Some day these houses will disappear. They are typical of middle-class houses that sprouted on the Hill in the 1890s, making use of the Second Empire mansard roof to give these narrow houses two more bedrooms on the third floors. Generations of condemnation notices have been pasted on them. They would be worth restoring if they were moved to another neighborhood, and perhaps they have some hope here, now that the Hill is growing new construction and looking more hopeful. But it isn’t likely that they’ll win their race with the wrecking ball.
Four houses on Stanton Avenue, which is the line that separates Highland Park from East Liberty. First, two that obviously go together, though they differ in a few details.
Here is a house we might describe as center-hall-Colonial-Baroque.
The Baroque details of the central dormer need a bit of restoration. We hope they can be repaired rather than simply replaced with simpler wood (or aluminum or vinyl).
Finally, a house that is more than twenty years younger than its neighbors; the lot was still vacant in 1923, according to plat maps.
Paul Irwin designed this house for R. P. McAllister; it was built in about 1920. (Father Pitt knows this information because the owners of the house helpfully inscribed it on a bronze plaque around the corner at the delivery entrance.) Though it is eclectic in its influences, everything works in harmony, from the Georgian front door to the Japanese eyebrow in the roofline to the surprising outbreaks of half-timbering in the rear.
The late Franklin Toker believed that these houses were probably designed by Frederick Scheibler. He was following the original scholars of Frederick Scheibler, Shear and Schmertz, who brought poor old Scheibler out of obscurity in his old age in time to see himself hailed as a prophet of modern architecture.
Father Pitt hates to contradict Dr. Toker, whose encyclopedic knowledge of Pittsburgh architecture was probably unmatched; but Toker has been wrong before. Martin Aurand, whose biography of Scheibler will probably remain the definitive one for generations to come, lists these houses under the “misattributions.”
Old Pa Pitt himself is of the Aurand opinion, and in fact Father Pitt has probable grounds for attributing these houses—without, however, claiming complete certainty—to Benno Janssen. His reason is that there is a very similar terrace in Oakland (368–376 McKee Place) that is almost certainly by Janssen & Abbott. Father Pitt hopes to have pictures of those houses soon; meanwhile, you can take his word for it—or look them up on Google Street View—that it would be odd if one of these terraces were by Janssen & Abbott and the other by Scheibler.
These houses are yet another clever answer to the question of how to design a terrace of relatively inexpensive houses so that they are architecturally attractive and distinctive—so that, in other words, they make potential tenants think they’re getting something special. Compare them, for example, to the row just next door to the left, which was built on a lower budget to a much more ordinary design.
The 1100 block of Portland Street was built by a company that included the architects Robinson & Winkler, to whom we therefore attribute these unusually florid houses.1 In plan the houses are the usual Pittsburgh Foursquare, but varied with unusual details that make the changing scene a constant delight as we walk up the street.
Just the dormers could form an album for the instruction and amusement of other architects.
Source: Pittsburg Press, September 29, 1905. “The Highland Realty Co. has applied for a Pennsylvania charter. The company has been organized by Architects Charles M. Robinson and George Winkler, Contractors D. M. Fair and the East End Attorneys J. E. Wise and W. E. Minor. Its primary purpose is the building of high-class houses in the East End. Six such residences, to cost about $10,000 each, have already been started by Mr. Fair on the west side of Portland Avenue, near Hampton street, in the North Negley district.” All the houses on both sides of the 1100 block of Portland Street, north of Hampton, are of the same dimensions, with flamboyant details that mark them as probably all the work of the same designers. They appeared between the 1903–1906 layer and the 1910 layer at Pittsburgh Historic Maps. ↩︎
In 1889, William Smith Fraser, one of our top architects in those days, supervised a whole long block of fifty elegant stone-fronted houses lining both sides of Dinwiddie Street.1
A majority of the houses disappeared over the years; the street came to look like a battle zone, three-quarters abandoned.
But the wheel turned again. About fifteen years ago, Rothschild Doyno Collaborative designed infill housing and refurbished the Fraser houses. The new houses were built at the same scale and setback as the old, and with some of the same massing; the old houses were refurbished with inexpensive materials that matched the new houses.
It’s still not a rich neighborhood. But it’s a beautiful and welcoming streetscape again, and it’s an inspiring example of how an interrupted streetscape can be made whole. The new houses are definitely of our century, but they belong on the street. Without duplicating the Fraser designs, they make themselves at home in the neighborhood.
