Tag: Apartment Buildings

  • Apartment Entrances on Bayard Street, Oakland

    Entrance to the Adrian

    Designers of apartment buildings often put a lot of effort into the entrances, because the entrance is what sells the idea of the building. You are, after all, trying to make prospective tenants think this is where they want to live. You will walk through these doors, a good entrance says, and you will feel like a duke walking into his palace. In one short stretch of Bayard Street this morning, we collected several artistic entrances, beginning with the Adrian above, at which no duke would turn up his nose.

    Entrance to the Aberdeen

    The Aberdeen is almost as splendid, an effect slightly diminished by installing stock doors at the entrance and balcony.

    Entrance to the old King Edward

    There are two King Edward Apartments (plus an annex around the corner); this is the older of the two.

    Entrance to the second King Edward

    The later King Edward is covered with terra cotta, and its bronze doors are themselves works of art.

    Entrance to the second King Edward
    Entrance to Bayard Manor

    Bayard Manor has the kind of late-Gothic entrance that would make you feel you had done your best if you were expecting a visit from Queen Elizabeth I.

    Entrance to Bayard Manor
    Entrance to the D’Arlington

    The D’Arlington is an interesting combination of classical and Prairie Style, with both baroque and abstractly geometric ornaments coexisting comfortably at the entrance.

    Entrance to the D’Arlington
    Entrance to the D’Arlington
    Decorations at the entrance to the D’Arlington
    Entrance to Bayard Mansions
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    Finally, a later building that does not quite succeed in competing with its neighbors, but still provides a respectable-looking entry.


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  • The Morrowfield, Squirrel Hill

    “Morrowfield” in terra cotta

    The Morrowfield is that big building that looms ahead as you approach the Squirrel Hill Tunnel on the Parkway from downtown Pittsburgh. It was built in 1924 as part of a huge development promoted by developer Thomas Watkins as “a city set on a hill,” and most of the buildings—including this one—were designed by the architect J. E. Dwyer, originally from Ellicott City, who built himself a house right next to the site and spent years supervising construction projects.

    The Morrowfield

    In this map from “A City That Is Set on a Hill,” Building Age, December, 1923, p. 36, the big rectangle marked “148 FAMILY APARTMENT” would become the Morrowfield.

    Dwyer’s elevation of the Morrowfield

    The same article printed the architect’s elevation of the new apartment building, spread across two pages. We have taken some pains to restore it to legibility.

    The Morrowfield under construction
    “Utilizing the Street Grade in Hillside Apartments,” Building Age, October, 1924.

    The building went up at a breakneck pace, with crews doing everything all at once. It was finished in less than a year. Below, “Steel work in the early stages showing the brick filler walls being laid before the concrete work was begun, to rush the job along.”

    The Morrowfield under construction

    By the time the October, 1924, issue of Building Age came out (from which the pictures of the construction above were taken), the whole project was complete, and this photograph of the building from a distance was taken in time to make it into the magazine.

    Entrance
    Entrance with marquee

    The entrance is liberally decorated with polychrome terra cotta.

    Terra Cotta
    Terra cotta at the entrance
    Detail of the entrance
    Morrowfield Avenue side

    The building of this project was watched nationally, because it was unusual to place such a large building on such a difficult lot. The architect’s elevation shows the slope of Murray Avenue along the front; here we can see that Morrowfield Avenue, on the right-hand side (in terms of the elevation), slopes upward even more dramatically. Then the street behind, Alderson Street, slopes upward again, so that the ground-floor entrances on Alderson Street are three floors up from the main entrance on Murray Avenue.

    Alderson Street side

    From that same article in Building Age:

    The Morrowfield Apartments presents an interesting study in the effective utilization of exceptional grades. The front elevation faces a western street that is 30 feet lower than the street level in the rear, and a grade running north and south affects the building lengthwise as well as in depth.

    The consequence is that the apartment is partly seven and partly eight stories high in front, and only five stories in the rear. What is really the fourth story when seen from the south elevation, is the first when seen from the rear, and the occupants of the fourth story front are therefore enabled to reach their apartments without the use of stairs or elevator by simply coming in the other street.

    Entrance on the Alderson Street side
    Alderson Street side
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
  • Herford Apartments, Shadyside

    Herford Apartments

    When our local historians speak of the early adopters of modernism among Pittsburgh’s architects, they usually mention Titus de Bobula, Frederick Scheibler, and Kiehnel & Elliott. Old Pa Pitt would propose to add Charles Bier to that short list. His work is not as imaginative as the best work of Scheibler, but that is about the worst that can be said for him. In the early twentieth century, Bier gave us a large number of buildings influenced by German trends in Art Nouveau, and he developed a distinctive style of his own—one that put an Art Nouveau spin on Jacobean forms. This apartment building is a good sample of his work. It was built in 1910 with six luxurious units.1

    Herford Apartments
    Entrance to the Herford Apartments

    The entrance especially looks like something from a magazine like Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. (We know those German and Austrian art magazines circulated among our architects in Pittsburgh; one of them actually took notice of Frederick Scheibler.) The oversized classical brackets are a whimsical touch.

    Lantern

    These lanterns seem to be modern replacements, since ghosts of gaslights are visible behind them.

