Father Pitt

Tag: Domestic Architecture

  • Rea House, Chatham University

    Rea house

    Another of the millionaires’ mansions that have become part of Chatham University. Built in 1911 or 1912 for steel executive James C. Rea, the Julia and James Rea House is now a student dormitory. Students tell us the rooms are “quirky” in a good way, with high ceilings and odd protrusions, because the house was divided with minimal disruption to the original architecture.

    Rea House

    A very short video on the Chatham Undergraduate Housing page shows us some of the interior.

    With a tree in front
    Up a long hill

    Addendum: The architects were MacClure & Spahr.

  • Clyde House, Shadyside

    This Renaissance house in Shadyside is now a residence for first-year students at Carnegie Mellon. The round dormer is unusual, but there was a brief fad for them around the turn of the twentieth century: see also the J. J. Matthews House.

    Addendum: The architect was Frederick Osterling. This is the sole survivor of a row of three houses Osterling designed; this one was for James H. Hammond. See Works of F. J. Osterling by J. Franklin Nelson, 1904.

  • Macbeth House, Shadyside

    Built in the 1880s, this fine Queen Anne house shows up in 1890 as belonging to Mrs. Geo. A. Macbeth. The variety of masses and textures is handled with remarkably good taste.

  • Two Varieties of Tudor in Shadyside

    Tudor house

    Two varieties of Tudor house. They have very similar center-hall plans, but the one above emphasizes extravagant and almost cartoonish woodwork, whereas the one below is much more restrained. Old Pa Pitt would have guessed that the second one was later, but the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site tells us that both were built at about the same time, not long before 1910 (between the “1903–1906” layer and the “1910” layer). It would be interesting to know the name of the somewhat eccentric architect who designed the one above.

    Another Tudor house

  • Condemned House in Sharpsburg

    Condemned house in Sharpsburg

    This house is under sentence of condemnation. There is nothing really special about it, except that it is probably about 150 years old and a good representative of the Gothic I-house. The I-house is a vernacular style of house common in Pennsylvania and much of the Midwest, with a center hall and two rooms on either side. When the simple plan is complicated by a peaked central gable, as in this house, it is it is described as a Gothic I-house. Often the I-house is extended by additions that give it an L shape—and sometimes more than one addition accumulates over the years, as we see with this one, where the smaller addition in the foreground was probably added around the 1920s, to judge by the 3-over-1 window on the second floor.

    From the side

    Note the pointed vernacular-Gothic windows in the attic.

  • Tudor House on Pembroke Place, Shadyside

    House on Pembroke Place

    A big house or small mansion in a particularly lush Tudor style. The woodwork is decorated with unusual care.

    Woodwork

  • Spencer House, Shadyside

    Spencer House

    This house on Amberson Avenue at Pembroke Place was built in the 1880s; it appears on the map in 1890 as belonging to Mrs. C. H. Spencer. The “stick style” is fairly unusual in Pittsburgh, but this is a magnificent example.

    A different angle

  • Knable House, Shadyside

    Knable house

    A tasteful Jacobean house built in 1911, as we know from the date stone over the front door. It seems to have been built for a John E. Knable.

    Addendum: The architect was W. F. Struthers, who had formerly been partner with Thomas Hannah.

    1911

    Architectural historians sometimes use the term “Jacobethan” for a style that is indeterminately Tudor and Jacobean mashed together.

    Knable house, oblique view

  • Georgian Mansion in Shadyside

    720 Amberson Avenue

    A large house that probably dates from the 1920s, with a recent expansion in the rear; it was getting all new windows when old Pa Pitt took these pictures.

    With trees
    Main entrance
    Lintel
    Oblique view

    A “virtual tour” from a year ago, when the house sold for a little less than two million, shows a computer simulation of a thoroughly modernized interior.

  • Stair-Step Rowhouses in Oakland

    Rowhouses on Louisa Street

    Pittsburgh is full of these little two-storey rowhouses from the first half of the twentieth century. They are often more spacious than they appear, because they are much deeper than you might guess. Like every other kind of building, they have to adapt to Pittsburgh topography, so that, on a sloping street like Louisa Street in Oakland, they end up stair-stepped like this.