Category: Shadyside

  • The Georgian, Shadyside

    The Georgian

    Many of the apartment buildings in the East End sold a kind of architectural fantasy to prospective residents. The Georgian went the obvious step further and named itself after its own architectural style. It adapts Georgian elements with some success to the configuration of a large city apartment house, arranged around a pleasant garden court. The needs of the automobile, however, mean that the dominant impression as we read the name of the building in front is of a blank metal door. Father Pitt decided to crop out the garage door for the picture of the court below.

    The Georgian
  • Colonial Place

    Mansion at Colonial Place

    Colonial Place is one of those tiny enclaves all built at once in which Shadyside abounds. This one was built in 1898, and it is unique in that the entrance is flanked by two grand mansions.

    Mansion

    George S. Orth was the architect of almost all the houses in Colonial Place. (See if you can guess which house old Pa Pitt thinks was not part of the original plan.) Mr. Orth had a prosperous career designing mansions for the wealthy, as well as some large institutions like the School for Blind Children. But he seems to have been forgotten faster than most Pittsburgh architects. He died in 1918; ten years later, when the architect George Schwan died at 55, his obituary in the Charette had to remind readers who Orth was: “He [Schwan] was trained in the office of George S. Orth, old time architect of Pittsburgh…” That is all the more remarkable because the Charette was the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, of all groups the one that would be most likely to remember George S. Orth.

    At any rate, Colonial Place is still a remarkably pleasant little street. The landscaping was done by E. H. Bachman, and the sycamores he planted still shade the street in summer and make a striking avenue in the winter with their stark white branches and trunks.

    Colonial Place
    House
    House, front view
    House, perspective view
    Ranch house
    House with green shingles
    House with white shingles
    House with maroon shingles
    House
    House
    Mansion

    This mansion is currently the residence of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Pittsburgh.

    Terra cotta
    Mansion

    This one is currently for sale, and you can tour the interior on Google Street View (push the “Browse Street View images” standing-figure button to reveal little blue dots all over the house).

    Side entrance
    Ionic capital
    Bracket
  • The Belvedere

    The Belvedere

    Originally called the Alpine, this Renaissance-bordering-on-modern apartment building was put up in 1909 by developer John McSorley. Research by a local expert in all things McSorley shows that the architects were Perry & Thomas from Chicago, who designed many apartment buildings in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill. The rounded corner seems to have been a favorite device of theirs for a while: two other Perry & Thomas buildings on Ellsworth Avenue also have prominent rounded corners.

  • Tudor Duplexes in Shadyside and Beechview

    Woodside Dwellings

    This duplex in Beechview is one of a pair right beside the Westfield stop on the Red Line. It looked very familiar. Where had we seen it before?

    Duplex on Ellsworth at St. James Place

    This duplex is on Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside, part of a group of duplexes on St. James Place and the adjacent side of Ellsworth Avenue. It is not identical to the one in Beechview, but so many of their parts are identical that the Beechview and Shadyside duplexes were obviously drawn by the same pen.

    Woodside Dwellings

    Above, a perspective view of one of the pair in Beechview, which is marked “Woodside Dwellings” on a 1923 map. It stands on Westfield Street, which was briefly called Woodside Avenue; the other of the pair was called “Suburban Dwellings” after the cross street, Suburban Avenue. Except for the loss of the Tudor half-timbering in the front gable, this one is very well preserved. (Suburban Dwellings has lost more details.)

    Below, a perspective view of one of the duplexes in Shadyside.

    Duplex on Ellsworth Avenue

    One of the details they share is a “No Outlet” sign. But we can see that the Shadyside duplexes are narrower and deeper than the Beechview ones. The same architect adapted as much of the same design as possible to the different dimensions of different lots.

    Four more of these duplexes stand on St. James Place, a little one-block side street running back to the cliff overlooking the railroad and busway.

    Duplex
    Tudor duplex

    This one has kept its original tile roof.

    Perspective view
    Another duplex
    Yet another

    A detail preserved by the one in Beechview is the Art Nouveau art glass with Jugendstil tulips.

