Father Pitt

Tag: Apartment Buildings

The St. Regis, Shadyside

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

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.

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.

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.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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September 1, 2025
Relics on Walnut Street, Shadyside

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.

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

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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September 1, 2025
Bellefonte Apartments, Shadyside

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.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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August 30, 2025
Some Details of Highland Towers, Shadyside

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.

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.

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

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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August 25, 2025
Moderne Apartment Building in Shadyside

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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August 16, 2025
Apartment Building with Storefronts by William E. Snaman in Dormont

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.”

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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August 4, 2025
Apartment Buildings by W. A. Thomas on Friendship Park, Bloomfield

This striking building, which dates from about 1906, was designed by W. A. (for William Arthur) Thomas, a prolific architect and developer who is almost forgotten today. It’s time for a Thomas revival, Father Pitt thinks, because wherever he went, Thomas left the city more beautiful and more interesting.

The most attention-getting part of this building is the tower of half-round balconies in the front, and here the design is amazingly eclectic. Corinthian capitals on the pilasters and abstract cubical capitals on the columns—and then, on the third floor, tapered Craftsman-style pillars. But we don’t see a disordered mess. It all fits together in one composition.

Now, it’s possible that the interesting mixture of styles was the product of later revisions. But we are inclined to attribute an experimental spirit to Mr. Thomas. At the other end of the block…

This building is so similar that we are certainly justified in attributing it to Thomas as well unless strong evidence to the contrary comes in. But it is not identical. Here the columns go all the way up, and they terminate in striking Art Nouveau interpretations of classical capitals.

Volutes and acanthus leaves are standard decorations for classical capitals, but the proportions and the arrangement are original.

Olympus E-20N.

A fourth floor of cheaper modern materials has been added, but the addition was deliberately arranged to be unobtrusive, or indeed almost invisible from the street. Most passers-by will never even notice it.

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July 30, 2025
Crafton Ingram Apartments, Ingram

Philip Friedman was busy in the years after the Second World War. He designed an incredible number of apartment buildings, and he seems to have owed his success to two things (in addition, of course, to hard work and skill in managing projects): a knack for combining modern design with more traditional elements to attract a wide range of renters, and a willingness to compromise. When the July, 1950, issue of the Charette, the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, published a layman’s criticism of Friedman’s work, Friedman replied that he was at the mercy of his clients, and sometimes they really did throw out his drawings and stick classical columns on a modernist building. However, he did what he could. “He contends…that while his buildings are admittedly far less esthetic achievements than economic realities, many other new multiple dwellings in this area reflect no concern for esthetics whatever.”

The Crafton Ingram Apartments, originally called the Crafton Ingram Arms, are typical of Friedman’s work. They were built in about 1950. The buildings are square brick modernist boxes. But they have quoins and pediments and other Georgian details to convince the rubes that this is a high-class establishment. Originally there were four identical groups—three in Crafton and one in Ingram. Two of them have disappeared: this is the one that still stands in Ingram.

Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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July 29, 2025
Bayard Manor, Oakland

The Bayard Street face of Bayard Manor. Yes, that odd little half-timbered projection on the roof really is skewed in relation to this side of the building. That is because Craig Street and Bayard Street do not meet at exactly a right angle; the roof projection (it probably holds elevator mechanics) is oriented at right angles to every side of the building except the Bayard Street front.

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

More pictures of the Bayard Street front of Bayard Manor, the main entrance, and the Craig Street side.

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June 25, 2025
Harry, George, Matilda, and Laura, plus Hilda and Herbert

That sounds like the title for a very complicated farce, but these are actually the names of six apartment buildings in Oakland, all of which share a common style. First, on Oakland Avenue, we have Harry, George, Matilda, and Laura, which look like four buildings but are really two identical buildings, each divided in two parts. The romantic battlemented fronts give tenants the chance to imagine themselves as medieval lords and ladies fresh out of a Walter Scott novel. These fantasies were effective in selling apartments, and probably still are.

Around the corner on Dawson Street are two other buildings that share many of the same details. They had the same owner—John Dimling (note the sign for the private alley Dimling Way in the picture above)—and we can guess that they were probably drawn by the same pencil. These are called Hilda and Herbert.

Here the architect has responded to the challenge of a lot that is not rectangular with a pair of asymmetrical designs that resemble but do not repeat Harry, George, Matilda, and Laura.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

John Dimling was also the owner of the rainbow terrace on Dawson Street, and it is a good guess that the same architect was responsible for that as well. That architect was almost certainly Frederick Sauer, who is best remembered for his churches (like St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. Stephen Proto-Martyr) and his backyard whimsies, but who was very busy with all kinds of work. Father Pitt has not found these particular buildings in construction listings yet; but John Dimling was responsible for quite a bit of development in this part of Oakland, and in looking through the trade magazines for Mr. Dimling’s name, we find that, whenever an architect is mentioned, it is always and without exception F. C. Sauer during the period when these buildings went up (around the turn of the twentieth century). We therefore attribute them to Sauer until someone proves otherwise.

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June 10, 2025