Father Pitt

Category: Squirrel Hill

  • House by Benno Janssen, Squirrel Hill

    Front of the house

    This beautiful and slightly fantastical house is tucked back in the woods in Squirrel Hill. Not long ago, a small group of Benno Janssen’s fans, among whom old Pa Pitt certainly counts himself, were given a tour of the house by the current residents, whose memorable hospitality made the occasion a delight. The details of the house are beautifully preserved, and with the owners’ permission we present a few of them here, beginning with one of the distinctive copper dormers.

    Dormer
    Lantern
    Main stairway
    Closet at the top of the stairs

    Ascending the main stairway leads to a surprising revelation: all the doorways upstairs are Gothic arches, including the large closet at the head of the stairs.

    Upstairs hall
    Bedroom
    Outer wall of bedroom
    Chandelier

    The metalwork in the house is by Samuel Yellin, a Ukrainian artist in Philadelphia who ornamented many Janssen buildings.

    Upstairs hall
    Sconce
    Original stove

    Downstairs in the kitchen is the original range, which has had some spiffing up but needed no thorough reconstruction. It is still the main cooking apparatus for the house.

    Rear of the house

    The rear of the house opens on a beautiful shaded slope that terminates abruptly in a forested cliff, because this is Pittsburgh. The current owners added a new dining room in the rear, carefully matched to the original house in its details.

    Rear of the house
    Rear of the house
    French doors

    You may have noticed that windows are few in this house: French doors take the place of most windows. They can be flung open for generous air circulation, and the louvered shutters still shut over the openings.

    Looking up at the roof
    Rear wall with dormers
    Dormers and roof slates
    Sony Alpha 3000; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    Like most Janssen designs, the house uses simple lines, exactly the right number of them, and relies on carefully chosen materials—like these irregular roof slates and copper dormers—to add satisfying texture.

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  • One Side of One Block of Beechwood Boulevard, Squirrel Hill

    1471 Beechwood Boulevard

    Probably no single street in Pittsburgh can claim so many distinguished dwellings as Beechwood Boulevard—mostly because it is a very long street that winds through three prosperous neighborhoods. Picking a block almost at random, old Pa Pitt strolled down the street and photographed every house on the sunny side. The majority of these houses share design quirks that make us think they were probably drawn by the same hand.

    1463
    1463
    1447
    1443
    1443
    1437
    1437
    1431
    1425
    1425
    1417 and 1419
    1411 and 1415

    A pair of postwar doubles that illustrate the demographic changes over the history of Squirrel Hill. This block of Beechwood Boulevard mostly filled in with grand houses for the upper middle class; after the war, these much more modest dwellings were the ones that made sense. Today, a new house built here would probably equal the older grand houses in square footage, if not in quality of construction.

    1407
    1401
    1401
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Four Mansions on Wilkins Avenue, Squirrel Hill

    5310 Wilkins Avenue

    Perhaps it is stretching a point to call this first one a mansion, but it is a big house built with the best materials.

    5314

    A Georgian mansion that would look at home in Annapolis or Williamsburg.

    5314
    5321 Wilkins Avenue

    A different and less pedantically correct take on Colonial Revival. Note the shutters that actually shut.

    5321
    5321
    5321

    The garage has a comfortable apartment for your chauffeur.

    5325

    The Smith mansion is built of very dark brick in a subdued Flemish Renaissance style. Appropriately, the bricks are laid in Flemish bond.

    5325
    5325
    5325
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Coach House, Squirrel Hill

    Coach House, Squirrel Hill
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    A former carriage house on Wilkins Avenue converted to a single-family home.

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  • G. P. Rhodes House, Squirrel Hill

    G. P. Rhodes house

    G. P. Rhodes, who appears to have been a banker from the references we find to him in old newspapers, was the owner of this Tudor mansion on Wilkins Avenue. The roof has been replaced with asphalt shingles meant to look like tiles, but otherwise the details are very well preserved.

    Woodwork over the entrance
    Upstairs windows
    Stable

    This garage was probably built as a stable, where Mr. Rhodes’ horses lived better than may of their human neighbors.

