A few weeks ago old Pa Pitt took a wintry walk on North Avenue (which used to be Fayette Street back when it did not run all the way through to North Avenue on the rest of the North Side). He took piles of pictures, and although he published four articles so far from that walk (one, two, three, four), there’s still quite a collection backed up waiting to be published. Thus this very long article, which is a smorgasbord of Victorian domestic architecture with a few other eras thrown in. Above, a pair of Italianate houses. They both preserve the tall windows typical of the high Italianate style; the one on the right still has (or has restored) its two-over-two panes.
A typical backstreet Bloomfield row of frame houses, showing almost every treatment working-class Pittsburghers can think of to apply to the exterior of an old house.
This stone-fronted Romanesque house on North Avenue is decorated with intricate carvings, and Father Pitt would guess that they were probably by Achille Giammartini, who was responsible for most of the best Romanesque decoration in Pittsburgh, and who also decorated the Masonic Hall just up the street.
A couple of blocks of North Avenue, where we can see some fine Italianate houses of the Civil War era, interspersed with some towering Queen Anne mansions. We start at the corner of Palo Alto Street, where a Queen Anne house makes the most of a tiny lot by going up to a fourth floor.
These two houses share splendid porches, probably added later, since the porches match even though the houses do not. The owners of the houses have coordinated their efforts, so that the porches match.
Three more modest houses, though their full third floors give them a generous allotment of bedrooms.
A pair of houses that were both the peak of elegance in different eras. The Italianate one on the right goes for a simpler dignity; the Queen Anne on the left pulls out all the stops to make the most picturesque composition possible. Note the relative heights, by the way: high ceilings were a feature of the Italianate style in better houses, so that the house at left adds one more floor in exactly the same vertical height.
Seventeen years ago, Father Pitt published a picture of the front door of the house on the right. The picture was taken on 120 film with a folding Agfa Isolette.
Two simple and attractive Italianate houses, one of which has grown a partial fourth floor.
Here is an interesting document of how the neighborhood has changed. The house at left was originally an Italianate residence; the corner store may have been original or may have been added later. The projecting commercial building next to it, which probably dates from about 1920, was added when the house was taken over by the United States Casket Company, later the Melia Casket Company, which still inhabited the building until about twelve years ago. Both buildings have had a thorough renovation since the casket-makers moved out.
Two different interpretations of Italianate, one of which has sprouted an inartistic dormer to give it a fourth floor.
Finally, a center-hall house in a kind of late Greek Revival style; it occupies a double lot.
Much of the detail on this fine old house is well preserved, including the half-octagon dormer, the oval art-glass window, the wraparound porch (partly enclosed by an improvised screen), and one of the finest displays of aluminum awning old Pa Pitt has ever seen.
In the 1920s and 1930s, designers of houses often made them into fairy-tale cottages, in which every detail was carefully managed to evoke picturesque fantasies of old England or France. But this was also the time when built-in garages were becoming a requirement for suburban homes. If the garage door is on the front, it often spoils the fantasy. But this house in Mission Hills, Mount Lebanon, shows us that there is an alternative: make the garage part of the fantasy.
Not only is the garage entrance a big stone arch that suggests an immemorially ancient cellar under the house, but it is also decorated with the terra-cotta rays that were a fashionable adornment of the fairy-tale style.
Mission Hills is a neighborhood where every house is an individual work of art. It has a special charm in the snow. Here is a short stroll on Orchard Drive, taking in a wide variety of styles.
An assortment of styles from a block and a half of North Avenue facing the Commons in old Allegheny. These houses are now included in the Mexican War Streets Historic District. First, a tall and narrow Queen Anne house built in the 1880s.
This Queen Anne has a larger lot and thus more room to spread out and grow picturesque projections.
These three houses probably go back to the Civil War era; they are typical of the larger sort of houses that grew all over Pittsburgh from the beginning until the middle 1800s, when more elaborate styles came into fashion.
It is not easy to guess the age of these little houses. Old Pa Pitt’s best speculation, judging from old maps, is that they also go back to the Civil War era, but had their fronts modernized at some time around 1900. The one on the left may have had its front replaced more than once before it finally ended up with this Craftsman-style stucco treatment.
Finally, another house from the 1880s, this one with particularly elaborate woodwork.
This house looks quite traditional on the outside, but inside it used the most up-to-date construction methods for 1928. Instead of the ordinary timber framing, it was built on a steel frame like a skyscraper. It was such an innovation that Carnegie Tech architecture students made a field trip to inspect the construction.
Pittsburgh Press, October 14, 1928.
When a technological institute of the standing of Carnegie Tech expresses interest in a construction project to the point of sending a class to inspect the work, then it may be regarded as a certainty that the project is basically sound and worthy.
Forty Tech students, part of whom are shown above, headed by Prof. T. D. Mylrea, assistant to the head of the building construction department of the Institute, last week made a tour of inspection of the new type, steel framed, fire proof home being built in Mission Hills, Mt. Lebanon, for W. H. Shaffer, Jr.
This home, designed by Lyon and Taylor, New York architects, is such a departure from past methods of construction that a number of builders’ and architects’ magazines have published exhaustive articles concerning it. It is primarily a product of Pittsburgh, the National Steel Fabric Co., Steel Frame House Co. and Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. having collaborated with L. Brandt, Pittsburgh housing engineer, in working out the details of construction.
The front of this house in Mission Hills has changed very little since it was new. It was sold in 1930, probably when it was newly built, and the Sun-Telly printed its picture.
“Mission Hills Home,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, June 1, 1930, p. 48
Forgive the blurry microfilm reproduction of what was already a photograph reproduced in halftone on cheap newsprint; it is enough to show us that, except for the filled-in side porch, not much is different in front, although the tiny sapling in the newspaper picture is a major tree now. There appears to be an addition in the back, where it does not alter the impression the house makes from the street.
