The Church of the Ascension was designed by William Halsey Wood, a master of Gothic architecture who died very young, at 41, but nevertheless left a substantial body of work. Here he seems to have concentrated his efforts on the massive tower.
Compare these recent pictures to the Father Pitt’s pictures of the same church in 2013.
This exceptionally fine country house on Ellsworth Avenue has been absorbed by the city, but maintains its rural dignity. It was built just after the Civil War in about 1870, and all the best features of the era are represented—generous porch, huge tall windows, and a dignified but not monotonous simplicity of form.
With the limited research he was willing to put into it, old Pa Pitt was not able to confirm his impression that this building on Elmer Street was once a stable. But it certainly has the look of a stable. Well into the early twentieth century, the city was full of stables where the thousands of draft horses that pulled every kind of conveyance were kept.
A nicely restored Victorian house in the back streets of Shadyside. The front porch seems to have been foreshortened to accommodate a basement garage, but the work was tastefully done.
Colorful paint adds a bit of whimsy to a small apartment building in Shadyside.
Built for a prosperous doctor, this house was designed by Longfellow and Harlow (soon to be Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow), and shows the restrained good taste that would be the hallmark of the firm’s work for decades. Although it is technically on the Squirrel Hill side of the street, socially this house forms part of the Shadyside millionaires’ row along Fifth Avenue.
A simple modernist brick box is given an Art Deco flair by distinctively patterned brickwork.
This Second Empire mansion had a narrow escape: the third floor burned out in 1987, and the owner died the next year, leaving the house a derelict hulk. It was rescued from demolition at the last minute by serial restorationist Joedda Sampson, who painted it in her trademark polychrome style; it has since passed to other owners, whose pristine white also works well with the design. The house was built in 1871; Frederick Osterling worked on early-twentieth-century renovations and additions.
This would be a fairly ordinary building, in what we might perhaps call Renaissance style, except for its curious Art Nouveau ornamentation.
Addendum: According to a city architectural survey, this building, the Everett Apartments, was a work of the extraordinary Hungarian Art Nouveau architect Titus de Bobula.
The “chocolate church” at Fifth and Negley was designed by Theophilus P. Chandler Jr., whose name always sounds to old Pa Pitt like the villain in a Marx Brothers farce. Chandler worked mostly in Philadelphia, but he also designed First Presbyterian downtown and the Duncan mausoleum in the Union Dale Cemetery.
