This Victorian storefront was given a strange Art Deco makeover at some point in the twentieth century. The makeover extended only halfway up, so the original Victorian style is perfectly preserved on the top two floors. East Carson Street on the South Side is one of the best-preserved Victorian commercial streetscapes in North America, but until very recently it was never preserved in any deliberate fashion—only by extraordinary luck.
Charles Bickel, a good and competent Pittsburgh architect most famous for Kaufmann’s department store, designed this building, but Father Pitt is not quite sure about the rest of its history. A market house was built here in 1893 and burned in 1914; it was rebuilt in 1915, but the exterior walls may have remained from the older building. Old Pa Pitt would love to hear from someone who knows definitely one way or the other. At any rate, it is one of only two original city markets left in Pittsburgh (the other is the East Liberty Market, now Motor Square Garden), neither of which is still used as a market. It sits in the middle of a tight urban square whose southern half is very much like some of the squares of London; the northern half spoils the illusion.
In American terminology, the Queen Anne style is a hodgepodge of every style of architecture except, perhaps, anything that was popular during the reign of Queen Anne. With its oversized front-facing gable and multiple textures, this house perhaps fits in the “Shingle Style,” often regarded as a division of the Queen Anne style.
This lovingly preserved one-room schoolhouse from 1874, known as the Sample Schoolhouse, lives in the front yard of the township administration building. Father Pitt took its picture when it was tastefully decorated for Christmas.
The old adage that “a man’s home is his castle” is given a literalist interpretation in this Richardsonian Romanesque mansion from 1893. It stands out on a street of standout houses.
Although it’s technically in Shadyside, Rodef Shalom stands at the east end of the Oakland monumental district, the long row of dazzling architecture along Fifth Avenue. Much of the dazzle was contributed by Henry Hornbostel, and few of his buildings are more dazzling than this. It was built in 1907, and it is far and away the finest synagogue building in Pittsburgh.
The Mount Washington branch of the Carnegie Library, built in 1900, was designed by Alden & Harlow, Andrew Carnegie’s favorite architectural firm. It occupies a valuable site on Grandview Avenue across from one of the most spectacular views in North America, but as a historic landmark it has some protection from greedy developers.
This church dates from the late 1920s, but it looks timeless—it has a sort of Hollywood medieval look that would be at home in a Hollywood medieval movie. The congregation, after dwindling in the 1980s, is now vigorous, with an offshoot congregation in Edgeworth.
