In the shadows of the ever-encroaching university and hospital buildings, these tiny rowhouses still survive in a little alley in the back streets of Oakland.
Houses in the Grandview Plan lit up by golden winter sun, as seen with a long lens from Beltzhoover. We have seen some of the houses on Edgemont Street from a little closer; for example, the wide house with three dormers at lower left is the one we identified as designed by Henry Gilchrist.
The front of green terra cotta is unique in Pittsburgh. Frederick C. Sauer designed this building, and when it was done he moved his office into it. It is the only one of Sauer’s buildings, as far as old Pa Pitt knows, that bore his name on the building itself, though at some point some workman, doubtless thinking he was doing a splendid job of renovating the building, did his best to obliterate the letters:
Addendum: As we might have guessed from looking at the front, the building rose in two stages. Three floors were added in 1909.1
Somehow the line for the Mount Lebanon Historic District was drawn just to the left side of this building, leaving it unhistorical, though taking in a much more pedestrian postwar apartment building across the street. Fortunately, historic district or no historic district, most of the details have been preserved, although the original windows would have added a layer of artistry that their simpler modern replacements lack.
The art glass in the stairwell has been preserved.
The front door is a work of art in itself. Enlarge the picture and admire the door pull.
Two houses that both seem to date from the Civil War era; they both appear on an 1872 plat map of Allegheny City. This one has just had some spiffing up. It is an Italianate variant of the typical Pennsylvania I-house with an addition in the back (although the addition in this case may have been part of the original plan). It has been divided into two dwellings, but the outlines of the house and many of its details are well preserved.
The outline of the house on the 1872 maps shows the wing in the rear, so it is at least that old.
This house was inhabited until recently; it looks as though it had a fire and is undergoing repairs. It has a more complicated history. It also appears on the 1872 map, and later maps that distinguish the materials of buildings show that this was a wood-frame house. At some point around 1900 it was divided into two dwellings. Some time after 1923 it was sheathed in buff Kittanning brick, giving us an 1860s form with 1920s exterior details.
Canon PowerShot S45; Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.Comments
The spire of the German Evangelical Protestant Church (now Smithfield United Church of Christ), designed by Henry Hornbostel and finished in 1926, was the first structural use of aluminum. Behind it, the Alcoa Building, designed by Harrison & Abramovitz and finished in 1953, was the first skyscraper entirely clad in aluminum.
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.
Andrew Peebles, who also designed St. Peter’s on the North Side, designed this church, which was quite large when it was built but looks like a toy next to the skyscrapers of Grant Street. Built in 1887, it is now the oldest building on the street.
