Father Pitt

Tag: Domestic Architecture

  • Early-20th-Century Rowhouses, Manchester

    Abdell Street rowhouses

    Update: We are happy to report that the burned-out house has been neatly restored: see new pictures here.

    An attractive row of small houses built a little before 1910. One of them has had a fire and is under sentence of condemnation; we hope it can be rescued, but it may not be worth enough to restore. It is only yards from Allegheny West, a very desirable neighborhood; but that neighborhood line is there, and these houses are technically in Manchester.

    From the back we can see how a good bit of thought was put into making these houses bright and airy while still using the small space efficiently.

    Rear of the houses

  • Milliken Row, Manchester

    Milliken row, Manchester

    The tall houses here probably date from the Civil War era, and they were probably built to be rental properties; they appear on our 1872 map as belonging to A. Milliken. Originally there were three pairs of houses and one single on the corner, all matching; one of the pairs has disappeared and been replaced by smaller modern rowhouses. The newer houses do a good job of matching the style of the neighborhood, but they would have done better if they had been built at the same setback from the street. As for the height, it is probably useless to quibble about that. It is old Pa Pitt’s impression that builders of any given era are very dogmatic about the proper height for a ceiling. Look at the third floor of the house on the corner, and compare it to the third floor of the house next to it: you will see at once that modern ceilings are much lower than ceilings from the 1860s, and that is simply the way it is and nothing can be done about it.

    This street is now North Avenue, but when these houses were built it was Fayette Avenue; it did not connect to North Avenue until the later twentieth century.

  • Second Empire House on Neville Avenue, Oakland

    Second Empire house

    Now apartments, this grand old house, right at the edge of Oakland on the border of Shadyside, is a remnant of the time when what is now the apartment district was a suburban retreat for the well-to-do.

    From the front
    Second Empire house

  • More of the Tudor Style in Schenley Farms

    Tudor house on Parkman
    Side view

    Father Pitt promised more Tudor-style houses in Schenley Farms, and here they are. We are certainly not finished with the Tudor houses in the neighborhood, but we have made a good beginning.

    Another Tudor house from the front
    Oblique view
    A Tudor house
    No place for hate
    From the front
    A later Tudor

  • Renaissance Style in Schenley Farms

    Renaissance palace in Schenley Farms

    Though Tudor was the most popular style in Schenley Farms, there are other styles as well, and there are several fine Italian Renaissance palaces in the neighborhood.

    The same
    Another Renaissance house
    Oblique view
    With fine tile roof
    Ornament
    Brick Renaissance

  • The Tudor Style in Schenley Farms

    Tudor house in Schenley Farms

    The Tudor style was very popular for large houses in Pittsburgh in the early twentieth century, and in Schenley Farms, that exceptional enclave of exceptionally fine houses in the Oakland medical-intellectual district, it is the single most popular style. The hallmark of the style is half-timbering: exposed wooden beams with stucco (or some such material) between them. Here is a random selection of Tudor houses; we’ll see more of them shortly, since, with the leaves gone for the winter, now is the time to get pictures of the houses behind the trees.

    Another Tudor house, this one with light brick
    This one has quite a bit of half-timbering
    Tudor house on a hill
    Postwar Tudor

    This last house is an interesting example of the survival of the style into the middle twentieth century: it is later than most of its neighbors, and probably dates from the 1930s at the earliest, but it adapts the Tudor style to a lower budget and more modest size.

  • Henry Chalfant House, Allegheny West

    Chalfant Hall

    Now Chalfant Hall of the Community College of Allegheny County, and currently getting a thorough renovation. The house was built in about 1900; no one seems to know who the architect was. Henry Chalfant was a successful lawyer whose father was a successful lawyer as well.

    Front
    Detail

  • Trinity A. M. E. Church, Hill

    Trinity A. M. E. Church

    A modest church from 1925 in an unusual Spanish Mission style. That style was very popular for houses and apartments in the 1920s, but in Pittsburgh it is seldom found in churches.

    The well-preserved, though somewhat bedraggled, Italianate house next door is also worth noting.

    Trinity AME Church and Italianate house

    Addendum: The architects of the church were Sharove & Friedman, who were more used to synagogues than churches—they worked with Henry Hornbostel on the Congregation B’nai Israel synagogue. Without the tower, this would look very much like a modest synagogue. Source: The American Contractor, September 8, 1923: “Church: $20,000. 1 sty. & bas. 30×70. Wylie av. & Francis st. Archt. Sharove & Friedman, Berger bldg. Owner The Trinity African Meth. Episcopal Congr., Rev. G. F. Williams, 2704 Wylie av. Brk. walls. Drawing plans.”

  • Eclectic House on Aylesboro Avenue, Squirrel Hill

    A little bit Georgian with a hint of Gothic, this house is oddly eclectic in its details but harmonizes them well.

  • House on Northumberland Street, Squirrel Hill

    House on Northumberland Street

    Something like a Pittsburgh foursquare stretched into a Renaissance palace, this house prefers simple dignity to ostentatious ornament.

    Oblique view