Tag: Domestic Architecture

  • J. C. Pontefract House, Chateau

    On city planning maps, this house is in Chateau, but socially it was at the end of the Lincoln Avenue row of rich people’s houses in Allegheny West. Today it sits surrounded by robotics works and fast-food joints, but it is kept in beautifully original condition by its owners. The architects were Longfellow, Alden & Harlow (or some subset of those three), at the very beginning of their practice—just about the time they designed Sunnyledge, which is something like a stretched version of this house. Enlarge the picture and note the patterns in the brickwork.

  • Two Houses by Louis Stevens in Schenley Farms

    Henry Terry house

    Louis Stevens designed two houses side by side on Parkman Street for two members of the Terry family—Henry Terry and C. D. Terry. The houses were built about 19161, and they are a good demonstration of how completely different arrangements of the elements can nevertheless be stamped with the architect’s indelible signature.

    The Henry Terry house, above, is symmetrical, with twin gables facing us and a porch roof extending from the center entrance.

    C. D. Terry house

    The C. D. Terry house, on the other hand, is asymmetrical, with a side porch, an entrance with Romanesque-style receding arches, and a single gable facing the street.

    In both houses, though, we see the same steeply pitched roof, with its slightly flared roofline, and the same Flemish-bond brickwork. The houses let us know right away that they are the work of the same architect.

    C. D. Terry house
    Henry Terry house

    Stevens’ best-known work in Pittsburgh is probably the Worthington mansion in Squirrel Hill, which is now part of Temple Sinai. It is on a much larger scale and made with richer materials, but we can see its family resemblance to these two houses.

    1. Our information comes from The Construction Record in 1915, which tells us that Stevens was taking bids on these two houses. ↩︎
  • Stone House in Point Breeze

    House on Reynolds Street

    This stone house makes a fine impression as you walk by on Reynolds Street. If you just glanced at it, you might miss a very unusual feature: the corner windows in the front bedrooms on the second floor. Corner windows were very popular for a while in the middle twentieth century in modernist residences: they had the very practical purpose of leaving large expanses of wall blank for furniture or decorations. But it is not common to see them on a house that probably dates from about 1900.

    Oblique view
    Front door
  • Concrete Rowhouses by Titus de Bobula, Greenfield

    Titus de Bobula houses

    These tiny houses on Frank Street have a historic importance far out of proportion to their cost and size. First of all, they are among the relatively few remaining works of the eccentric architectural genius and flimflam artist Titus de Bobula, the man who would have been Fascist dictator of Hungary if he had had better luck. Second, they are built of reinforced concrete, some of the very first American houses so built. Titus de Bobula was the apostle of concrete in his brief architectural career, and his influence would be hard to overestimate.

    A single house in the row

    The houses have had their separate adventures since they were built, including some artificial siding. This one has had windows and front door replaced, but at least it shows the simple outlines of the design, including the bay window in front.

    The row from the Greenfield Avenue end

    The house on the end may be the best preserved of the row.

    From the Lilac Street end

    Many sources say that twenty of these houses were built. Six remain, and old Pa Pitt believes there were never more than nine. The architect claimed to have built more, but we cannot rely on anything Titus de Bobula says about his work, because he was prone to exaggeration and outright fabrication.

    The houses were an investment by multimillionaire newspaper magnate Eugene O’Neill, owner of the Dispatch and no relation to the playwright of the same name. He owned the land on Frank Street and along Greenfield Avenue to either side. Some architectural historians say that De Bobula rowhouses went up on Greenfield Avenue, but that is contradicted by old maps and today’s evidence.

    Rowhouses on Greenfield Avenue

    These rowhouses on Greenfield Avenue, on the land once owned by Eugene O’Neill, were built at about the same time as the De Bobula houses, but these are standard brick. Old maps do show three more concrete houses on Lilac Street, perpendicular to the row on Frank Street, but those were replaced after the Second World War by two larger and more expensive houses:

    Where more De Bobula houses used to be

    These two houses stand where a row of three concrete houses, probably by De Bobula, stood in the first half of the twentieth century.

    For more on Titus de Bobula and his very surprising career, you can see the article on Titus de Bobula in Father Pitt’s Pittsburgh Encyclopedia.

