This is almost unique in Pittsburgh: an apartment building that curves into a crescent shape to follow the curve in the street. It is deliberately given a Georgian look to remind us of the crescents in London. Old Pa Pitt has not been able to determine an architect yet; the complex was built for James A. Wilson in 1903. In 2011 it was restored under the supervision of Landmarks Design Associates.
The big building included storefronts as well as apartments.
A little modernistic apartment building whose details have been marred somewhat—the stock “picture windows” do it no favors. But enough remains that we can imagine the clean late-moderne look the architect was going for.
Father Pitt knows nothing about this building other than what you see here. It is an interesting combination of traditional and modern, with a simple cornice that could easily date from the 1890s, but more modernistic corner windows making bright sunrooms that invite tenants to use them as conservatories. The original windows have been preserved in most of the apartments; a few have been replaced.
The glass and metal awning needs just a little working over to make it a splendid and impressive statement at the entrance again.
Joseph Hoover’s firm designed this modernistic apartment house, which was planned in 1950. It was named for Dr. Paul A. Knott, a medical doctor on the Hill who went into the landlording business. Except for the windows of one apartment, which were recently replaced, the building still stands very much as the architect designed it.
Note in the drawing how much the architect was relying on the grid patterns of the windows for the effect of the front. That is precisely the detail that vanishes when those windows are replaced. “God is in the details,” as Mr. Mies said, and that is especially true of a modernist building like this, where the details are few and therefore chosen with care.
This little box of apartments was probably built in the 1940s. It relies on contrasting bricks for its simple and effective decoration. Old Pa Pitt thinks those small windows must make the stairwell a dim place; but otherwise it is an attractive building that would have been even more attractive with the original windows, although the replacements are at least the right size for the holes in the wall.
Regent Square is famous for being a single neighborhood divided among four municipalities. This building is just inside Pittsburgh city limits; the border with Wilkinsburg cuts a diagonal path through the neighborhood just a few yards to the southeast, merrily bisecting buildings as it goes.
Here is a building with personality, and we are happy to see it getting a restoration that respects its individual quirks. The building was sold in 1907 by Adelbert E. Dudgeon & Son;1 and since the Dudgeons were architects and builders, and the building shows obvious similarities to some of their other apartment buildings, we are justified in assuming that they designed and built it.
Note the new porch columns. The original columns might have been more correctly classical, but these are a big improvement over the spindly metal supports that preceded them, which were easily bent out of shape by drunken teenagers.
If you moved into one of these apartments in the front, you would have an excellent view of the utility cables. You would also be a short walk from the shops of downtown Wilkinsburg, where interesting things are happening, and from the Wilkinsburg station on the East Busway.
Some details of Hampton Hall, a Tudor apartment building in Oakland designed by H. G. Hodgkins.
This apartment building with Renaissance details was built in about 1905. The architect was A. E. Linkenheimer,1 about whom old Pa Pitt knows very little so far.
The name of the building is interesting, because it is the name of a project that was planned at about the same time nearby at the intersection of Penn and East End Avenues, where Titus de Bobula was to supervise an immense $600,000 Alpha Apartment Hotel. That project fell through; at the moment Father Pitt does not know that the name was anything more than coincidence.
This building is under sentence of condemnation, but it does not appear to be in such bad shape that it could not be rescued. Homewood is not rich, but there has been some renovation going on in nearby streets.
The Braddock Avenue side has its own neatly symmetrical façade.
Views of the roof of Hampton Hall, a large Tudor apartment building in Oakland designed by H. G. Hodgkins. We also have views of the entrance and courtyard, the lobby, and the front and a perspective view.
Hampton Hall is a grand Tudor apartment palace in Oakland designed by the Chicago architect H. G. Hodgkins.
A while ago one of the residents mentioned to old Pa Pitt that the long canopy that usually leads from the courtyard entrance to the street had come down for work, which—our correspondent pointed out—would make some of the previously hidden details accessible to a camera. Here, from about two and a half years ago, is how the canopy usually looks:
And here is the courtyard without the canopy:
Father Pitt ended up spending an hour or more taking pictures all over the building, and since he has so many pictures, he will split them into multiple articles to avoid wearying his visitors. Today we see the courtyard and the main entrance.
