Stairways can be good opportunities for architects to show off, and here is a stairway designed by Henry Hornbostel that defies imitation.
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Stairway in Baker Hall, Carnegie Mellon University
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Some Details of Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon University
Of all the buildings on the Carnegie Mellon campus, Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall (named for Andrew Carnegie’s mother) probably makes the most jaw-dropping first impression. It was originally built in 1907 as a separate but related school, the Margaret Morrison Carnegie School for Women, where women would learn the skills women were fitted to learn. When it was discovered that women were fitted to learn everything, the school dissolved into the larger university.
Henry Hornbostel’s design makes its opening statement with a grand and stripey rotunda that is impressive and welcoming at the same time.
The polychrome ornament found throughout the campus is laid on lavishly here.
One of the sconces in the rotunda.
A side porch with some unusually intricate decoration that nevertheless does not look at all fussy.
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Skylight in Baker Hall, Carnegie Mellon University
“My heart is in the work,” said Andrew Carnegie in 1900, and it was a good enough slogan to be immortalized in glass, especially if Carnegie himself was paying for it.
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Apartment Building on Wightman Street, Squirrel Hill
This apartment building has a few details worth appreciating, though it appears to have lost its cornice. This building also has the biggest art store in Pittsburgh on the ground floor. You walk in the Hobart Street entrance and find yourself in a fairly big art-supplies store. Then you walk back and realize there’s another whole room that size. Then you walk back and realize there’s another whole room that size. Then you walk back and realize there’s another whole room that size. In fact the whole ground floor of this building is given over to art supplies.
This floral ornament presides over the light well.
Addendum: The building was put up in about 1924; the architect was Charles R. Geisler. Source: The American Contractor, October 27, 1923: “Apt. Bldg. (36 suites): Hobart & Wightman sts. Archt. C. R. Geisler, Ferguson bldg. Owner & Bldr. L. L. Noffah, 5843 Forbes st. Sketches.”
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Telephone Exchange, Squirrel Hill
A particularly grand example of the Renaissance-palace school of telephone exchanges. Father Pitt believes that all our Renaissance-palace telephone exchanges were probably done by the same architect, and some day he hopes to find out who it was. (Update: It was probably James Windrim, a well-known Philadelphian who had the Bell Telephone franchise in Pennsylvania for many years. He designed the 1923 Bell Telephone Building downtown, and is known to have worked on other telephone exchanges in our area.)
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Eclectic Styles on the North Side of Hobart Street, Squirrel Hill
Earlier we looked at the buildings on the south side of Hobart Street in this block and discovered that Spanish Mission and Tudor were the same thing, barring a few tweaks of the ornamentation. The buildings on the north side of the same block are at about the same scale, but they are a more eclectic bunch. Sometimes the individual building is about as eclectic as it can be.
Above, for example, you see one in a style old Pa Pitt calls German Jacobethan Spanish Mission.
This one, on the other hand, is so thoroughly Spanish Mission that residents ought to be required to wear Franciscan tunics.
The one above is quite eclectic, but it harmonizes its influences seamlessly.
This modernized Tudor conveys its architectural message with textured and patterned brickwork as well as the usual half-timbering.
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Tudor or Spanish Mission? In Squirrel Hill, You Can Have Both
Who knew? It turns out that Tudor can be Spanish Mission and vice-versa, as long as you add the right decorative touches, and of course the right names. This row of five apartment buildings on Hobart Street, Squirrel Hill, alternates Tudor and Spanish Mission, as you could guess even without seeing them just by the names of the buildings: Cambridge, Granada, Windsor, Armada, and Wemberley. Yet they are all more or less the same building. Only the decorative details change. Tudor buildings have peaked rooflines; Spanish Mission buildings have curvy rooflines and little tiled awnings. Knowing how to make the same building Tudor or Spanish Mission is a great time-saver for an architect.
Here are the buildings, left to right:
Cambridge 
Granada 
Windsor 
Armada 
Wemberley -
Terra-Cotta Decorations, Carnegie Mellon University
Henry Hornbostel was one of the first architects to employ polychrome terra cotta. Here are three different patterns from buildings at Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University.
Thistles, in tribute to Andrew Carnegie’s Scottish pride.
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Alumni House, Carnegie Mellon University
A relic from the days when this part of Squirrel Hill was a wealthy exurb full of houses like this. Enlarge the picture and note the fine cornice woodwork along the roofline.
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The Mall, Carnegie Mellon University
Many styles of buildings have been put up on the campus since Henry Hornbostel laid out the original plan for Carnegie Tech, but it’s remarkable how much the original Hornbostel plan has been respected. The campus is still built around these broad open green spaces, with the various buildings kept within matching heights and setbacks, even when they are in wildly different styles.
