A simple modernist brick box is given an Art Deco flair by distinctively patterned brickwork.
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The Admiral Apartments, Shadyside
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Art Nouveau Apartment Building in Shadyside
This would be a fairly ordinary building, in what we might perhaps call Renaissance style, except for its curious Art Nouveau ornamentation.
Addendum: According to a city architectural survey, this building, the Everett Apartments, was a work of the extraordinary Hungarian Art Nouveau architect Titus de Bobula.
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Apartment Building on Elwood Street, Shadyside
A very plain apartment block (as far as we can tell from the outside, the name of it is For Rent 2 & 3 Bedroom Apartments), but an attractive addition to the street nonetheless. The prominent bays, which would have been spurned by modernist architects, have two salutary effects. Aesthetically, they vary what would otherwise be a monotonous front. If you are the kind of modernist who despises aesthetic considerations, however, consider the practical purpose: bays like these flood the interior with light in a way that cannot be accomplished with any flat surface.
Addendum: According to our local John McSorley expert, this building was put up for developer John McSorley in 1903. The architect was J. A. Thain from Chicago.
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Mayflower Apartments, Shadyside
A modest apartment building with a bit of Art Deco flair in the brickwork and the staggered vertical lines.
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Royal York Apartments
This splendid apartment house on Bigelow Boulevard is a feast of Art Deco details; in fact, in a city that never adopted Art Deco as enthusiastically as many of its rivals, this is one of the most remarkable Art Deco buildings. Like many other apartment blocks in Oakland, it required some cleverness from the architect to adapt it to an unpromisingly irregular site.
Addendum: According to a city survey of historic buildings, the architect was Edward Stanton, and the building was put up in 1937.
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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).
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The President Apartments
A notable example of Art Deco in Shadyside.
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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.
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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.
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The Lionhead, Shadyside
Twin lion heads guard the entrances to the Lionhead, an apartment building in Shadyside.
