Category: Squirrel Hill

  • Atherstone

    Gateway to Atherstone

    This is a strangely elaborate gateway for a postwar modernist apartment building. But anyone who knows the history of Fifth Avenue can guess that the gateway indicates where a grand mansion once stood on the Shadyside Millionaires’ Row. (Although city planning maps make Fifth Avenue the boundary between Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, traditionally both sides of the street were counted as “Shadyside.”)

    Inscription reading “Atherstone”

    Atherstone was the mansion, or “castle” as locals would have said, of hardware and steel magnate John Bindley.

    From the Bulletin Index, December 8, 1939.

    It was built in 1890, greatly expanded during the First World War (when these pillars were built), abandoned in 1929, and torn down in 1938.

    Pillar in the Gothic manner

    When the demolition began, the Bulletin Index, Pittsburgh’s high-toned society magazine, ran an article about the house that we reproduce below. The magazine had been infected by Timestyle with its horror of conjunctions and its quirky capitalization, but we trust our readers to interpret it without too much difficulty. The article gives us a picture of Depression-era Fifth Avenue at its lowest point, before the postwar housing boom filled many of the vacant estates with modern apartment buildings.

    Gateway to Atherstone

    Atherstone

    Forty years ago young Theodore Dreiser used to spend his evenings reading Balzac in the Allegheny Public Library, his Sunday afternoons walking out Fifth Avenue and back again. It was then one of the wealthiest, swankiest, most famous streets in the world. Dreiser gaped at the great mansions, marvelled years later in his autobiography that “even the lamp posts were better than in other parts of the city.” One of the most magnificent of the castles he gaped at was “Atherstone” (see cut).

    Atherstone was a work of art, a baronial symbol of the great-spending paleo-industrial age of which William Randolph Hearst is the sole remaining big figure. Pittsburgher John Bindley, having grown rich with his Grant Street hardware store, richer as co-founder of the Pittsburgh Steel Co., built his four-story gargoyled castle (in 1890) in the grand manner, with crenellated turrets and 80 windows with leaded panes, named it after his ancestral home place in England. A widower with only two of his six children living, he travelled through Europe every year with his niece Elmina, brought back paintings, furniture, hand-carved panelling, marble mantel-pieces in the fashion of one who feels it a class privilege and duty to patronize the arts. Fixtures he had made to order in Manhattan to match the furniture he bought, for the Chippendale dining room, the Japanese room that was his favorite. During the prosperous war years Steelman Bindley spent $200,000 to remodel, add a wing to his castle. In an enlarged residence of 24 rooms, six baths, he installed an electric elevator, new copper drains, plumbing and kitchen equipment, added cupboard space that virtually equalled the room volume of an ordinary house, put two carved stone pillars at the driveway entrance, two huge solid oak doors at the entrance of the hand-carved oak panelled hall.

    Four years later, at the age of 75, Steelman Bindley died. Atherstone and contents were left to Son Edward Houston Bindley, who died in 1929, to Daughter Adelaide Bindley Davidson, who closed up the castle, put most of the furniture (including the Japanese room) into one end of the Hoeveler warehouse, moved to California. Installed above the spacious six-room coachhouse in the rear was Niece Elmina McMillin, her four servants.

    Many a great mansion Theodore Dreiser looked upon forty years ago now stands boarded up and weed-choked, many another has been torn down to leave great toothless gaps in swank Fifth Avenue. Fortnight ago came word that John Bindley’s Atherstone, scene of many and lavish entertainments, was to be given into the hands of home-wrecking Austin Givens, Inc. (who eleven years ago tore down John Bindley’s hardware store to make way for the Gulf Building). Last week the curious and buying public poked and peered through the cold bare rooms of Atherstone, being auctioned bit by bit. This week Wrecker Givens began to tear down, cart away.

    The Bulletin Index, December 8, 1938, p. 33.

    Pillar
    Sony Alpha 3000; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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  • Laughlin Hall, Chatham University

    Laughlin Hall at Chatham University
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Built in 1931, Laughlin Hall was designed by E. P. Mellon, an architect of conservative but refined taste who prospered through his connection to the Mellon family. (E. P. stood for Edward Purcell, but he seems to have been known by his initials.) The Mellons were big patrons of the Pennsylvania College for Women, Chatham’s predecessor, and Uncle Andy himself had his house nearby.


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  • Wendover Street Apartments, Squirrel Hill

    Gable end

    The distinctive Flemish gables of these apartments catch our attention as we come down Beacon Street. They were probably designed by Perry & Thomas, a Chicago firm responsible for a number of apartment buildings in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill. Although some ill-advised changes have been made, for the most part the unusual details—Flemish Renaissance filtered through an Art Nouveau lens—have been preserved.

    Wendover Street apartments
    2010–2000 Wendover Street
    2010 Wendover Street
    2010 Wendover Street
    2006 Wendover Street
    Entrance to 2006
    Entrance to 2010
    Wendover Street apartments
    Windows
    Wendover Street apartments
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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  • Magnolias on Kamin Street, Squirrel Hill

  • Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co., Squirrel Hill

    Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co.

