Father Pitt

Tag: Callowhill Street

  • Tudor Manse by Henry Gilchrist in Highland Park

    5916 Callowhill Street

    Henry Gilchrist designed many fashionable mansions for the rich and the upper middle classes. This 1904 Tudor house on Callowhill Street is typical of the “English style” of the time, but the details of the half-timbering are unusually rich. The house is very similar, but not identical, to one Gilchrist designed two years later in Schenley Farms. In this house, though, the small-paned Tudor windows have been preserved, and they add to the picturesque old-English effect.1

    5916 Callowhill Street
    HDR picture of 5916 Callowhill Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    This HDR picture of the house, made up of three different exposures, looks a bit artificial but brings out the details in the woodwork.

    1. Source for the attribution: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, August 31, 1904, p. 563. “Mr. E. E. Arensburg will erect a dwelling on Callowhill street, from plans prepared by Architect H. D. Gilchrist, Frick Building.” Confirmed by a 1923 plat map, where the house belongs to “M. Arnesburg” (note spelling). ↩︎
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  • House by Frederick Sauer in Highland Park

    5906 Callowhill Street

    Perhaps the best way to describe the architect Frederick Sauer is to say that he was a high-functioning mad genius. He produced some very respectable church designs—St. Stephen Proto-Martyr, St. Stanislaus Kostka, and St. Mary of the Mount, to name three. Meanwhile, he went home every evening and started pulling rocks out of his back woods and piling them up into whimsical buildings with his own hands.

    When he designed a private residence, Sauer sometimes pushed the limits of current styles. Here is a big stony house built from his design in 1893. It hits some of the fashionable Romanesque notes, but that immense crowstepped Flemish gable makes a big impression on the neighbors. (The high-pitched roof and big gables also give the house a roomy third floor.)

    5906 Callowhill Street
    5906 Callowhill Street, capital
    House by Frederick Sauer
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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