Three identical houses with all the signature quirks of the Queen Anne style: turrets, odd angles, curved surfaces, oriels, shingles, and every other effect that can be applied to a city house to make it more picturesque.
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Three Queen Anne Houses on Mellon Street, Highland Park
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Kodak EasyShare Z1285. -
Shingly Victorian in Coraopolis
This frame house across from the train station is a feast of Victorian woodwork, lovingly picked out in a tasteful polychrome paint scheme.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
Ordale Boulevard in Seminole Hills, Mount Lebanon
Once again old Pa Pitt turned himself loose with a camera in Seminole Hills—this time mostly in the older and more expensive end. The variety of styles makes the neighborhood a constant delight. For this session, let’s visit Ordale Boulevard.
This is a collection specifically for those readers who like scrolling through house designs of the 1920s and 1930s. The rest can just whiz right past the “more” link and go on to something else.
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Meado’cots, Homewood
Designed by our remarkable early modernist Frederick Scheibler, “Meado’cots” is an unusual set of terrace houses built in 1914—another Scheibler answer to the question of how to make cheap rows of houses architecturally attractive. It sat abandoned and boarded up for quite a while, but now it is inhabited and stable. The metal roofs on the central section and the cheap standard doors are not to old Pa Pitt’s taste, but they were within the budget of the new owner, and they keep the buildings standing and in good shape, with the potential for restoration with original materials later.
This composite of the central section from above parked-car level is made possible by a kind neighbor from across the street. He saw us struggling to hold the camera up at arm’s length and called down from a third-floor window to offer the use of his stairs for a better angle. Thank you, Homewood neighbor, for confirming Father Pitt’s impression that Homewood is a place where the neighborly virtues are strong.
Note the corner windows. They would become a badge of modernism in the 1940s, but here they are in 1912!
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Abandoned House in Homewood
Homewood is prospering now more than it has done in decades, but there are still many forgotten corners. This house, in the part of Homewood traditionally called Brushton, has been abandoned and forgotten for a very long time, though the other houses on the street are inhabited and well kept. Because it has been left alone for decades, it preserves details of crumbling shingle and woodwork that have been replaced on all its neighbors. It appears to have been built in the 1890s for J. M. Gruber, and it is a good example of how the Queen Anne style filtered down to the middle classes.
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Pair of Victorian Houses in Lawrenceville
Kodak EasyShare Z1285. A pair of stylish Victorian houses opposite Arsenal Park on 40th Street. The one on the right is in the high Queen Anne style, with a turret and odd-shaped windows and a wraparound porch. The one on the left is smaller and more restrained, but only relatively.
These two houses have both had quite a bit of work put into them in the past few years. A quarter-century ago, before Lawrenceville began to be a trendy neighborhood, Father Pitt captured these same two houses with a plastic box camera.
Photographed in 1999 with an Imperial 620 camera. Several things have changed, especially in the house on the left. The porch has been removed; it looks as though it was a later addition, and the removal may have restored the house to something more like its original appearance. The sawed-off Gothic peak on the third floor has been restored. The glass blocks by the front door are still there, but perhaps that is how we know this is a Pittsburgh house and not one in Baltimore or Boston. As for the house on the right, it has been cleaned and restored to picture-perfect condition.
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An Afternoon Stroll in Seminole Hills, Mount Lebanon
Once again, old Pa Pitt took half an hour’s walk in the far end of Seminole Hills, but unlike last time he did it in broad daylight this time. Most of these pictures are on the sunny side of the street, but we hope you will forgive a few backlit pictures.
Even in the more modest part of Seminole Hills, the variety of styles is remarkable. A few postwar modern houses have grown up here, too, but the shady winding streets make harmony of what might otherwise be a dissonance of styles.
Because we have nearly fifty pictures to show, we’ll avoid weighing down the front page and boring the readers who have no interest in domestic architecture by putting the rest behind a “more” link.
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A Twilight Stroll in Seminole Hills, Mount Lebanon
The back end of Seminole Hills developed later than the section nearer Washington Road, with more modest houses, many of them built during the Depression. But even many of these modest middle-class homes are pleasing designs, doubtless by some of our more distinguished architects. These pictures were taken after sunset in dim light, so expect some grain if you enlarge them.
This house sits in a triangle where Iroquois Drive meets Allendale Place at an acute angle. It faces the street on three sides, and it was designed to be a good composition from any angle.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
Hillside House in Carrick
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Dutch Colonial meets Normandy in an attractively eclectic house that you can see from a long way away, because it perches on the side of a steep hill.
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Victorian Row in Lawrenceville
Separate ownership does funny things to rowhouses. This row of four would have matched originally; some owners have doubled down on the Victorian style, and some have done what they could with modern materials, leading to interesting effects along the property line.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.
