An unusually well-preserved small foursquare house that is charming and handsome in its way, in spite of being an architectural muddle. If you try to judge it by any standard of symmetry or proportion, you will quickly conclude that nothing is in the right place. But even after those thoughts have run through your mind, you are likely to think that somehow, in defiance of all correctness, it is a good-looking house.
This house in what Father Pitt sometimes calls center-hall foursquare style was probably built in the 1890s, and its flared rooflines (even on the dormers) and angular brickwork must have looked very modern.
Gladys Avenue was one of the richest streets in the middle-class neighborhood of Beechview. We’ve already seen a bungalow designed by the notable Pittsburgh architect W. Ward Williams. Here are a few more houses nearby, beginning with another designed by Williams, this one a generously sized Tudor—or English-style, as it would have been called in 1914, when it was built.
They’re nearly obscured by shrubbery, but note the very interesting sloped porch supports of this house that echo the curving slope of the roof.
A generously extra-large foursquare. Have you noticed that these first three houses all have unusual diamond panes in the upper sashes of some of their windows? Those were also a feature of the bungalow designed by W. Ward Williams on the same street, making us wonder whether Williams was responsible for all these houses.
Father Pitt had a nice conversation with the owner of this house, who tells us that it was built in about 1919. If you peer into the shadows behind the flag in the picture above, you may notice an exceptionally fine art-glass window in the parlor.
Ingram, a pleasant little borough in the Chartiers Valley, has a typically Pittsburgh assortment of house styles, from working-class frame houses to grand mansions. Here are just a few houses snapped at random while old Pa Pitt was taking a short stroll near the Ingram station. Above and below, a stately foursquare whose large lot makes room for a curved wraparound porch and sunroom.
A Dutch Colonial that preserves its wooden shingles.
What appears at first glance to be another foursquare is actually a duplex, although it might have been built as a single-family house.
A tidy cottage that probably dates from the 1920s. Note the fat tapered Craftsman-style columns in front.
A huge, rambling center-hall house. Father Pitt suspects that the corner projection, which now has a flat roof, originally supported a square turret.
Some houses on Heberton Street in a variety of styles, from Shingle Style to Pennsylvania Farmhouse Revival.
The 1100 block of Portland Street was built by a company that included the architects Robinson & Winkler, to whom we therefore attribute these unusually florid houses.1 In plan the houses are the usual Pittsburgh Foursquare, but varied with unusual details that make the changing scene a constant delight as we walk up the street.
Just the dormers could form an album for the instruction and amusement of other architects.
Three similar houses in a row, Pittsburgh Foursquares with dignified classical detailing, and all three in beautiful shape. Father Pitt has was told by the owner of one of them, an architect and community activist, that they were designed by Ulysses J. L. Peoples.
Although the houses clearly go together, window placements and other details vary.
“Modern Ionic” capitals—the kind where the volutes (the spiral things) stick out at the four corners, as opposed to classical Ionic capitals, which are meant to be seen from the front and have pairs of volutes rolled up like a scroll.
Baywood Street is a typical street of upper-middle-class foursquares in East Liberty, mostly well preserved. Several have been turned into duplexes, but without much damage to the outlines of the house, as in the example below—where you should pay particular attention to the exceptionally fine round oriel on the second floor (and ignore the slightly mutilated dormer). The houses on the northeast side of the 5500 block are all the same dimensions and the same basic design, but with the fronts varied enough to make a pleasing diversity; they seem to have been built all at once at some time between 1903 and 1910, all designed with the same pencil.
There’s nothing particularly special about this house, except that it’s a good example of how an architect can vary the incidentals of the usual Pittsburgh Foursquare to produce a pleasing design. The dormer has been altered a bit, but its distinctive central arch remains, though it has been filled with a rectangular stock window.
Some variants on the Pittsburgh Foursquare from one block in Beechview. They all have the same basic layout of reception hall, parlor, dining room, and kitchen on the ground floor; three or four bedrooms and bathroom on the second floor; and two or more rooms on the third floor. Above, a fairly late version, probably from the 1920s. The lines are simpler and the roof is shallower.
Here is a well-preserved larger version with its original slate roof and multiple dormers. Note the arched window in the dormer. The bay on the left side of the house, which goes up from the dining room into the master bedroom, is very common in Pittsburgh Foursquares of the early 1900s. It allows cross-ventilation and ample light into those rooms in spite of the narrowness of the gap between houses.
This variant without the pyramid roof creates more room in the third floor.
A very large example of the Pittsburgh Foursquare, but the layout of rooms is more or less the same; they are just bigger rooms.
Finally, a much-renovated house with a gambrel roof, which probably has more room on the third floor in proportion to its size than any of the others.
