy of Georgian architecture.

    707 Maple Lane
    709 Maple Lane

    This house has probably had some alterations over the years, but it preserves a unique dormer on the side.

    Dormer
    712 Maple Lane

    Finally, an extravagant riot of gables and dormers.

  • St. Stephen’s Church, Sewickley

    St. Stephen’s Church

    A very stony Anglican church that has kept its rich black coat of soot.

    Tower
    Gargoyle facing right

    Gargoyles guard the building from the top of the tower.

    Gargoyle facing left
    Tower
    West Front
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
  • Some Houses on Broad Street, Sewickley

    222 Broad Street

    Broad Street is one of the two main streets of central Sewickley. It is lined with public buildings (churches, post office, school) and a wide variety of houses. This dignified Queen Anne is a good introduction to the street.

    222 Broad Street
    Front of the house
    324 Broad Street

    This center-hall frame house has been remodeled to someone’s ideal of picture-postcard Victorian perfection. Until a few years ago, it was asymmetrical and had no front porch or Victorian Gothic peak in the front.

    333 Broad Street

    A center-hall Georgian house of the early twentieth century, probably built as the manse for the Methodist church next door.

    306 Broad Street

    An elegant Second Empire house whose porch wraps around to become a porte cochère.

    327 Broad Street

    A beautiful shingle-style mansion belonging to St. Stephen’s Anglican Church next door.

    330 Broad Street

    There are also some modest houses among the mansions, like this charming little I-house with real wood siding.

  • Two Houses on Pine Road, Sewickley

    529 Pine Road

    Pine Road is a short street in a very tony section of Sewickley. Here are two fine houses in very different styles. First we have an Italianate house, probably dating from the 1880s or so.

    With the grounds
    Perspectiove view
    529 Pine Road
    525 Pine Road

    Here is an elegant Dutch colonial with a fine growth of ivy on one of its chimneys.

    Perspective view from the right
    Perspective view from the left
    525 Pine Road
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
  • Sewickley United Methodist Church

    Sewickley United Methodist Church

    The most striking feature (in two senses of the word “striking”) of this church is the great clock tower, which gives time to the whole village. In fact, the borough took over responsibility for maintaining the clock, as the church tells us in its page of Village Clock Tower Facts. The tower was finished in 1884, and in 1996 a thorough rebuilding was finished that included a new electronic clock to replace the replacement clock that had replaced the original clock many decades previously.

    Steeple
    Sewickley United Methodist Church
    Tower entrance
    Sanctuary entrance

    Cameras: Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • Some Houses on Beaver Street, Sewickley

    36 Beaver Street

    Sewickley is known for its grand houses, and some of the grandest are along Beaver Street, the main street of the village.

    36 Beaver Street
    26 Beaver Street
    26 Beaver Street
    56 Beaver Street
    56 Beaver Street
    56 Beaver Street
    66 Beaver Street
    66 Beaver Street
    59 Beaver Street
    59 Beaver Street

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1281; Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • St. James Convent, Sewickley

    St. James Convent

    Even though it is on the grounds of a parish that is still open, with a school that is still open, this glorious Second Empire building is abandoned and crumbling, with scraggly Trees of Heaven—the badge of abandonment—taking root all around it. In its current state it looks like a drawing by Charles Addams.

    St. James Convent
    Roof woodwork
    Close-up of some woodwork
    Dormer
    Dormer from the side
    Dormer from the front
    Different dormer from the front
    St. James Convent
    St. James Convent
    St. James Convent
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
  • Sewickley Presbyterian Church

    Sewickley Presbyterian Church

    This is one of the few remaining churches designed by Joseph W. Kerr, who was one of our top architects in the middle 1800s (he also designed the Shields Chapel nearby in Edgeworth). It opened in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War.

    In Father Pitt’s opinion, Mr. Kerr had good taste. Both this church and the Shields Chapel belong to the middle nineteenth century, but they were never embarrassingly out of date; to the last gasp of the Gothic style in America a hundred years later, an architect familiar with the idiom would have found this a pleasing and successful design.

    Steeple

    It is fortunate that the congregation has the money to keep the glorious steeple in excellent shape…

    Detail of Tower

    …right up to the iron pinnacle at the top.

    Pinnacle
    Tower entrance
    Side entrance
    Side of the church
    Prespective view of the church
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
  • Charette Place, Sewickley

    Charette Place street sign

    There’s that name again: Charette, indicating to the initiated that something architecturally interesting is going on. A “charette,” as we mentioned when we visited Charette Way downtown, is architects’ slang for a session of intense work to meet a deadline, and the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club for many years was called The Charette.

    Charette Place is a small one-street subdivision in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, developed by the firm of Ackley & Bradley in 1941. When it was new, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described it as “unique in that the plot is owned and the homes are planned, built and sold by the architects.”

    Architects Operate Plan. Thisrow of masonry homes emphasizes the character of Charette Place, Sewickley sub-division of Ackley & Bradley, which is unique in that the plot is owned and the homes are planned, built and sold by the architects.
    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 13, 1941.

    These are pleasant little houses, not towering works of genius. They do what they’re supposed to do: they make up a street of economical homes where each house is different, but all go together. Though most of them have gone through various alterations, the neighborhood keeps its unified character.

    648 Charette Place
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