A massive new apartment tower for Duquesne University students, and a big improvement in the Uptown cityscape (it replaced a parking lot). The architects were Indovina Associates, who designed the building in a subdued version of the currently popular patchwork-quilt style, with materials that harmonize well with the other buildings along the Uptown corridor.
An attractive and well-maintained building that would have been even more attractive when that overhang had green or red tiles. The style seems to hover somewhere between Renaissance and Arts and Crafts.
After the originally tiled overhang and its showy wooden brackets, the most eye-catching feature is the balconies with their bulging iron railings.
Father Pitt has not been able to find the architect of this fairy-tale palace, but it is in good shape. It was built for Frank Sholten, a local newsdealer who apparently wanted to expand into the landlording business, in 1928, and a Sun-Telly photographer captured the building still under construction.
The building has a near-twin in West Homestead, and some lucky day Father Pitt or one of his correspondents will find the name of the artist behind both of them. Meanwhile, we can appreciate the details, bathed in golden late-afternoon sun.
L. A. Raisig was listed as the architect of this well-preserved apartment building, which was built in 1900.1 And that sets old Pa Pitt’s mind speculating, because in the history of architecture, L. A. Raisig is famous, if you could call it that, for exactly one thing: for a brief period, just after Frederick Scheibler finished his apprenticeship with Alden & Harlow, he and Raisig were partners in the firm of Raisig & Scheibler.
According to Martin Aurand’s biography of Scheibler, “In fact, Raisig was a builder, not an architect, and it is hard to figure what he brought to the short-lived partnership other than an initial sense of security for a young architect.”2
However, Mr. Aurand may have been mistaken about Raisig. He was writing in the days before instant searches of the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide were possible, and quite a few listings turn up in which Raisig appears to be acting as architect.
But when did Scheibler join Raisig? Mr. Aurand found exactly two projects by them, one an unbuilt competition entry, and both from 1901. This apartment building was announced in August of 1900. And when Father Pitt looks at the front of it—
—he notices a very distinctive arrangement: two-storey classical columns holding up a broad third-floor balcony, with a smaller second-floor balcony over the entrance. It is not a common arrangement—in fact, old Pa Pitt can think of only one other instance of it at the moment, and it is this building in Park Place:
This apartment building was put up six years later, in 1906, and it was designed by Frederick Scheibler in his early classical phase.
What are we to make of this observation? Nothing definite yet; Father Pitt intends to find out more about L. A. Raisig, who disappears from the Record & Guide after the end of his partnership with Scheibler. But we may consider at least the possibility that the Ruskin Villa is a very early work of Frederick Scheibler in partnership with, or working for, L. A. Raisig. So old Pa Pitt leaves this article for now, but he will update it with better information when he knows more about Mr. Raisig and his partnership with young Frederick Scheibler.
Since it was built as public housing and opened in 1973, and since it bears a strong resemblance to his many other public-housing projects, Father Pitt does not hesitate to assign this building to Tasso Katselas, the king of public works in Pittsburgh.
An apartment fire fortunately was confined.
A typical small apartment building with storefronts that keeps many of its distinctive details, including the tiled overhang with exaggerated brackets. The windows have been replaced (although the art glass surrounding the stairwell windows is still there), and the storefront on the right has been heavily altered. But the quoins picked out in contrasting Kittanning brick still grab our attention as we walk by.
An attractively modernistic little apartment building—Father Pitt would guess it dates from about 1940—in good shape, with not too many alterations. Small details like decorative brickwork elevate it from mundane to elegant. And note the corner windows, the badge of mid-century modernity.
Father Pitt is not sure whether these three buildings were originally built as apartments or as single houses, but he is almost positive they were built as rental properties. Old maps tell a clear story: at some point a little before 1910, T. Herriott, who owned a house to the right of these buildings (where the Mark Twain Apartments are now), bought his neighbor’s large lot, demolished the frame house on it, and had these three buildings put up, which he continued to own at least through 1923. They obviously had porches, since the scars where the porch roofs were removed are covered with vertical clapboards.
The Flemish-bond brickwork is arranged with the headers in a different color, so that it looks surprisingly like Wikipedia’s color-coded diagram of Flemish bond:
This quiet enclave of small apartment buildings is part of the same “city set on a hill” development as the Morrowfield, and the buildings were probably also designed by J. E. Dwyer. They’re fairly ordinary Pittsburgh buildings of the early 1920s, Mission style with a bit of Romanesque thrown in. They look their best in black and white.
Built in 1903, this apartment building on East End Avenue was one of the early works of our future prophetic modernist Frederick Scheibler, while he was still in his classical phase. It is listed as No. 16, “Apartment building for Robinson and Bruckman,” in the Catalogue of the Works of Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr., in The Progressive Architecture of Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr., by Martin Aurand (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).
