Father Pitt

Tag: Apartment Buildings

Highland Park Club Apartments

This is a big apartment complex, but it is not nearly as big as it was meant to be.

In the beginning of 1939, an apartment complex was proposed for this land. it would require zoning changes in an area that was mostly single-family houses and mansions, and when residents saw the designs by architect Clifford Lake, there was much loud protest.

“Mercer Plans Big Apartment,” Pittsburgh Press, January 12, 1939, p. 5.

It would be a huge complex of interlinked towers, nine storeys high, that would completely change the character of Negley Avenue. “It will be necessary for City Council to change the district from a Class A to a Class C zone before work can be started,” the Press reported.

It was obvious from the reaction that the plans had been far too ambitious. By May, the plans had shrunk. “Original plans for the structure have been scaled down from a nine-story 623-family apartment to the present six-story building, Mr. Lake said.”

But many of the residents nearby were still not satisfied. Give them an inch, they thought, and who knows how many ells they might take?

“You well understand,” said an attorney for the opposing property owners, “that it is impossible under the law to negotiate what kind of structure will be built after the zoning ordinance is passed.

“They propose to change the law so that hotels, educational and charitable institutions, jails and commercial businesses can be placed in a district where these people have built homes.”

It was not until a year later, in 1940, that a building permit was applied for. But the fight wasn’t over. When the zoning law was changed, residents went to court, and they won. Then came the Second World War, which was an even bigger fight than the zoning battle.

Finally, in 1946, the zoning law was changed to permit three-storey apartments in the area, and construction of the reduced complex begin in 1947, finishing in 1948.

Perhaps because of the long fight, the complex makes a surprisingly modest impression from the street. The landscaping is lush and park-like: this complex, like Gateway Center, makes good on the promise of “towers in a park,” although “towers” is a bit generous for buildings with three floors and a high basement.

The buildings themselves are fairly ordinary, not the dream towers Mr. Lake envisioned in 1939. The entrances, however, are decorated in late-Art-Deco fashion to maintain the impression that you are approaching something special.

The sides of the buildings facing the garden court have been given ridiculously narrow cartoon paste-on shutters, which do them no favors. The sides facing the side streets have no shutters and look the way Mr. Lake meant them to look.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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April 7, 2025
Moderne Apartment Building in North Point Breeze

Streamlined modernity invades Point Breeze! Although this building has been muddled a little, enough of its distinctive details are intact that it still creates a striking impression as we walk down Thomas Boulevard. Father Pitt loves the rounded corners from the outside, though he might curse them if he lived in those corner apartments.

April 6, 2025
Endangered Buildings in Carrick

It is never pleasant, but old Pa Pitt feels as though he has a duty to document things that might be gone soon. Sometimes miracles happen, and we can always hope, but without a miracle we can only turn to the photographs to remember what has vanished.

“Berg Place,” a group of three apartment buildings along Brownsville Road in Carrick, probably cannot be saved. It’s a pity, because the buildings, in a pleasant Arts-and-Crafts style flavored with German Art Nouveau, have a commanding position along the street, and their absence will be felt. They were abandoned a few years ago, probably declared unsafe, and since then they have rotted quickly.

Some of the simple but effective Art Nouveau decorations in brick and stone.

These two buildings across the street from Berg Place, damaged by a fire, may possibly still be saved. At present one of them is condemned, but that is not a death sentence, and it looks as though prompt action was taken to secure the one on the corner after the fire. They are typical of the Mission-style commercial buildings that were popular in Carrick and other South Hills neighborhoods, and they ought to be preserved if at all possible. Carrick is not a prosperous neighborhood, but much of the commercial district is still lively, and with the increase in city property values the repairs might be a good investment.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS

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March 29, 2025
The Linwood, North Point Breeze

The Linwood, designed in 1906, is characteristic of Frederick Scheibler in his early-modern phase. You can imagine it being published with approval in one of those German architectural magazines that our local architects occasionally got their hands on. It contained six luxurious apartments, with maids’ quarters, for well-to-do city-dwellers. Although the windows have been replaced and the third-floor balconies have been filled in for sun rooms, the strong lines of the building still make pretty much the same impression they did when it was new. It stands out without offending: it looks like something special, which would be helpful in peddling apartments to the smart set.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10 (all but this picture); Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

These pictures were taken just this afternoon. After a while the rain started to pour. But would that deter old Pa Pitt from getting one more picture? Certainly not! He will dry out eventually.

This is Father Pitt’s first article on anything in North Point Breeze—another neighborhood he has neglected too long. Several other North Point Breeze articles will follow soon.

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March 28, 2025
Apartment and Commercial Block on Murray Avenue, Squirrel Hill

A commercial building and apartment block in the eclectic style popular in the 1920s: it carries a whiff of Spanish Mission, but also a bit of Renaissance. Liberal use of terra cotta enlivens the façade.

