Father Pitt

Tag: Apartment Buildings

  • Old Heidelberg, Park Place

    Inscription: “Old Hedelberg”

    If old Pa Pitt had to pick one apartment building to preserve in Pittsburgh, it would be a hard choice. But this one, built in 1905, is probably the first one that would come to mind. It was the one that earned Frederick Scheibler a short-lived international reputation, and it is perhaps our best example of the kind of Viennese Art Nouveau that some of our architects drooled over in the European magazines that made their way over here.

    Old Heidelberg

    The name “Old Heidelberg” tells us something about the charm of this style. It’s the predecessor and source of what Father Pitt likes to call the “fairy-tale style” of the 1920s and 1930s: it tries to create an impression of a delightful time long past, but it does it with modern materials, sometimes shockingly modern, and with a design vocabulary that adroitly mixes the historical with the up-to-date and even futuristic.

    Old Heidelberg
    Old Heidelberg
    Old Heidelberg from Der Architekt

    The Old Heidelberg got quite a bit of attention from the architectural press, and the photograph above even made it into the Viennese annual Der Architekt for 1908, thus bringing the chain of architectural influences around in a circle, since Scheibler is known to have taken many of his ideas from Viennese publications.

    Balconies
    Balconies

    Note how the building is constantly varied, even where you might expect it to be symmetrical. The balconies on the right are handled differently from the balconies on the left.

    Other balconies
    Dining room in one of the apartments

    In 1963, the Historic American Buildings Survey took pictures of the Old Heidelberg, including a couple of interior shots—regrettably fogged, but still recognizable. Above, a dining room; below, a fireplace. We can see that the odd but effective combination of nostalgia and modernism prevailed in the interior as much as on the outside.

    Fireplace
    Windows with mushroom tiles

    Little decorative whimsies all over add to the fairy-tale atmosphere and the sense that some kind of adventure lurks around every corner.

    Mushrooms tiles
    Stained glass
    Wing

    Cottage wings were added after the main building was put up; they match well enough that one might not guess that they were later additions, but the style is simpler and even more modern-looking.

    Old Heidelberg
    Wing
    Canon PowerShot SX20; Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • Regent Square East Apartments, Wilkinsburg

    305 Hay Street, originally Regent Square East

    Robert J. Worsing was both the developer and the architect of this good-looking six-unit building, put up as condominium apartments in 1977. Among the amenities was “a 36-inch wide log-burning fireplace” in each unit, which explains the prominent chimneys with their modernistic chimney pots. A Press article showed the architect’s model, which includes the fabric awnings that—surprisingly—are still maintained over the front windows.1

    Regent Square East
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    1. “6-Unit Condo Okayed for Wilkinsburg Site,” Pittsburgh Press, May 29, 1977. ↩︎
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  • Castletone Apartments, Mount Lebanon

    Entrance to the Castletone Apartments

    A modernist building typical of the postwar apartment boom, including the tall stairwell light made of glass blocks—a Pittsburgh product much employed in the middle twentieth century. To old Pa Pitt’s ears, “Castletone” sounds like the name of a third-string record company, but the apartments are in a very convenient location, just down the street from the Mount Lebanon subway station on the Red Line.

    Castletone Apartments
    Castletone Apartments
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Fairy-Tale Apartment Building in Brookline

    Apartment building on Brookline Boulevard

    A little apartment building—with four apartments, judging by the number of buzzers—in what old Pa Pitt calls the fairy-tale style, the mark of which is exaggeratedly picturesque features that look like illustrations from a children’s book.

    Apartment building on Brookline Boulevard
    Entrance

    The entrance is so similar to the entrance to the Sholten Arms in Carrick that we have to suspect the same hand drew both. Father Pitt’s guess is that the decorative gable was originally carried all the way to its logical peak, but was truncated when the overhang was rebuilt.

    Decorative gable
    1149 Brookline Boulevard
    Entrance
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Row of Apartment Buildings on Shady Drive East, Mount Lebanon

    777 and 779 Shady Avenue East

    A row of four originally identical apartment buildings with Jacobean detailing.

    Row of apartment buildings on Shady Avenue East
    781 and 783
    Entrance
    Entrance

    This entrance seems to preserve its original details better than the others.

    A different entrance

    On the other hand, the colored tiles beside the door at this entrance are probably original, but have disappeared from the other three entrances.

    The whole row
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Fairy-Tale Apartment Building in Mount Lebanon

    189 Castle Shannon Boulevard, Mount Lebanon

    Somehow the line for the Mount Lebanon Historic District was drawn just to the left side of this building, leaving it unhistorical, though taking in a much more pedestrian postwar apartment building across the street. Fortunately, historic district or no historic district, most of the details have been preserved, although the original windows would have added a layer of artistry that their simpler modern replacements lack.

    Upstairs window

    The art glass in the stairwell has been preserved.

    Entrance
    Front door

    The front door is a work of art in itself. Enlarge the picture and admire the door pull.

    Entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • McGinley Hall, Duquesne University

    McGinley Hall
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    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.

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  • Apartment Building in the Back Streets of Dormont

    Apartment building at Edgehill and Espy Avenues

    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.

    Apartment building at Edgehill and Espy Avenues
    Apartment building at Edgehill and Espy Avenues
    Apartment building at Edgehill and Espy Avenues

    After the originally tiled overhang and its showy wooden brackets, the most eye-catching feature is the balconies with their bulging iron railings.

    Iron railing
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Sholten Arms, Carrick

    Sholten Arms

    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.

    “Carrick Fourth Ward in Home Building,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, May 27, 1928, part 4, p. 12.

    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.

    Entrance
    Dormer
    Diapered brickwork
    Sholten Arms
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Ruskin Villa Apartments, Wilkinsburg

    Ruskin Villa

    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—

    Front of the building

    —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.

    Colonnade
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    1. Source: Record & Guide, August 29, 1900, p. 561. “McDowell Brothers, owners, will erect a three-story brick apartment house at the corner of Wallace avenue and Mulberry street, Wilkinsburg P. O., Station D. The plans are being prepared by Architect L. A. Raisig, of Wilkinsburg. Owner will let contracts.” A 1903 Hopkins map shows the building on the northeast corner owned by “McDowell.” A 1915 Hopkins map shows the name as “Ruskin Villa Apts.” ↩︎
    2. The Progressive Architecture of Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr., p. 10 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). ↩︎