Three matching Victorian houses with generous turrets—the one on the corner house being considerably more generous than the other two.
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A Pointy Trio on Alder Street, Shadyside
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Victorian Double House on Alder Street, Shadyside
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990. A good example of how an old building can be updated on a limited budget without too much damage to its appearance. Front porches are gone, and vinyl siding and new windows lost some of the Victorian detail. But the windows are framed appropriately if simply, and distinctive woodwork on the third floor has been preserved and restored. Now five apartments, the double house is still an attractive building; and if old Pa Pitt would prefer to have seen it restored to its original Victorian appearance, he nevertheless recognizes and applauds a tasteful effort to balance restoration with profitability.
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Not Frederick Scheibler
This row of houses on Alder Street in Shadyside has been attributed to Frederick Scheibler, Pittsburgh’s most famous home-grown modernist, by the guesswork of certain architectural historians. But Martin Aurand, Scheibler’s biographer, could find no evidence that Scheibler designed them. Then who was responsible for this strikingly modern early-twentieth-century terrace?
Old Pa Pitt is confident that he has the answer. The architect was T. Ed. Cornelius, who lived all his life in Coraopolis but was busy throughout the Pittsburgh area. We can be almost certain of that attribution because the houses in the middle of the row are identical to the ones in the Kleber row in Brighton Heights:
And the Brighton Heights houses were the subject of a photo feature in the Daily Post of March 5, 1916, in which T. Ed. Cornelius is named as the architect.
The Alder Street houses are bookended by larger double houses, one of which—this being Pittsburgh, of course—is an odd shape to fit the odd lot.
So remember the name of T. Ed. (which stands for Thomas Edward) Cornelius when you think of distinctive Pittsburgh architecture. It is quite a compliment to have your work mistaken for Frederick Scheibler’s.
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House from the 1880s in Shadyside
It is the northeastern corner of Shadyside now, but this house was built in the neighborhood that developed around the East Liberty station, which was not far from where the East Liberty station is today—now a busway station, but on the same route. This house was built in the 1880s for a family named McCully, to judge by old maps. It has been divided into three apartments, but it has kept many of its 1880s details.
This entrance is probably a replacement for a front porch that ran the width of the building.
The original carved wooden brackets include the abstract cutout botanical decorations that were very popular in the 1870s and 1880s
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