Acorn Hill

Tag: Acorn Hill

Gothic Meets Modern on Acorn Hill

This stone mansion on Acorn Hill, with its eye-catching combination of Gothic and modernist details, was designed by William C. Young and built in 1937.

Pittsburgh Press, February 21, 1937, p. 50.

“The above drawing by William C. Young, architect and builder, is of the model home being erected at the intersection of Watsonia Blvd. [now Marshall Road] and Norwood Ave., North Side, for Mr. and Mrs. John H. Phillips by the Young firm. The home is a combination of all that is modern in electrical equipment and labor saving devices with all that is charming and quaint from the old Norman English Architecture.” Old Pa Pitt thinks of “Norman” as implying the English branch of Romanesque rather than Gothic, but he will not argue about the charm.

The steps leading up to the house from Marshall Road are a masterpiece of romanticism in landscape design.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

December 6, 2024
Acorn Hill

Acorn Hill is a little enclave in the larger neighborhood known to residents as Observatory Hill, and on city planning maps as Perry North. It has some unusually fine houses in a wide variety of styles, built up over a period of about half a century.

Map of Acorn Hill, adapted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap, used under the Open Database License.

In any neighborhood this one would be an extraordinary house. It would not be out of place in the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony. The porch has been glassed in and the windows in the dormers have been replaced, but the house retains most of its architectural integrity. Father Pitt does not know the architect yet, but among the local architects known to have been influenced by those German and Austrian art magazines that found their way to Pittsburgh we may mention Frederick Scheibler, Kiehnel & Elliott, and Edward Weber.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

November 29, 2024

Tag: Acorn Hill

Gothic Meets Modern on Acorn Hill