    Art glass

    Old Pa Pitt does not yet know the architect of these Tudor duplexes. But if he had to make a wild guess, he would guess Charles Bier. The wide arches with strong verticals above, and the filtering of Tudor detailing through a German-art-magazine Art Nouveau sensibility, strongly remind us of Bier’s other works. There are other known works of Bier both in Shadyside and in the South Hills.

    In Shadyside, these Tudor duplexes are interspersed with Spanish Mission duplexes, showing once again that Tudor and Spanish Mission belong together.

    Duplex on Ellsworth Avenue
    Duplex on St. James Place
  • Holy Spirit Byzantine Catholic Church, Oakland

    Begun in 1960 and dedicated in 1962, this church was designed by the firm of Williams, Tribilcock, Whitehead and Associates1 in a modernist Byzantine style. And no one notices the architecture, because the church is deliberately oriented to display its huge and colorful mosaic triptych, “made entirely of genuine Venetian glass,” to traffic outbound on Fifth Avenue.

    The mosaic is a complete introduction to Christian theology. On the left, the Old Testament prophets who foretold Christ, with illustrations of their lives and visions; on the right, the Apostles who knew and were taught by Christ, with equally appropriate symbols; and in the center, the Trinity, up among the birds and airplanes.

    Some Old Testament prophets.
    A selection of Apostles.

    The mosaic has suffered some cracking over the years, but it is still a stunningly colorful sight to come across as one walks from Oakland toward Shadyside.

    The south-transept entrance features three aluminum-glazed onion domes served on an hors-d’œuvre tray.

    On city planning maps, the church is in Shadyside, but Pittsburghers have always considered the Oakland monumental district to begin at Rodef Shalom at the eastern end, and the church calls its neighborhood “Oakland,” and the post office places it in the Oakland postal code.

    1. The source for all our information is the “About Us” page on the Holy Spirit site. ↩︎
  • A Stroll Up Devonshire Street

    Georgian mansion and fence

    Today we are going to take a stroll up one block of Devonshire Street; and although it will be a short stroll, it will be a long article, because almost every single house on this block is an extraordinary mansion by some distinguished architect. Old Pa Pitt regrets that he does not know which architect for most of them, but he is feeling lazy today and has decided not to spend the rest of the day researching the histories of these houses. Instead, he will simply publish these pictures, which are worth seeing both for the houses themselves and for the poetic effect of the late-autumn landscapes, and will update the article later as more information dribbles in.

    (more…)
  • Carron Street Baptist Church, Shadyside

    This beautiful and tasteful Colonial Revival church by the Beezer Brothers was featured in the December 15, 1900, issue of the American Architect and Building News. You search Google Maps for it in vain today, and you may be thinking what a shame it is that it disappeared.

    But it didn’t disappear. It’s still there.

    It looks a little more working-class now, but it’s recognizably the same building. Is there a tasteful and wealthy congregation looking for a church? This one is ripe for restoration.

  • Admiral Apartments, Shadyside

    Admiral Apartments

    Father Pitt has pictured this building before, but here are two more pictures. This would be an undistinguished modernist box except for the patterns in the bricks, which elevate the whole building to Art Deco and make it an ornament to its corner rather than an unfortunate relic of the middle twentieth century.

    Corner view
  • Liberty School Auditorium, Shadyside

    Auditorium of the Liberty School

    This splendid little auditorium combines the Jacobean style of the main school with a hint of Art Deco. Father Pitt does not yet know who designed the addition. The original school was a design by MacClure & Spahr, and we know that Benno Janssen designed additions to more than one MacClure & Spahr building; this would certainly be in the range of Janssen’s style.

  • Queen Anne House on Ellwood Street, Shadyside

    House on Ellwood Street

    This house was built, probably in the 1890s, as one of a row of four similar or identical houses. Of the other three, one was converted to a duplex and two to three-unit apartment buildings: this is the only one that remains as built. The ornamental woodwork is worth observing.

    Gable of the house with ornamental woodwork