In this picture, the houses with stone bays in front are some of the original Fraser houses. Their more colorful neighbors are the “infill” houses.
Source: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, May 29, 1889, p. 246. “The contract for the fifty modern dwellings, previously reported, to be erected on Dinwiddie street by Mr. Lockhart, has been given to Henry Shenck. W. S. Fraser, Seventh street and Penn avenue is the architect. These dwellings will be of brick, with stone fronts, bay windows and porches, and all modern conveniences.” ↩︎
A while ago, Father Pitt took a walk on Thomas Boulevard in the light rain, so don’t be surprised to see raindrops in some of these pictures. Thomas Boulevard, like McPherson Boulevard, has an eclectic mixture of housing from duplexes through Shingle-style mansions to medium-sized apartment buildings. Today we’re concentrating on the houses, some of which are magnificent. Above, a Shingle-style house with all its shingles in place.
If you ever asked yourself how much difference materials really make in the appearance of a house, compare this Shingle-style house, where the shingles have been replaced with fake siding and paste-on shutters, to the one above.
A typical Pittsburgh Renaissance palace that has turned into an apartment building.
A house with Queen Anne outlines that has been modernized with reasonably good taste.
This frame house was in deplorable condition before it was updated and made to look like a product of the twenty-first century. You can look on Google Street View to see the specific meaning old Pa Pitt assigns to “deplorable.” With an unlimited budget, Father Pitt would prefer to restore a house like this to its original design. With a limited budget, this was a good result.
This turret with house attached needs some rescuing. It has what the real-estate people call good bones, and that turret ought to be attractive to a well-off eccentric now that the neighborhood is on the upswing.
A big center-hall house that is now solar-powered.
A stony foursquare with Queen Anne details. It has lost its porch, but the third floor retains fine original woodwork and windows.
A center-hall colonial from early in the Colonial Revival, when Georgian was filtered through a late-Victorian lens.
This is a variation on the same plan as the previous house, which is right next to it; they were probably built at the same time and designed by the same hand. The porch has been replaced with a modern construction that does not quite fit, but the house looks much better with this porch than it would look with no porch at all.
This towering center-hall manse makes spectacular use of Kittanning brick in Frederick Sauer’s favorite color. The beefiness of it, along with the well-balanced selection of picturesque details, makes us think that Sauer is a good suspect for the architect.
This house grew a large balcony when it was turned into a duplex.
A big square house with typical Queen Anne details, especially the little balcony and the curved surfaces covered with shingles.
It is a little hard to date these houses on South 10th Street from old plat maps, and any South Side historians who have good information are earnestly invited to enlighten us. The two on the right end are separate from the rest and slightly larger. A row of houses appears on this land in 1872, belonging to someone named Thomas. In 1882, however, all but the two houses on the right are gone; the rest of the land is vacant. By 1890 the row is full again, still belonging to the Thomas family, except for the last house on the left, which belongs to someone named Todt.
Father Pitt’s best guess, then, is that the two houses on the right date from the Civil War era. The rest of the houses might have burned in about 1880, and were rebuilt in what was still the usual vernacular style for small rowhouses. But this is only a wild guess, and more information would be welcome. It is, after all, possible that the 1882 map was wrong, and the houses never went away.
This fashionably Romanesque house was probably built in the 1890s for a W. Snively. It has been converted to apartments, but the original outlines of the house are still evident. If, by the way, you are embarrassed by the soot stains on the stone of your house, old Pa Pitt suggests overcoming your embarrassment and embracing the history that soot represents. The alternative of painting your stone grey is not a success.
Perrysville Avenue started as a plank road, with tollgates, but in the second half of the nineteenth century it began to fill up as the spine of a pleasant suburban neighborhood of Allegheny. Today Perry Hilltop is a strange mixture of appalling decay and beautiful restoration: it has never quite got off the ground as a trendy neighborhood, but some of the houses have been beautifully preserved. The splendid Dutch Colonial mansion above, for example, is in very good shape. Note the original windows. It was probably built around the turn of the twentieth century.
A Victorian frame house that preserves some of its original details, including the trim around the windows. It appears on an 1882 plat map, so it probably dates from the 1870s.
This center-hall manse has a third-floor dormer that, fortunately, no one has ever had the money to modernize.
This house was probably built at some time around the First World War.
