A frame Victorian house of the sort that makes Shadyside such a pleasant neighborhood to go walking in. Various alterations have been made, but they have been in sympathy with the original design.
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Victorian House in Shadyside
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Carriage House in Shadyside
Plat maps seem to show that this carriage house was built, not for the house it sits directly behind, but for the house of C. F. Arrott on the corner of Negley and Ellsworth. The house is now gone, replaced by Rutledge Hall, but the carriage house, which is big enough for a generous private home, is kept in beautiful shape.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Rutledge Hall, Shadyside
This would be an ordinary brick box, except that the main entrance has been grandified with two floors’ worth of Doric columns and an elaborate classical entrance, making the building look like a modernist apartment block that collided with a plantation house.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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The Admiral, Shadyside
It seems that every few years old Pa Pitt points his camera at this building again (more pictures here and here). Its gaudy modernism appeals to him the way a colorful toy appeals to a five-year-old.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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The Ellsworth, Shadyside
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990. John A. Butz, the brother of the more productive Edward M. Butz, designed this apartment building, which was put up in 1912.1 Here we see it in the last rays of evening sun.
Addendum: Our correspondent David Schwing sends us this photograph of the Ellsworth that appeared in the Pittsburgh Post for September 28, 1915, before the building was obscured by trees and later buildings.
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Rowhouses on Pierce Street, Shadyside
The little rowhouses on Pierce Street were built as rental properties for Andrew W. Mellon, who was not too rich to squeeze a few pennies out of working-class tenants. The houses had a fine location right next to the Roup station on the main commuter-rail line to the east, and they are still right next to its successor, the Negley station on the East Busway. Old Pa Pitt visited them on an August evening, and the fact that these pictures are appearing only now shows how backed up we sometimes get around here. We have some history of the Pierce Street rowhouses in an earlier article.
Pierce Street is unusual in Pittsburgh; it looks more like a street in Baltimore, with an entire block of identical houses all built more or less as one building, their fronts right against the sidewalk.
A few of the houses on one side of the street have disappeared, replaced by parking lot; but the streetscape is still intact enough to show us what it originally looked like.
It appears that most of the houses are in the hands of the same owner and kept up beautifully with identical stoop plantings.
Not all of them, however; a couple are still obviously in private hands and were not repointed when the rest of the houses were restored.
This corner house was left isolated when a few houses to the left were demolished.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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Modernistic Apartment Building on Walnut Street, Shadyside
Shadyside seems to have a larger concentration of modernistic mid-twentieth-century apartment buildings than any other Pittsburgh neighborhood. Without any other information, old Pa Pitt would guess this one dates from about 1940.
Glass block from Pittsburgh Corning became a badge of modernity. If that were not enough, the metal awning over the entrance should do it.
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Negley Station on the East Busway
The Negley Station is an easy walk from both the Ellsworth Avenue and Walnut Street business districts in Shadyside, as well as businesses on Centre Avenue and Baum Boulevard. Like most busway stations in Pittsburgh, it is a direct replacement for an old commuter-rail station: in this case, the Roup station that used to be at exactly the same place. (South Negley Avenue was part of Roup Street until the 1890s, and rail stations tend to keep their names even when the street for which they are named changes.)
Commuters gather on the inbound platform in late morning rush hour.
And here come the buses.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens. The outbound platform in evening sunlight.
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Three Houses on Howe Street, Shadyside
The eastern part of Howe Street grew a fine collection of upper-middle-class houses around the turn of the twentieth century. Here are three in three different styles, beginning with a fine Dutch colonial. The entrance has been altered to make the house an apartment building, but otherwise the details are in good shape.
Here is a sturdy foursquare house with Queen Anne details.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. Finally, a Tudor with an imaginative randomness made even more random by later alterations and additions.
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Thames Manor, Shadyside
This building immediately struck old Pa Pitt as a Geisler & Smithyman sort of building, and in this case his instinct was correct. It was built in 1929, and Geisler & Smithyman were indeed the architects. The Geisler of the firm was the venerable Charles R. Geisler, who lived in Beechview and scattered medium-sized apartment buildings all over the Pittsburgh area.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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