    G. P. Rhodes house
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Some Houses on Fair Oaks Street, Squirrel Hill

    5441 Fair Oaks Street

    Murdoch Farms is the plan in Squirrel Hill famous for millionaires’ mansions, but this is the middle-class corner of it. The houses here were also designed by some of our prominent architects, but on a more modest scale. We haven’t identified most of them yet, but we’ll point out the architects we know.

    5401
    Since we have about two dozen more pictures to show you, we’ll put the rest behind this link to keep from weighing down the front page.

  • The Lands Where the Jumblies Live

    5445 Fair Oaks Street

    Far and few, far and few
         Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
         And they went to sea in a Sieve.

    —Edward Lear.

    Moravian arch

    A house on Fair Oaks Street in the Murdoch Farms plan, Squirrel Hill. Above, a Moravian arch over the door.

    Jumbled bricks
    5445 Fair Oaks Street
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • W. A. Steinmeyer House, Squirrel Hill

    5320 Wilkins Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    Ingham & Boyd were the architects of this very respectable French cottage overlooking Wilkins Avenue from a little service road.1 It was built for W. A. Steinmeyer, vice-president of the Allemannia Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh. The placement of the entrance at the left instead of in the center is uncharacteristic of the architects, and we can only assume that some desirable interior arrangement made it worth departing from their usual rule of exact symmetry.

    1. Source: The American Contractor, July 12, 1924. “Res.: $25.000. 2½ sty. & bas. Irreg. Approx. 43×68. Brk. on h. t. 5324 Wilkins av. Archt. Ingram [sic] & Boyd, Empire bldg. Owner Wm. A. Steinmeyer, vice-pres., The Allemannia Fire Insurance Co., 7 Wood st. Gen. contr. let to Hugh Boyce, 1719 Meadville st.” There is no house at 5324, but the lot at 5320 is shown as belonging to W. A. Steinmetz [sic] in 1923. Polk’s City Directory for 1926 shows W. A. Steinmeyer living at 5324 Wilkins Avenue; by 1939 the address of this house is 5320 on the Hopkins plat map. The next address after 5320 on Wilkins Avenue is 5392. ↩︎
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  • Morrowfield Garage, Squirrel Hill

    Morrowfield Garage
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    The garage next to the Morrowfield (both designed by J. E. Dwyer) is a utilitarian building, but it has some virtues. First of all, it continues the line of shops at ground level, so that it does not kill a whole section of commercial street the way large parking garages often do. Second, the rhythm of window and wall is right. It’s not an inspired design, perhaps, but it does not strike us as a sudden interruption of the cityscape. The tile decorations at the top and the little tile diamonds scattered like snowflakes all over the front add visual interest, even if they are not terribly artistic. The same decorative scheme is carried on in the rear, where for both the apartment building and the garage Mr. Dwyer decided to treat the back-alley side as a second front.

    Rear of the garage
    Samsung Digimax V4.
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  • Shaare Torah Congregation, Squirrel Hill

    The striking feature of this modernist synagogue is the huge relief over the entrance that symbolically depicts the Twelve Tribes of Israel surrounding the Tablets of the Law. The architects were Ben Friedman and Nathan Cantor, although Father Pitt has not yet sorted out whether they worked together or at different times.

    Ground was broken for the first part of the building on April 20, 1947; first services were conducted September 3, 1948. Ground for the Rabbi Sivitz Memorial Talmud Torah and Main Building was broken August 17, 1952; it was dedicated on August 27, 1955.

    Friedman’s preliminary sketch of the Shaare Torah synagogue

    This preliminary sketch for the synagogue was published on the cover of the Jewish Criterion, August 23, 1946. The sketch is quite different from the building as it stands, but obviously an early stage in the evolution of the same idea. Through the halftoning, we can just make out the name “Friedman” in the signature.

    The symbols are taken from the prophecy of Jacob in Genesis 49:

    Reuben, unstable as water;

    Simeon and Levi: instruments of cruelty are in their habitations (but Simeon’s sword is mitigated by a wreath of olive, and Levi later became the priestly class, and thus is represented by a swinging censer);

    Judah is a lion’s whelp;

    Zebulun shall be for an haven of ships;

    Issachar is a strong ass, crouching down between two burdens;

    Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse’ heels, so that his rider shall fall backward;

    Gad, a troupe shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last;

    Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties;

    Naphthali is a hind let loose;

    Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall;

    Benjamin shall raven as a wolf.

    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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