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March 8, 2025
Emich Apartments, Mexican War Streets

A grand apartment house that would have been grander before it lost its cornice in front. Another “Emich Apartments,” taller and grander, stood where Allegheny General Hospital is today; both were named for developer W. A. Emich. This one was built on the site of the old Second Ward School in the city of Allegheny.

Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.

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March 3, 2025
Arch Street, North Side

Arch Street, which is now included in the Mexican War Streets despite not bearing the name of a battle or a general, is a typical North Side combination of dense rowhouses, small apartment buildings, and backstreet stores. Here are just a few sights within one block of the street.

An exceptionally elaborate Queen Anne house whose owner has used bright but well-chosen colors to emphasize the wealth of detail on the front.

Two modest houses from before the Civil War; the brick house at left is dated 1842.

A small apartment building with a well-balanced classical front.

Some fine woodwork surrounds a front door.

The colorful dormer steals the show, but enlarge the picture to appreciate the terra-cotta grotesques on the cornice.

This little building looks as though it dates from the 1920s. Although it is quite different in style from its neighbors, it fits harmoniously by sharing the same setback and similar height.

A backstreet grocery that is currently functioning as a backstreet grocery—an unusual phenomenon in city neighborhoods these days. The apartment building above it has some interesting and attractive brickwork.

Sony Alpha 3000.

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February 24, 2025
South View Apartments, Beechview

This 1950s modernist apartment building was put up on what had been the Neeld estate in Beechview until after the Second World War. It has kept much of its original detail, including the windows. The one big change has been the addition of a hipped roof, which was probably the simplest and most economical way to solve persistent problems with the original flat roof. The colored sections give the building a cheery whimsy that most modernist boxes lack.

Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.

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February 19, 2025
A Stroll on Glenmore Avenue in Dormont

A few pictures from a very brief walk after a day of rain. Glenmore Avenue may not be quite as tony as Espy Avenue a block away, but it has its share of elegant homes. As in many other streets in Dormont, the elegant homes are mixed in with pleasant little apartment houses and duplexes—a core principle of what old Pa Pitt calls the Dormont Model of Sustainable Development.

We start with a house that, although it is addressed to Glenmore, actually faces the cross street, Lasalle Avenue.

This Tudor seems to present a modest front to LaSalle Avenue, but turning the corner to Glenmore Avenue reveals a long side of dimensions that would almost qualify it for mansion status.

Next to the Tudor mansion, a symmetrical double house arranged as two Dutch Colonial houses back to back.

A typical Pittsburgh duplex—except that the typical Pittsburgh slope of the lot gives it the opportunity for a third apartment in the basement, with a ground-level entrance on the side street, Key Avenue.

An apartment building that looks like many other small apartment buildings in Dormont. They probably all share the same architect: Charles Geisler, who lived nearby in Beechview and designed dozens of buildings in Dormont and Mount Lebanon.

Even though he has walked on Glenmore Avenue many times before, old Pa Pitt never made this association before now. This is a smaller cottage, but it was clearly designed by the same hand that drew this overgrown bungalow on Mattern Avenue:

This is what you get if you tell your architect, “I want a bungalow, but with three floors.” The house on Glenmore may originally have had stucco and half-timbering like this: there’s no telling what’s under that aluminum siding.

Canon PowerShot A540; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

This striking house in a subdued version of Prairie Style has been rescued from decay, with tiny plastic paste-on shutters as a signifier of a high-class renovation. Here they are installed behind downspouts, which makes them even more conceptually absurd.

More pictures of Glenmore Avenue.

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January 1, 2025
Scheibler Apartment Building in Highland Park Condemned
After years of neglect and decay, this apartment building in the otherwise prosperous neighborhood of Highland Park is finally condemned.

And it will be a tragedy to lose it, because it is an extraordinary work by an extraordinary architect.

Frederick Scheibler is possibly the most-talked-about architect Pittsburgh ever produced, and this building—put up in 1906 for Mary M. Coleman—marks a turning point in Scheibler’s style, according to his biographer Martin Aurand. “The facade departs from precedent, however, in the sheer strength of its massing, and in its near total lack of common domestic imagery—even a cornice.… There is virtually no exterior ornament at all. The Coleman facade continues a process of abstraction begun at the Linwood [in North Point Breeze], but the leap forward in Scheibler’s developing style is sudden.”¹

Considering the value of real estate in Highland Park right now, restoring this building should be not only public-spirited but also profitable. Is any ambitious developer willing to take it on? That blue sticker isn’t necessarily a death sentence: it will be removed if the dangerous conditions are remediated. To make it easier for you, Scheibler’s original drawings for this building are preserved in the Architecture Archive at Carnegie Mellon, so there need be no guesswork in the restoration.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
1. Martin Aurand, The Progressive Architecture of Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr., p. 42 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). ↩︎
December 13, 2024