    Ornament on the Herford Apartments
    Herford Apartments
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    Update: Our correspondent David Schwing sends this photograph of the Herford from the Press article, showing the building when it was new.

    Pittsburg Press, February 13, 1910.

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  • A Simple Apartment Building in Dormont

    2912 Glenmore Avenue

    There’s something pleasingly simple about this little apartment building just off the Potomac Avenue business district in Dormont. There are almost no decorative details, but the simple pilasters that frame the front give the building enough texture to carry itself with dignity. The stone lintels over the windows on the side of the building are a clue to its history: the front is probably a later addition, replacing open balconies with extra rooms. But the matching white brick makes the change hard to detect without some concentration.

    2912 Glenmore Avenue
    Entrance to 2912 Glenmore Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    The entrance (we are able to peer into the shadows by combining three different exposures in one picture) surprises us with classical woodwork and ornamental leaded glass—another clue that this building is older than we would have thought from a glance at the front.

    2912 Glenmore Avenue

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  • The St. Regis, Shadyside

    Face on the St. Regis

    Here is another of those apartment buildings that stare back at you when you stare at them.

    The St. Regis

    The St. Regis was built in 1908; the architects were the Chicago firm of Perry & Thomas, who designed several other apartment buildings in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill.

    Entrance
    Entrance
    Entrance in perspective

    Perry & Thomas seem to have absorbed an eclectic assortment of styles from Beaux Arts through Art Nouveau to Prairie Style. These entrances have the graceful and almost decadent curves we associate with Art Nouveau. They are very similar to the entrance to the Emerson, an apartment building put up two years earlier. That building is attributed to Samuel Crowen, another Chicagoan; but Crowen was associated with Perry & Thomas, and there is certainly a more-than-coincidental resemblance—not only in the entrances, but also in the balconies, which in both buildings are framed by supports ending in decorative faces. The ones on the Emerson are much more abstract, but the idea is the same.

    Face on the Emerson

    Face on the Emerson.

    Faces on the St. Regis

    Faces on the St. Regis.

    While taking these pictures, Father Pitt had a short conversation with the maintenance man, who tells us that the apartments were originally big and luxurious, but have been cut down to one and two bedrooms by the present owners. Expensive materials like marble abound inside the building.

    The St. Regis
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • Relics on Walnut Street, Shadyside

    House at Walnut and Copeland

    The business strip along Walnut Street developed fairly late in the history of Shadyside; much of it was still residential a century ago. If we raise our eyes above ground-floor level, we can see that these little shops are built around a much older house, dating from the 1880s to judge by old maps.

    Rear of the house

    A few blocks eastward on Walnut Street we find a different kind of conversion.

    Walnut and Negley

    Here is a Second Empire mansion, built in the 1870s, converted to an apartment building, probably in the 1920s. The stucco addition on the front, with its cartoonish half-timbering that looks like a ten-year-old’s idea of Tudor architecture, fits better than it deserves to with the original house thanks to the simple expedient of painting everything white and matching the trim color.


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  • Bellefonte Apartments, Shadyside

    Bellefonte Apartments

    Georgian details applied to a pair of mirror-image apartment buildings on Elmer Street. The huge sunny bays might be described as exceptionally tall oriels, since they do not reach the ground, but instead terminate in surprisingly folksy carved wooden brackets.

    Bracket
    Bellefonte Apartments
    Pillar
    “Bellefonte”
    “Apartments”
    Entrance
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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  • Some Details of Highland Towers, Shadyside

    Lunette with “Highland Towers” and address

    We’ll have to wait till the leaves are off the trees to get anything like a complete picture of the front of Highland Towers, one of Frederick Scheibler’s most famous buildings. But this collection of details should be enough to demonstrate why architectural historians drool over it. The building brings a fresh breath of Art Nouveau to Highland Avenue.

    Entrance
    Courtyard
    Balconies

    As built in 1914, the apartments were luxurious residences. Each had a living room, dining room, solarium, kitchen, library or guest room, two bedrooms, bathroom, and servant’s chamber. There were garages in back with gardens on the roofs.

    Mosaic and windows

    Scheibler took the idea for these mosaic patterns from the German graphic designer, architect, industrial designer, type designer, and artist Peter Behrens.

    Mosaic
    Grille
    Front wall
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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  • Moderne Apartment Building in Shadyside

    Apartment building with Moderne details
    Composite of two photographs from a Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Probably built in about 1940, this was the science-fiction apartment building of the future. Except for newer windows, it has not changed much.


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  • Apartment Building with Storefronts by William E. Snaman in Dormont

    2895–2899 West Liberty Avenue

    It would have been a better composition with the original ground floor, but even so the upper two-thirds are attractive. We attribute this building to William E. Snaman because it is the only apartment building in the vicinity built at the right time to match this listing:

    The Construction Record, October 30, 1915. “George E. McKee, Alger street, was awarded the contract for erecting a three-story brick store and apartment building on West Liberty avenue, Dormont, for Mrs. Mary Ivol, 6268 West Liberty avenue, Dormont. Plans by Architect W. E. Snaman, Empire building. Cost $10,000.”

    Wreath in stained glass
    Apartment building at Tennessee and West Liberty Avenues
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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