This is a huge composite picture, so don’t click on it unless you have the megabytes to spare. This elegant apartment building on Craig Street had a typically Pittsburgh problem to solve. The lot is irregularly shaped and (of course) not level. The architect’s answer was a façade that is varied enough to mask the fact that it does not quite line up with the street. At first glance, the front seems symmetrical; the second and third glances will reveal the curious staggering of the wall.
Well, this one didn’t quite work.
Old Pa Pitt has mentioned how he enjoys seeing the experiments builders try with small apartment buildings. Here we see a builder who seems to have absorbed some of the ideas of modernism and added some Craftsman-style details: the three-over-one windows, the decorative brickwork, the wood-framed entrance. But the details seem applied at random, and a modernist architect would have been more regular in the geometry. Note the lack of rhythm or alignment in the windows, which throws off the whole façade. The second and third floors have windows in groups of 2, 1, 3, 2; the first floor has groups of 2, 1, 2, 1, and they do not line up at all with the windows above them. The entrance does not line up vertically or horizontally with anything else in the building; its awkward corner placement seems to leave some of the trim hanging off the edge.
Someone will probably come along and tell Father Pitt that this building is by a famous modernist architect, and old Pa Pitt will only say that the architect was having a bad day.
You have probably never heard anyone say this before, but Father Pitt is fascinated by small apartment buildings. Larger apartment blocks are often designed by famous architects, and they may be masterpieces of their kind. But small apartment buildings sometimes preserve the adventurous whimsies of a builder who was not technically an architect but could draw a blueprint all by himself.
Here is a good example. The third floor of this little apartment building in Mount Lebanon is typical of the Spanish Mission style that was very popular in the near South Hills in the first half of the twentieth century. But below that the details are Georgian. It would be hard to imagine a stranger clash than those two styles—and yet they work well together. Pedestrians walking by never say, “Now there is an outrageously mixed metaphor of a building.” A big-deal architect would probably never do it, but it works.
Addendum: The architect was probably Charles Geisler, who filled Mount Lebanon and Dormont with small apartment buildings.
A typical courtyard apartment building in a corner of Mount Lebanon that is full of small to medium-sized apartment buildings. This one is in a simple but attractive Jacobean style, where a few effective details carry all the thematic weight.
Colorful paint adds a bit of whimsy to a small apartment building in Shadyside.
A simple modernist brick box is given an Art Deco flair by distinctively patterned brickwork.
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.
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.
A modest apartment building with a bit of Art Deco flair in the brickwork and the staggered vertical lines.
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.
