Father Pitt

Tag: Apartment Buildings

  • Two Different Interpretations of Tudor in Oakland

    The apartment building above, which faces Centre Avenue, is arranged as a kind of Tudor Renaissance palace. In defiance of its sloping site, it is a perfect rectangle arranged around an open courtyard. One can imagine Queen Elizabeth building herself a palace on this pattern.

    Almost adjacent—in fact, directly adjacent in the rear parts—is the Schenley Arms, which sits in the narrow angle between Centre Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard.

    Where the (unnamed, at least on its face) apartment building above is in the style of a Tudor palace, this is deliberately arranged in the ramshackle fashion of an old English inn. The deliberately haphazard shape takes advantage of a very irregular lot and gives the building an entirely different appearance from different angles.

    Neither one of these buildings is a very accurate representation of real Tudor architecture: they are mostly put together from standard parts with Tudor accents added. But the Tudor accents are valuable. Especially in the Schenley Arms, they give the building an architectural reason for being an absurd mishmash of odd angles: it looks as though the building was supposed to be that way, rather than forced into its absurd shape by the constraints of an absurd property.

    Update: Note the comment below identifying Edward Crump, Jr., as having designed and built the Schenley Arms. The other building, which was named the Pennsylvanian, was designed, constructed, financed, and managed by architect Daniel A. Crone, according to his biography in Pittsburgh of Today (1931).

  • The President Apartments

    A notable example of Art Deco in Shadyside.

  • The Bellefield

    An apartment building whose elaborately decorated upper floors make it look a bit top-heavy.

    Addendum: According to the city architectural inventory (PDF), the Bellefield Dwellings apartment house was built in 1904. It is listed with the State Historic Preservation Office.

    The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation identifies the architect as New Yorker Thomas Carlton Strong, who later moved to Pittsburgh, converted to Catholicism, and designed Sacred Heart Church in Shadyside. Now apartments for senior citizens, it was built as luxury urban housing where each apartment included servants’ quarters.

  • Entrance to the Gerber Apartments, Shadyside

    Otherwise not remarkable among the many classically inspired apartment houses in Shadyside, this one has an entrance that certainly stands out. It makes a spectacle of itself, in fact. The capitals on the massive square columns are more or less Corinthian, but Corinthian is usually the lightest and airiest-looking of the classical orders, whereas this construction gives the impression that it outweighs the whole building behind it.

    This picture was taken with what might be called a toy camera. It was a no-name digital camera with stated 18-megapixel resolution, but clearly those 18 megapixels are achieved by multiplying some much smaller number of pixels. It may amuse you to enlarge the picture to full size and examine the results.

  • The Lionhead, Shadyside

    Twin lion heads guard the entrances to the Lionhead, an apartment building in Shadyside.

  • Apartment Building, 17th and Sarah Streets, South Side

    This modest apartment building (it looks as though the ground floor used to be a store) is enlivened by interesting brickwork.

  • King Edward Apartments

    King Edward Apartments

    This splendid apartment block in Oakland occupies an awkward plot. The intersection is not precisely perpendicular, which means the plot is not precisely rectangular. The architect has attacked this problem by making a staggered façade along Craig Street, skillfully manipulating the ornamentation so that it appears to be more symmetrical than it is. In this picture, the ground floor—given over to retail shops—is being renovated.

  • Hampton Hall

    Hampton Hall

    The Tudor style adapts itself to an apartment building with some success. Old Pa Pitt can’t keep himself from wondering whether there are actually apartments up there under those peaked roofs with the dormers. Most of the Tudor atmosphere is in the detailing of the stone, but we have a few cartoonish suggestions of half-timbering just so nobody mistakes the style for anything else.

    Addendum: According to the city architectural inventory (PDF), Hampton Hall was built in 1928.

  • D’Arlington Apartments, Oakland

    D’Arlington Apartments

    Edward Keen was the architect of this intriguing apartment building on the edge of Oakland, just where it meets Shadyside. It was built in 1910, and the style seems to old Pa Pitt to be something like Italian Renaissance fading through Prairie Style to modernism. It has the simplicity and squareness of all three styles; the details are subtle but rich (especially the cornice); and the inset balconies, with much effort put into preventing them from breaking the lines of the rectangular walls, presage the simplicity-at-all-costs of the modernists.

  • Webster Hall

    Webster Hall

    A full view of the Fifth Avenue façade of Webster Hall. The design is by Henry Hornbostel, who successfully created a conservative Art Deco classicism that harmonizes with the other grand monuments on Fifth Avenue.

    The building was apparently put up as fancy bachelor apartments, but soon became a grand hotel (it is now apartments again). It was famous for the Webster Hall Cake, whose secret recipe is still treasured by little old ladies all over Pittsburgh. But old Pa Pitt is delighted to discover that the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle has a whole article on Webster Hall Cake, including two recipes that claim to be close approximations. Father Pitt suspects that there are still little old ladies out there who claim to have the real thing, but these recipes are a good start.