Father Pitt

Tag: Fairy-Tale Style

  • Bellevue Gables, Bellevue

    Glimpse of Bellevue Gables through the trees

    When demand exceeds supply in the housing market, as it did for quite a while after the Second World War, apartment buildings can be plain brick boxes. It is enough to say, “Here is a place to live, and if you pinch your pennies you can probably afford it.” But in the 1930s, it was necessary to give people a good reason to pick your building over any of the other places people could live. Thus apartment buildings tended to sell a fantasy: live here and you will be the kind of aristocrat you always knew you deserved to be.

    Bellevue Gables entrance and terraces

    Bellevue Gables peddles that fantasy and does a good job of it. Especially on the Sprague Avenue side, the stone terraces and lush landscaping make the approach to the entrances feel like walking into one of the Stately Homes of England.

    Bellevue Gables sign and entrance

    Rudolph Berg, Jr., was the owner, the builder, and the architect. He had suffered much in the Depression: when old Pa Pitt went looking for his name in the papers in the 1930s, he had to plow through pages and pages of sheriff’s sales before he came across any construction listings. But by 1939, when Bellevue Gables opened, he seems to have recovered and was ready to get back into the apartment-development business on a grand scale.

    Open Today: Bellevue Gables, designed for better living.
    Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, May 7, 1939, part 4 page 16.
    Sprague Avenue face
    Sprague Avenue face of Bellevue Gables
    Stone wall
    End of the complex

    The complex is two buildings, one along Sprague Avenue and one along Hawley Avenue.

    End of the Sprague Avenue building
    End of the Sprague Avenue building
    Hawley Avenue side
    Entrance
    Entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Medieval Modernism in Oakland

    135 North Craig Street

    A matched set of apartment buildings, just behind St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose simple modernist forms are enlivened with just enough medievalistic detail to let the tenants imagine they live in a castle.

    135 and 137 North Craig Street
    Entrance
    Lantern
    Entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Thames Manor, Shadyside

    Thames Manor

    This building immediately struck old Pa Pitt as a Geisler & Smithyman sort of building, and in this case his instinct was correct. It was built in 1929, and Geisler & Smithyman were indeed the architects. The Geisler of the firm was the venerable Charles R. Geisler, who lived in Beechview and scattered medium-sized apartment buildings all over the Pittsburgh area.

    Thames Manor
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • A Stroll in Seminole Terrace, Mount Lebanon

    Houses on Navahoe Drive

    Seminole Terrace is not included yet in the Mount Lebanon Historic Discrict, but the older part of the plan is a museum of good domestic architecture from the 1920s and 1930s—a time when the Colonial Revival, the Fairy-Tale Style, and various other fantasies of an elegant past could coexist comfortably in a newly laid-out automobile suburb. Here are some of the houses we saw on a walk along Navahoe Drive. We’ve seen some of these houses before, but we can always see them again.

    1350 Navahoe Drive
    1356
    1360
    Many more pictures…

  • Fairy-Tale Cottage in Virginia Manor, Mount Lebanon

    380 Morrison Drive
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    One of those visions of a fantasy past that resemble storybook illustrations more than they do any real historical architecture. This one is exceptionally fine, the fantastical elements carried out with good taste, and of course the snow added to the fairy-tale effect.

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  • Three Houses on Station Street, Bridgeville

    245 Station Street

    Three fine houses in three different styles. We begin with a house in the fairy-tale style of the 1920s and 1930s, whose steeply pitched roof, open arch on the side of the house, and Jacobean entrance combine to give it a storybook picturesqueness.

    245 Station Street
    245 Station Street
    243

    A dignified version of Queen Anne style; some alterations have changed the original character a bit, but the house still leaves a strong impression of comfortable prosperity.

    243
    233

    It is a little hard to tell what this house was originally; it may have begun as a Queen Anne house similar to the previous one, but it seems to have been accumulating expensive renovations over the years, so that today it is an eclectic but tasteful mixture.

    233
    233
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Some Houses on Roycroft Avenue, Mount Lebanon

    45 Roycroft Avenue in the snow

    This side of Roycroft Avenue—which was the sunny side yesterday afternoon—is in the St. Clair Terrace plan (the other side is part of a different plan). As with many of the plans in the Mt. Lebanon Historic District, the lots were sold off to buyers who would hire their own architects to design their dream houses. The result is a pleasingly eclectic collection of houses whose designs are all of high quality. We’ve seen some of these houses before, but the deep snow added an irresistible picturesqueness.

    49
    55
    57
    61
    73
    77
    81
    85
    89
    93
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Fairy-Tale Apartment Building in Brookline

    Apartment building on Brookline Boulevard

    A little apartment building—with four apartments, judging by the number of buzzers—in what old Pa Pitt calls the fairy-tale style, the mark of which is exaggeratedly picturesque features that look like illustrations from a children’s book.

    Apartment building on Brookline Boulevard
    Entrance

    The entrance is so similar to the entrance to the Sholten Arms in Carrick that we have to suspect the same hand drew both. Father Pitt’s guess is that the decorative gable was originally carried all the way to its logical peak, but was truncated when the overhang was rebuilt.

    Decorative gable
    1149 Brookline Boulevard
    Entrance
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Fairy-Tale Apartment Building in Mount Lebanon

    189 Castle Shannon Boulevard, Mount Lebanon

    Somehow the line for the Mount Lebanon Historic District was drawn just to the left side of this building, leaving it unhistorical, though taking in a much more pedestrian postwar apartment building across the street. Fortunately, historic district or no historic district, most of the details have been preserved, although the original windows would have added a layer of artistry that their simpler modern replacements lack.

    Upstairs window

    The art glass in the stairwell has been preserved.

    Entrance
    Front door

    The front door is a work of art in itself. Enlarge the picture and admire the door pull.

    Entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Some Houses on Fair Oaks Street, Squirrel Hill

    5441 Fair Oaks Street

    Murdoch Farms is the plan in Squirrel Hill famous for millionaires’ mansions, but this is the middle-class corner of it. The houses here were also designed by some of our prominent architects, but on a more modest scale. We haven’t identified most of them yet, but we’ll point out the architects we know.

    5401
    Since we have about two dozen more pictures to show you, we’ll put the rest behind this link to keep from weighing down the front page.