Father Pitt began this article by writing, “This house, built in 1884…”
And then he stopped.
The common wisdom says that this house, now the Music Building of the University of Pittsburgh, was designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow and built in 1884. That is the information in the Wikipedia article and in the city architectural survey and the National Register form for Schenley Farms and in the University of Pittsburgh Civic Center Conservation Plan.
But the date is obviously wrong: the firm of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow was founded when H. H. Richardson died in 1886, and an 1890 plat map shows the lot still vacant. (It is possible, therefore, that the universally accepted date “1884” originated as a misprint for “1894.”) As for the architects, the building does not appear on Margaret Henderson Floyd’s catalogue of their works in Architecture After Richardson, though we know that Floyd’s vast research missed a few buildings that have since been identified.
So here we have an example of a perfectly good and universally accepted fact that completely unravels when old Pa Pitt pulls at a loose thread. He has nothing yet to offer in its place except the pictures of the whimsical decorations that he originally intended to show you.
This much we know: the house was built for William J. Holland, pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church across the street (designed by Frederick Osterling in a similar Romanesque style), and chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania (later the University of Pittsburgh), and then Director of the Carnegie Institute. He was also perhaps the world’s leading lepidopterist, a teacher of ancient languages, an accomplished paleontologist, and a speaker of Japanese, in case he needed any more accomplishments to impress you.
When the house was built and who designed it will have to remain open questions for the moment.
The house is decorated with Romanesque carvings that have eroded into a medieval softness in Pittsburgh’s harsh atmosphere.
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