Father Pitt

Tag: Fairy-Tale Style

  • Garage Done Right

    248 Orchard Drive

    In the 1920s and 1930s, designers of houses often made them into fairy-tale cottages, in which every detail was carefully managed to evoke picturesque fantasies of old England or France. But this was also the time when built-in garages were becoming a requirement for suburban homes. If the garage door is on the front, it often spoils the fantasy. But this house in Mission Hills, Mount Lebanon, shows us that there is an alternative: make the garage part of the fantasy.

    Front with garage

    Not only is the garage entrance a big stone arch that suggests an immemorially ancient cellar under the house, but it is also decorated with the terra-cotta rays that were a fashionable adornment of the fairy-tale style.

    Garage
    Decorative rays over the garage entrance
    Kodak EasyShare Z1281.
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  • More of Mission Hills in the Snow

    230 Orchard Drive

    Mission Hills is a neighborhood where every house is an individual work of art. It has a special charm in the snow. Here is a short stroll on Orchard Drive, taking in a wide variety of styles.

    230 Orchard Drive
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  • Good as New in Mission Hills

    265 Orchard Drive

    The front of this house in Mission Hills has changed very little since it was new. It was sold in 1930, probably when it was newly built, and the Sun-Telly printed its picture.

    “Mission Hills Home,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, June 1, 1930, p. 48

    Forgive the blurry microfilm reproduction of what was already a photograph reproduced in halftone on cheap newsprint; it is enough to show us that, except for the filled-in side porch, not much is different in front, although the tiny sapling in the newspaper picture is a major tree now. There appears to be an addition in the back, where it does not alter the impression the house makes from the street.

    265 Orchard Drive
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • House by Alexander Sharove in Squirrel Hill

    Stanley Hohenstein House

    Alexander Sharove is best remembered today for the synagogues he designed, but like most architects he took on a variety of jobs, including this house built in 1937 for Stanley Hohenstein in the less expensive end of Murdoch Farms. Here Sharove juggles an eclectic assortment of styles from Jacobean to Georgian to Moderne.

    1230 Murdoch Road
    1230 Murdoch Road

    The arch with rays was a popular motif in the 1930s. Sharove’s version of it uses thin strips of terra cotta for the rays.

    Stanley Hohenstein House
    1230 Murdoch Road
    Sony Alpha 3000, Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • More Fairy Tales in Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

    1025 Lakemont Drive

    A week or so ago we saw a fairy-tale palace by Paul Scheuneman in Cedarhurst Manor. That house is perhaps the grandest in the plan, but some others are not far behind. Several other fine houses went up in the 1930s; they must have been even more like fairy-tale palaces in their first years, since much of Cedarhurst Manor was sparsely settled until after the Second World War, and these houses would have loomed suddenly out of the woods. They are in different styles, but they all share that prioritizing of the picturesque that is the hallmark of what Father Pitt calls the fairy-tale style of the 1920s and 1930s. Above and below, what Pittsburghers call a Normandy, with a turret cozily tucked into its corner.

    1025
    1033 Lakemont Drive
    1033 Lakemont Drive
    979 Lakemont Drive
    979
    979
    424 Greenhurst Drive
    242 Greenhurst Drive
    424 Greenhurst Drive
    441 Greenhurst Drive

    This house is of more modest dimensions, and it is similar to many other houses that went up in the suburbs during the Depression. (Many of them were designed by Joseph Hoover, a prolific producer of fairy-tale cottages who went full-on Moderne when he turned to commercial projects: he was the architect of the first Pittsburgh International Airport.) Here we see how the fairy-tale style has filtered down to the middle of the middle class: you may be limited in your resources, but you can still have the little cottage of your childhood dreams. Father Pitt suspects the half-timbered gable has been simplified from an original that would have had more timber.

    441 Greenhurst Drive
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Fairy-Tale Palace in Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

    418 Greenhurst Drive

    This fairy-tale palace, finished in 1930 or 1931, was designed by Paul Scheuneman, whom old Pa Pitt has already pointed out as a skilled practitioner of what we call the fairy-tale style—see these two houses in Green Tree. This one was featured in the Sun-Telly on Washington’s Birthday in 1931:

    Finish Cedarhurst Manor Home. English Design—Caste Brothers, builders, have recently completed this home in Cedarhurst Manor, new residential park on the outskirts of Mot. Lebanon. The architect was Paul R. Scheuneman. Several more homes are being planned.
    Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, February 22, 1931. Note how much lighter the stones were when they were new.

    “English Design—Caste Brothers, builders, have recently completed this home in Cedarhurst Manor, new residential park on the outskirts of Mt. Lebanon. The architect was Paul R. Scheuneman. Several more homes are being planned.”

    418 Greenhurst Drive
    Front porch
    House by Paul Scheuneman
    418 Greenhurst Manor
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • A Stroll on Vernon Drive in Washington Park, Mount Lebanon

    68 Vernon Drive

    Washington Park is one of those 1920s plans in Mount Lebanon that filled up with houses by different architects in different styles, until—like the others—it became a museum of the styles of the era. It’s part of the Mount Lebanon Historic District. This collection is the product of two walks on Vernon Drive, one just yesterday, and one back in May, so don’t be too surprised to see the seasons changing as we stroll.

    We begin with an outlier: a Mediterranean villa in a neighborhood where most of the houses range from Georgian to fairy-tale Northern European.

    68 Vernon Drive
    2 Vernon Drive
    20 Vernon Drive

    We have dozens more pictures to show you, which we’ll put below the metaphorical fold to keep from weighing down the front page.

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  • St. Philip’s School, Crafton

    St. Philip’s School, Craftonm

    Designed by Albert F. Link, the original part of St. Philip’s School was built in 1914–19151 to look like a fairy-tale castle. The steep hillside site was probably an inspiration: anything built here would look a bit like a medieval fortress, so why not go all the way?

    Tower
    Tower
    Statue
    St. Philip’s School
    St. Philip’s School
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. Source: The Construction Record, December 19, 1914. “Architect A. F. Link, N. Craig street, has plans for the superstructure of a two-story brick parochial school building for St. Phillips [sic] Roman Catholic Congregation to be built at a cost of $60,000. Foundation work has been completed.” ↩︎

  • Martha-Marion Apartments, Mount Lebanon

    Martha-Marion apartments

    This fairy-tale palace on Ralston Place preserves most of its charming original details. You will notice right away the most outrageously tall and pointy front gable in the tri-state area (cleverly echoed to give more of an illusion of depth), but after that pause to appreciate the original windows, seldom preserved in apartment buildings of this age, and carefully chosen to balance the other details of the building.

    Entrance

    We have some reason to suspect that the plans came from the office of architect Charles Geisler, prolific producer of small and medium-sized apartment buildings in Dormont and Mount Lebanon, as well as Squirrel Hill and elsewhere. If old Pa Pitt finds more specific documentation, he will confirm or revise this attribution.

    Porch
    Arch
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Some Houses on Standish Boulevard in Seminole Hills, Mount Lebanon

    75

    More houses from Seminole Hills, for which no excuse is needed, since the variety of styles and the imaginative designs speak for themselves.

    Turret
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