Father Pitt

Tag: Domestic Architecture

  • South Side Slopes

    The Slopes from the Bluff

    Pittsburghers love to show out-of-town visitors the inclines, the dinosaurs at the Carnegie, the view from Mount Washington, the sandwiches with cole slaw and French fries piled inside, and other attractions of the big city. But often what the visitors talk about most is that they can’t believe how those houses cling to the side of a cliff. Here are some views of the South Side Slopes from the Bluff across the river, so that you can show out-of-town friends who have not yet visited that houses do indeed grow that way in Pittsburgh.

    Closer view
    Another section

  • Pair of Queen Anne Rowhouses, South Side

    Obviously built together, these two houses on Sarah Street have had their separate adventures. The one on the right has had its third-floor false balcony filled in to give an upstairs bedroom a little more space; the one on the left has grown an aluminum awning (because it is the South Side, after all). But both retain most of their original details, which are fairly unusual, a sort of Queen Anne interpretation of French Second Empire.

  • Victorian Houses on Penn Avenue, Garfield

    5012 Penn Avenue

    A row of fine Victorian houses on Penn Avenue in Garfield (Bloomfield according to city planning maps, because Penn Avenue is the neighborhood line, but Pittsburghers have always called both sides of Penn “Garfield”). Note the splendid tall parlor windows on the one above, which also has some particularly good gingerbreading.

    Row of houses
    Wood carving

  • Alumni House, Carnegie Mellon University

    A relic from the days when this part of Squirrel Hill was a wealthy exurb full of houses like this. Enlarge the picture and note the fine cornice woodwork along the roofline.

  • Rowhouses on Penn Avenue, Garfield

    5100 block of Penn Avenue

    These are Baltimore-style rowhouses, where the whole block was built at once as more or less one subdivided building. They are much less common in Pittsburgh, but we do find them occasionally, and these rows in Garfield preserve many of their original details. They were built in the 1880s, probably as rental properties, since the 1890 map shows them as all owned by Brown, Donnell & Verner. Intact rows from this era are rare in Pittsburgh, and we should take care to preserve these two rows. Above, the 5100 block of Penn Avenue. Below, houses in the 5200 block.

    5200 block
    Owl

    Terra-cotta owls decorate every house. One wonders whether they had special significance for Brown, Donnell, or Verner.

    Another owl
    Corner house
    House with yellow door

  • Laval House, Duquesne University

    Laval house, front

    Duquesne University has overrun many blocks that were once crowded Bluff streets. The Academic Walk follows the course of what used to be Vickroy Street, and by almost random chance two Bluff rowhouses have been preserved in beautiful condition by the Spiritan Campus Ministry. In fact, on Google Maps we find that their address is still 952 Vickroy Street, even though they are the only remaining trace of Vickroy Street. In the 1800s, their neighbor used to be a brickyard, so the neighborhood has improved since they were built.

    A mural on the side.

  • Berry Hall, Chatham University

    Built in 1895, this is one of several magnificent private houses that have come into the possession of Chatham University without drastic architectural modification. The exterior is in an exceptionally accurate Georgian style that would be right at home in Annapolis or Williamsburg.

  • Italianate Mansion in Manchester

    Italianate mansion

    A splendid Italianate house, splendidly restored, complete with tower to keep an eye on one’s neighbors, as one had to do in the Italian Renaissance.

    Front door

    The current owners’ attention to detail includes proper fabric awnings for the porch.

  • Victorian Gothic in Manchester

    Victorian Gothic house

    A beautifully kept vernacular-Gothic house in Manchester. Enlarge the picture to appreciate the details, including the many shapes of roof slates and the more than usually elaborate woodwork along the porch roof.

  • South Side Slopes Houses

    House at 18th and Crosman Streets

    The acute angle of the intersection of Crosman Street with 18th Street on the South Side Slopes creates two odd-shaped lots filled with odd-shaped buildings, both of them irregular pentagons. Above, the one on the south side of Crosman is smashed up against a cliff, with a big billboard for its neighbor: South 18th Street is the old Brownsville Plank Road, and still the main route down from the South Hills neighborhoods to the South Side. Below, the house on the north corner sits at the head of a row of little Pittsburgh rowhouses, each of them altered according to the whims of decades of owners. The corner house is festooned with aluminum awnings; three of the other houses have aluminum awnings over the front doors, and two of them (the last two down the hill) are genuine Kool Vent awnings.

    Row of houses on 18th at Crosman

    These little rowhouses are a good example of the persistence of tradition in Pittsburgh vernacular architecture. They seem to have been put up in the early 1900s, with 1903 as a terminus post quem according to the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site; but they differ very little from the tiny, narrow rowhouses of the Civil War era.