A good example of how an old building can be updated on a limited budget without too much damage to its appearance. Front porches are gone, and vinyl siding and new windows lost some of the Victorian detail. But the windows are framed appropriately if simply, and distinctive woodwork on the third floor has been preserved and restored. Now five apartments, the double house is still an attractive building; and if old Pa Pitt would prefer to have seen it restored to its original Victorian appearance, he nevertheless recognizes and applauds a tasteful effort to balance restoration with profitability.
A long stretch of Shady Drive is lined on the southwest side with two rows of double houses, identical except that one row is built of sand-colored brick and the other of sooty dark red brick. Individually the buildings are attractive examples of the typical small Pittsburgh terrace with Mission-style details; as a whole row, they add up to something more impressive. Light snow was falling when we took these pictures a few days ago.
Some of the houses have had their front yards scooped out to make driveways, and a few have added garages in the basement.
We may take it as admitted that the overhangs that decorate the upstairs windows have no practical use at all, since in half the buildings they hang over the bedroom windows and in the other half those are left naked, with an overhang over the small windows that probably look out from the bathrooms. The decorative crests similarly alternate.
The alternating placement of the overhangs and the crests of the buildings actually creates a more regular rhythm in the row, taking into account the spaces between the buildings.
In the dense back streets of Oakland, now mostly given over to student housing, these elegant double houses stand out. They were built in the late 1880s as Coltart Square, which seems to have been conceived by a Philadelphia developer named Wood. Construction began in 1887, with four doubles (eight houses) on Forbes Avenue and thirteen (twenty-six houses) on Coltart Square, now Coltart Avenue. The ones on Forbes have long since disappeared; eleven of the original thirteen remain on Coltart Avenue.
Seeing the need of good, serviceable and complete houses, thoroughly improved and of latest style of architecture, at reasonable prices and in desirable locations, Mr. Wood, of Philadelphia, Pa., came here and had erected on Forbes street and Coltart square, in the most desirable part of Oakland and one of the very beautiful sections of our city, complete and desirably-arranged brick houses of 11 and 13 rooms, with cement cellar, heater, steel range, open grates all fitted for natural gas, cabinet mantels of choice woods and designs, crystal gas fixtures, electric gas lighting and electric bells, bathrooms, all artistically decorated with fine paper and stained-glass, and compactly built and with abundant closets, showing complete and thorough workmanship, streets and sidewalks well improved and good sewerage, within one square of the cable line [cable cars had just begun to run between the East End and downtown] and on the best drives to and from the city. The lots front Forbes street 23×150 feet and Coltart square, which is 50 feet wide, 35×90 feet. These houses are being sold at a very reasonable price and on very easy payments, and the agents, W. A. Herron & Sons, report that two of these houses have been already sold, one on Forbes street and one on Coltart square. A few will be rented to prospective buyers. Any desiring to purchase a complete house at low figures should call at W. A. Herron & Sons, 80 Fourth avenue, and examine plans and gain full particulars.
The houses have been under separate ownership from the beginning, so they are in varying states of preservation; but several of them retain some fine original details.
It seems that the houses sold quickly, and for a while the Coltart Square community was the haunt of well-to-do upper-middle-class families whose names were often mentioned on the society pages. Not until the second quarter of the twentieth century did the rest of Coltart Avenue become the densely crowded line of rowhouses and small apartment buildings it is today. But this one block still retains an echo of its High Victorian elegance.
Pittsburgh is full of tiny houses like these, and there’s not much special about these four in particular, except that they demonstrate how even the humblest dwellings have stories to tell after a century of history. These little doubles were originally identical, but they have had separate adventures. Two of the houses have had one of their upstairs windows bricked in; one of them has had the window replaced with a three-staggered-light front door, which is an amusing trick to play on houseguests. The pair on the left have had their flat porch roofs replaced with peaked roofs. All of them probably had green tile (or possibly red) on the overhangs above the upstairs windows. The main purpose of those overhangs is to serve as a signifier of the Spanish Mission style, which was very popular when these houses were built. The overhangs may also serve as a talisman to ward off the aluminum-awning salesman, and it worked in three out of four of the houses.
