The postwar boom was a very busy time for architects of apartment buildings, and Philip Friedman was probably the busiest of them all. Friedman seems to have owed his success to his willingness to make compromises when the client asked for them. Here we have Friedman at his most purely modernistic, borrowing the very practical cruciform plan from Le Corbusier—a plan that was getting a lot of publicity from its use in the Gateway Center development. But even here…
…the froufrou grapevine-pattern metalwork that holds up the porch roof, which seems quite out of character for the modern-to-the-max building, was probably the client’s idea.
Philip Friedman was busy in the years after the Second World War. He designed an incredible number of apartment buildings, and he seems to have owed his success to two things (in addition, of course, to hard work and skill in managing projects): a knack for combining modern design with more traditional elements to attract a wide range of renters, and a willingness to compromise. When the July, 1950, issue of the Charette, the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, published a layman’s criticism of Friedman’s work, Friedman replied that he was at the mercy of his clients, and sometimes they really did throw out his drawings and stick classical columns on a modernist building. However, he did what he could. “He contends…that while his buildings are admittedly far less esthetic achievements than economic realities, many other new multiple dwellings in this area reflect no concern for esthetics whatever.”
The Crafton Ingram Apartments, originally called the Crafton Ingram Arms, are typical of Friedman’s work. They were built in about 1950. The buildings are square brick modernist boxes. But they have quoins and pediments and other Georgian details to convince the rubes that this is a high-class establishment. Originally there were four identical groups—three in Crafton and one in Ingram. Two of them have disappeared: this is the one that still stands in Ingram.
