Father Pitt

Tag: Baltimore-Style Rowhouses

  • Row of Houses on Penn Avenue, Strip

    Row of houses on Penn Avenue, Strip District

    At the turn of the twentieth century, the Strip was a chaotic and lively mess of huge industries, small business, and rowhouses. Few of the houses remain; here is one of the surviving rows. These are what old Pa Pitt calls Baltimore-style rowhouses: a row where the houses are all put up as more or less one building, flush up against the sidewalk, with only a set of steps to the front door to separate them from the city outside. These were built as rental houses, probably in the 1890s or very early 1900s; they were still all under the same ownership in 1923, according to old maps. At first they had small back yards on the alley in the rear, but by 1910 those back yards had been filled in with tiny alley houses, which are still there today, and some day when it isn’t so cold old Pa Pitt will walk around to the alley and get their picture, too.

    Rowhouses in the Strip

    Surprisingly, all the houses in the original group survive. The house on the right end had its front completely rebuilt about ten years ago; the fourth house from the left has had a “picture window” installed in the parlor. The rest of the houses look more or less the way they have always looked.

    Row of houses in the Strip
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    Comments

  • Klee Row, Allegheny West

    Klee row

    A row of identical houses put up in 1884 for Joseph Klee, a successful manufacturer of shoes and one of the founders of the Rodef Shalom congregation. The word “Klee” means “clover” in German, so, of course…

    Dormer

    …all the dormers have clover ornaments.

    Breezeway

    Note the basement-level breezeway between houses, which is very unusual in Pittsburgh.

    End of the row
    One of the houses
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Row of Houses on North Avenue

    Row of houses on North Avenue

    These are what old Pa Pitt calls Baltimore-style rowhouses: that is, rowhouses where the whole row is built as one subdivided building right against the sidewalk (as opposed to the typical Pittsburgh terrace, where the houses are set back with tiny front yards). Since North Avenue is the neighborhood boundary on city planning maps, these fall into the “Central Northside” for planning purposes; but socially they formed part of the wealthy section of Allegheny that includes Allegheny West across the street.

    Rowhouses on North Avenue

  • Tiny Rowhouses on the South Side

    Houses at 24th and Carey Way

    These tiny houses at the corner of 24th Street and Carey Way were probably built as rental properties, meant to be the cheapest possible construction that could still be rented as a “house” rather than a tenement. They are what old Pa Pitt might call Baltimore-style rowhouses, where the whole row was built as one building, although in Baltimore the building would typically cover a whole block. The ones on 24th street were built between 1903 and 1910; the ones around the corner on Carey Way were built between 1910 and 1923. Yet we notice that, in those days, even these utilitarian shoeboxes for poor millworkers were not allowed to show their faces in public without a proper ornamental cornice.

    Cornice

    This is also an excellent view of a typical Pittsburgh system of utility cables.

    Houses on Carey Way
    Cornice

  • Rowhouses on Penn Avenue, Garfield

    5100 block of Penn Avenue

    These are Baltimore-style rowhouses, where the whole block was built at once as more or less one subdivided building. They are much less common in Pittsburgh, but we do find them occasionally, and these rows in Garfield preserve many of their original details. They were built in the 1880s, probably as rental properties, since the 1890 map shows them as all owned by Brown, Donnell & Verner. Intact rows from this era are rare in Pittsburgh, and we should take care to preserve these two rows. Above, the 5100 block of Penn Avenue. Below, houses in the 5200 block.

    5200 block
    Owl

    Terra-cotta owls decorate every house. One wonders whether they had special significance for Brown, Donnell, or Verner.

    Another owl
    Corner house
    House with yellow door