  • The Witches’ Caps on Negley Avenue

    625 to 633 South Negley Avenue

    This row of Queen Anne houses on Negley Avenue in Shadyside surely strikes every passer-by, if for nothing other than their turrets with witches’ caps. The other details are also worth noticing: the ornamental woodwork and the roof slates, for example. The houses are just detached enough that we can see that the sides are made of cheaper brick rather than the stone that faces the street.

    629 South Negley Avenue

    The last one in the row lost its cap many years ago, but in compensation has been ultra-Victorianized with extra polychrome woodwork, as we see on the dormer below.

    Dormer
  • Gothic I-House in Point Breeze

    This house probably dates from the 1870s, making it much earlier than the city neighborhood that filled in around it. Because Point Breeze is such a desirable neighborhood (this house is just around the corner from the Frick Art Museum), it has been worth the expense to restore this house to something like its original appearance.

  • We Identify a Forgotten Work by John T. Comès

    Looking for something else entirely, old Pa Pitt accidentally solved a mystery that had struck him back in May, when he photographed the First Church of the Brethren in Garfield. At that time, he had thought that the attached parsonage was “in an extraordinarily rich and accurate Tudor style for such a small house.”

    First Church of the Brethren and parsonage

    It turns out that the little house was by a big architect: John T. Comès, probably our most prolific architect of Catholic churches, and one—not surprisingly—known for his love of accurate historical detail. He was working for Beezer Brothers at the time, and he exhibited this drawing at the Pittsburgh Architectural Club’s 1900 exhibition:

    Pastor’s Residence for First Brethren Church, by John T. Comès

    Here is how one critic described the drawing:

    Mr. John T. Comes renders an admirable Pastor’s Residence for “First Brethren Church,” by Beezer Brothers, which leans hard to an old church and breaks away from the sidewalk in a most happy manner, winding up the stone stairs to a reserved and “strong door.” The drawing itself is a happy one. The pots on the chimney are swelling beyond redemption.

    The front has been replaced by a later porch, but otherwise Comès’ happy little house survives much as he drew it. And Father Pitt is delighted to add one more to the known works of a remarkable artist.

    Pastors residence, First Brethren Church
  • “Graswick,” Etna

    This house has a sign in front identifying it as “Graswick” and telling us that it was built in 1873. This spares old Pa Pitt a lot of research, and he suggests that all owners of historic houses should imitate the owners of this one. It is perched on the side of a steep hill, and it has a magnificent view straight down High Street to the town and the Pine Creek valley below.

  • Row of Queen Anne Duplexes on Sidney Street, South Side

    2315 to 2325 Sidney Street

    These three Queen Anne duplexes were once identical, or nearly so. Each one has had separate adventures, and each one has preserved some details and lost others.

    2323 and 2325

    This one probably preserves the original appearance best, though it has lost the stained glass in the parlor windows.

    2319 and 2321

    This one has suffered badly from separate ownership of the two sides. Some contractor charged quite a bit of money for mutilating the left-hand side. The right side has also been modernized, but with more taste, using windows that are the right size and shape for the wall.

    2315 and 2317

    This one has had similar alterations, but at least the parlor windows have not been filled in with toy blocks.

    Old Pa Pitt is constantly surprised by the number of Pittsburgh homeowners who say, “I hate all that natural light and fresh air! Block in those big ugly windows and give me just enough glass to see what the weather is out there.”

    Row of Queen Anne duplexes
  • House on California Avenue, Avalon

    The Bellevue line just narrowly misses this house, making it the first building in Avalon outside Bellevue, and the first on California Avenue outside the city, since California Avenue turns into Lincoln Avenue while it passes through Bellevue. The house was used as the Orion C. Pinkerton funeral home, but when old Pa Pitt took this picture a few days ago, the house was for sale.

    This is clearly the work of an architect rather than just a builder, and enough details are preserved that it would be worth restoring. That blank spot above the awning, for example, probably had a stained-glass window in it, and it could have one again.

    The off-center front door bothers Father Pitt. He finds it hard to imagine an architect designing the house that way originally. Yet the ornamental brickwork above the door matches that above the windows, as if it had always been that way. At the cost of making the picture look a little artificial, Father Pitt has compressed the shadows and highlights to make the details under the porch roof mire visible: enlarge the picture and judge for yourself what is going on with that front door.