T. Ed. (for Thomas Edward) Cornelius was the architect of this little Arts-and-Crafts Gothic church.1 Cornelius was a lifelong resident of Coraopolis, but he flourished for decades as a designer of small to medium-sized projects all over the Pittsburgh area. This building has not been a church for quite a while, but its current owners keep it up neatly, though they have adapted it to radically different uses.
C. D. Cooley, an architect who was associated with the Bartberger brothers for a while in the firm of Bartberger, Cooley & Bartberger, built this home for himself in the newly accessible suburb of Brookline, which had suddenly become an easy commute from downtown Pittsburgh when the Transit Tunnel opened. It is a beautiful house even now, little altered from Mr. Cooley’s vision, and it stands out from its more pedestrian neighbors as a work of unusual taste.
But tragedy struck the Cooley family. In 1915, Mrs. Cooley died. She was only thirty years old.1 About half a year later, Mr. Cooley put the house up for sale.
“Built by Pittsburg architect for home at cost of $9,000, but, owing to death in family will sacrifice to quick buyer.”
We might add that the building cost of $9,000 might have been twice the cost of neighboring houses in Brookline. The house was not huge, but by Brookline standards it was luxurious, with expensive materials—stone instead of brick, and oak where neighboring houses would have had cheap yellow pine.
Father Pitt loves chimney pots, and these simple rectangular ones are perfectly matched to the style of the house.
This striking design was by Janssen & Abbott, and it shows Benno Janssen developing that economy of line old Pa Pitt associates with his best work, in which there are exactly the right number of details to create the effect he wants and no more. The row was built in about 1913.1 The resemblance to another row on King Avenue in Highland Park is so strong that old Pa Pitt attributes that row to Janssen & Abbott as well.
These houses are not quite as well kept as the ones in Highland Park. They have been turned into duplexes and seem to have fallen under separate ownership, resulting in—among other alterations—the tiniest aluminum awnings old Pa Pitt has ever seen up there on the attic dormers of two of the houses.
Nevertheless, the design still overwhelms the miscellaneous alterations and makes this one of the most interesting terraces in Oakland.
This was an early commission for Louis Stevens,1 who would be best known in his career for houses and mansions for the rich and the upper middle class. It was built in 1911 on Churchview Avenue (then called Church Avenue, but renamed Churchview when Carrick was taken into the city of Pittsburgh), just off Brownsville Road. Four years earlier, Stevens had been studying architecture in Carnegie Tech’s night school. The front of the building has been muddled a bit, but the renovations were done in a halfhearted manner that allows us to appreciate the original composition.
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.
R. Maurice Trimble designed this charming little church, which was finished in 1909. It is still in nearly original condition, and still owned by its original congregation.
A simple but dignified design that preserves its Craftsman-style three-over-one windows.
This storefront on Brownsville Road has layers of history. The original 1920 building must have been an interesting design; enough remains to show us that somebody tried hard to make it distinctive and up to date.
The ground floor looks like a postwar remodeling, and a well-preserved inscription in the floor of the entrance tells us that it was a shop called Harvard’s.
As Mount Oliver trendifies, this storefront may become more desirable, and if you are the owner of a small business moving in, old Pa Pitt has a suggestion: whatever your business is, call it “Harvard’s.” You then have a ready-made logo, as well as a distinctive sidewalk inscription to welcome your customers. It would be an especially good name for the intellectual sort of used bookstore.
Father Pitt had to stand in the street and risk the wrath of the No. 51 bus to get this picture, but that is the kind of effort he is willing to make for you, his faithful readers.
As you pass by on the opposite side of Brownsville Road, pause to admire the finial at the peak of the gable.
For two blocks, Bausman Street in Knoxville is lined with these houses, which are modest in their dimensions but unusually fine in their design. There are four basic shapes, which repeat in the same order on both sides of the street.
The houses were built for the Knoxville Land Improvement Company as a speculative venture. Father Pitt has not yet discovered who the architect was, but the developers got their money’s worth from these designs.
Knoxville is a bit tattered around the edges at the moment, and a few of these houses have been lost to the ravages of time and poverty—two forces whose destructive power is surpassed only by the even more destructive force of prosperity. The remaining houses ought to be preserved as a document of the best early-twentieth-century styles in middle-class housing, and because, as a streetscape, they are a work of art.
This charming Arts-and-Crafts Gothic church is the most distinguished building in the little hamlet of Imperial. It was built, according to the date stone, in 1911 for a congregation that had been founded in 1840, and the large cemetery behind the church has tombstones going back to that foundation.
The outstanding feature of the church is its belfry, with simple and massive woodwork that echoes the Gothic arches below, but also flares out into bell shapes, like a Sunday-school-supplement illustration of the bells within.
A postwar Sunday-school wing in the rear is built from nearly matching brick.
