By the time these houses were being put up, probably in the late 1930s or early 1940s, the “Colonial” style had grown almost to a mania. It would take over the housing market in the second half of the twentieth century to such an extent that nine out of ten houses in real-estate listings of the 1990s were described as “colonial,” though most of them bore little resemblance to any architecture known from before the American Revolution.
These three houses are all built on the same basic plan: the rooms arranged around a small center hall with stairway. The house above proclaims its Colonial ambitions with a front door surrounded by a simple and attractive classical frame.
The main house is on the same plan as the previous house, but here a front porch is added, and a charming garage with miniature cupola plays up the Colonial theme.
Once again the same basic layout, but here the second floor is done in siding (wood originally) instead of brick, and a small vestibule is added at the front entrance.
This side of Roycroft Avenue—which was the sunny side yesterday afternoon—is in the St. Clair Terrace plan (the other side is part of a different plan). As with many of the plans in the Mt. Lebanon Historic District, the lots were sold off to buyers who would hire their own architects to design their dream houses. The result is a pleasingly eclectic collection of houses whose designs are all of high quality. We’ve seen some of these houses before, but the deep snow added an irresistible picturesqueness.
Craftsman meets Colonial in an attractive double duplex whose details are exceptionally well preserved—notably the showy carved brackets and the windows.
The Wilkinsburg borough building, which also houses the library, was designed by Theodore Eichholz in 1938, at the height of the mania for Colonial American architecture spurred by the restoration of Williamsburg. It opened on the first day of 1940.1 In these past two years it has been getting some restoration, including replacement of those tall columns, which are made of wood. The old ones had rotted; these new ones, carefully duplicating the originals, are supposedly treated to prevent rot—although if you only have to replace your wooden columns once every eighty-five years, you’re not doing too badly.
Fifth Avenue in Shadyside was the most famous of the millionaires’ rows in Pittsburgh. But there were some more modest houses as well—“modest” being a comparative term here. Some predated the arrival of the millionaires, and some were beyond the main stretch of mansions. Many have been replaced by postwar apartment buildings, but a number of these houses survive. A while ago, Father Pitt took an evening stroll on Fifth Avenue to have a look at some of them. Above, a wood-frame Queen Anne mansion with picturesque protrusions in all directions.
A center-hall house in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century interpretation of Georgian style.
Another center-hall house of the sort old Pa Pitt would call a center-hall foursquare. Walking around to the side reveals a fat turret that must add to the interest of the interior.
Another Georgian house, though the Georgian era was lamentably ignorant of buff Kittanning brick.
Sony Alpha 3000.
From the old days, before the millionaires, here is a wide I-house whose main part seems to have been built before 1872.
Shadycrest Village was just beginning construction when it opened for inspection on Valentine’s Day of 1943. The first stage of the development included modest six-room houses like these, done in the cheap and simple 1940s interpretation of the “Colonial” style.
Economical though they were, the houses were up to date, according to the puffery the developers distributed to the papers.
Noteworthy features being built in Shadycrest homes include colonial balustrade stairways, which are wide and easy to climb; improved bathroom fixtures; medicine cabinets, linoleum kitchen and bathroom floors; improved steel casement windows, easy to clean from inside the house, insulted ceilings, Kastone laundry trays, tilt-up garage doors, cabinet sink sets, wallcases edged with non-corrosive metal, and electric ventilating fans.
They also had generous lots to stand on, and—since we were in the middle of the Second World War—the publicity pointed out how much space you would have for a victory garden.
Lots in this development will all be good-sized, ranging from 100 to 200 feet deep. This means that owners will have enough ground for their own victory gardens and can raise their own vegetables.
The location was a big attraction—“so near the downtown district, and above the smog level”—although “6 minutes to downtown” assumes no pauses in driving through the Tubes, which was no more likely in 1943 than it is now.
The development continued to grow, and the larger part of it was made up of five-room double houses in the same simplified Colonial style. These sold rapidly at the end of the war, as returning soldiers looked for places to settle down and raise families.
Cheap though they were, these little houses have aged well. The neighborhood is still very pleasant today, and we notice that many residents still take advantage of the generous lots that come even with the doubles to plant cheerful gardens.
If you visit a friend in Shadycrest, you may need to be very careful about your navigation. The development began on established streets like Tropical Avenue, but as it grew the developers added new winding dead-end streets, and they had to come up with names for them. So…
Shadycrest Drive Shadycrest Road Shadycrest Court Shadycrest Place Shadygrove Avenue Shadyview Place
Finding a house in Shadycrest requires an instinct for pedantic specificity.
The little village of Rennerdale sits halfway between Carnegie and Oakdale on the Noblestown Road. This corner-tower frame church, with its Colonial-style details, reminds us of the Noblestown Methodist Episcopal Church designed by James Allison; and since we know that Allison designed other buildings in the area, it would not surprise us to find that he was responsible for this one. It has been swathed in artificial siding, as our few surviving frame churches usually are; but the siding men did an unusually good job of making sure that the windows and doors were properly framed. The church still belongs to its original congregation.
Parking garages sometimes give us good views of the surrounding buildings, and no one questions your right to be there as long as you look respectable enough. (The powdered wig helps.) Here are three interesting houses on Aiken Avenue seen from the Shadyside Hospital garage. First, an unusually well-preserved Shingle-style house with a lush crop of shingles.
This Queen Anne house has been turned into seven apartments, to judge by counting mailboxes and doorbells.
Finally, this mansion in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century interpretation of Colonial style has grown an apartment building in its back yard, a disease to which some old houses are subject in urban neighborhoods. It appears on Google Maps as a “community correction center,” so if you make a mistake in typing you can probably come here to have it corrected professionally. Old Pa Pitt prefers to make his own corrections, but he is glad there is a service for people who need it.