    You could count on architect Press C. Dowler for the bankiest-looking banks. The correct Ionic front of this one looks almost exactly the way he drew it, as we can see from the architect’s rendering that was published in the Press on February 8, 1931.

    Press C. Dowler’s rendering of the Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co.

    It seems to old Pa Pitt that the mark of a Dowler bank is correct classical detail combined with a lack of fussiness. There is never too much detail. But he takes the details seriously. In other buildings he was already adopting Art Deco and modernist styles, but a bank needed to look traditional and timeless—especially in the Depression. For other Dowler bank designs, see the Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company and the Braddock National Bank.


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  • Apartment and Commercial Block on Murray Avenue, Squirrel Hill

    1914 Murray Avenue

    A commercial building and apartment block in the eclectic style popular in the 1920s: it carries a whiff of Spanish Mission, but also a bit of Renaissance. Liberal use of terra cotta enlivens the façade.

    Crest
    Apartment entrance

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  • House by Alexander Sharove in Squirrel Hill

    Stanley Hohenstein House

    Alexander Sharove is best remembered today for the synagogues he designed, but like most architects he took on a variety of jobs, including this house built in 1937 for Stanley Hohenstein in the less expensive end of Murdoch Farms. Here Sharove juggles an eclectic assortment of styles from Jacobean to Georgian to Moderne.

    1230 Murdoch Road
    1230 Murdoch Road

    The arch with rays was a popular motif in the 1930s. Sharove’s version of it uses thin strips of terra cotta for the rays.

    Stanley Hohenstein House
    1230 Murdoch Road
    Sony Alpha 3000, Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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  • The Blinker House in Murdoch Farms

    Blinker House

    This house, built in 1925, was designed by Charles Tattersall Ingham, according to an article in the Trib from back in September. Ingham was half of the firm of Ingham & Boyd, a big deal around here—they designed many of our biggest schools, including all the schools in Mount Lebanon for decades. Both Ingham and Boyd had a mania for symmetry. They also had a taste for the classical in architecture, but they disliked columns. It takes all kinds.

    Perspective view

    But why is it called the “Blinker House”? The Trib article explains that it sits at a very complicated five-way intersection, where years ago there used to be a flashing red light. The blinker is long gone, but Pittsburghers have long memories, and everyone in the neighborhood knows it as the Blinker House.

    From the right

    As of this writing, the house is for sale, and the asking price is a little under 2½ million dollars—down from 2.6 million when the Trib article was written.

    Left side of house
    Sony Alpha 3000.

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  • Murdoch Farms in the Snow

    5421 Maynard Street

    Murdoch Farms, a dairy farm until the early twentieth century, is the most expensive section of Squirrel Hill. In the 1920s it filled up with mansions designed by our leading architects, and most of them are still in close to original shape, at least on the outside. Father Pitt took a stroll on a dim and snowy afternoon to get a few pictures.

    1411 Inverness Avenue
    1342 Inverness Avenue
    1342
    1342
    1342
    1331 Inverness Avenue
    1331
    1330 Inverness Avenue
    1330
    1324 Inverness Avenue
    1310 Inverness Avenue
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    We’ll see more of Murdoch Farms from this same expedition, including some individual houses whose architects old Pa Pitt can identify.


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  • Squirrel Hill’s Manor Has the Atmosphere of a Country Club

    The Manor in 1922

    The Manor, which opened in 1922, was designed by Harry S. Bair, who did a number of theaters around here (including the Regent, now the Kelly-Strayhorn in East Liberty). As the caption says, it was “a distinct departure from the conventional,” and the Tudor half-timbering of the exterior advertised the sumptuous club-like atmosphere of the interior. Today the exterior has been simplified, and the building expanded, but it still feels like an outpost of Merrie England on Murray Avenue.

    Manor in 2024
    Gable

    This gable on the Darlington Road side of the building still preserves all its intricate diagonal brickwork and half-timbering.

    Chimney
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    These little chimneys should have their own separate landmark status.

    Almost nothing remains of the original interior, though the Manor is still a movie house, now divided into four small theaters. Originally, the lobby was a feast of luxurious furniture and decoration.

    Entrance lobby

    And that was just the entrance lobby. If you were meeting someone or just waiting for something, you could retire to the parlor:

    Parlor

    There was also a men’s club room with the atmosphere of an old English manor:

    Men’s club room

    After all that, movies seem almost superfluous, but the auditorium was just as luxurious as the rest of the building:

    Auditorium

    Old Pa Pitt particularly likes the arrangement of tropical plants in the orchestra pit.

    Today, although the Manor is still a very pleasant place to take in a movie, almost nothing is left of that sumptuous interior except a bit of ceiling and this fine chandelier:

    Chandelier

    The 1922 pictures all came from a two-page feature in Moving Picture World for August 5, 1922, and we reprint the text of the article here (making a few silent typographic corrections).

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