Tag: Houses

  • Rowhouses at Fifth Avenue and Robinson Street, Oakland

    Rowhouses at Fifth and Robinson

    Sitting at the eastern end of the Great Soho Curve, these houses face eastward, so that they are right in front of you as you travel west on Fifth Avenue. Father Pitt was very sad some years ago when one of the row burned, leaving an irreparable gap; but the rest of the houses, after some years of neglect, are in good shape.

    Rowhouses at Fifth and Robinson
    Staggered rowhouses
    Two houses
    Pair of houses
    Chimney pots
    Dormer
    Front door
    Transom
    Breezeway

    The houses have breezeways between them, which we could not leave undocumented.

    Breezeway
    Breezeway
    Rowhouses
    Rowhouses
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • The Rainbow Terrace on Dawson Street, Oakland

    Colorfully painted rowhouses

    Within their low-budget limits, these little houses are of an attractive design, and they are very well kept up. The odd-shaped lot also means that they are staggered in a visually interesting way. But, still, they would be just seven among thousands of Pittsburgh rowhouses if they had not been painted in this striking way that lights up the whole block.

    Rainbow houses
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Addendum: The architect was probably Frederick Sauer, who seems to have done all the architectural work for John Dimling, the developer who owned this row. See also the Harry, George, Matilda, Laura, Hilda, and Herbert apartments.


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  • Condemned Houses on Bedford Avenue, Hill District

    Condemned Second Empire houses

    Some day these houses will disappear. They are typical of middle-class houses that sprouted on the Hill in the 1890s, making use of the Second Empire mansard roof to give these narrow houses two more bedrooms on the third floors. Generations of condemnation notices have been pasted on them. They would be worth restoring if they were moved to another neighborhood, and perhaps they have some hope here, now that the Hill is growing new construction and looking more hopeful. But it isn’t likely that they’ll win their race with the wrecking ball.

    Two of the houses
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • House by Max Nirdlinger, Perry Hilltop

    137 Marshall Avenue

    Maximilian Nirdlinger, who rests near the top of Father Pitt’s list of architects whose names are most fun to say, designed this striking house, which is unique in a row that otherwise consists mostly of Pittsburgh Foursquares. Nirdlinger was one of the giants of the first half of the twentieth century in Pittsburgh. He was a pupil of the Philadelphia titan Frank Furness, but left the master to come to Pittsburgh in 1899. By the early 1900s, he had his own practice.1 He quickly caught the eye of the fashionable set: four of the original houses in Schenley Farms, for example, were designed by Nirdlinger.

    137 Marshall Avenue

    Nirdlinger worked in many different styles: he could give you a Renaissance palace or a Tudor mansion with equal flair. For this Art Nouveau cottage, designed in 1916 for C. R. Caldwell, he seems to have taken a lot of hints from those German art magazines that circulated among our architects before the First World War.

    Porch and front door
    137 Marshall Avenue
    Olympus E-20N.
    1. Much of our information on Nirdlinger comes from “Maximilian Nirdlinger:
      Architect, Interrupted,” by Angelique Bamberger, in Western Pennsylvania History, Winter 2023-24. ↩︎

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  • Two Houses on Brighton Road, Allegheny West

    913 Brighton Road

    These two houses facing West Park on what used to be Irwin Avenue both have interestingly complex histories. The one above has a detailed history by the late Carol Peterson, so here we will only mention the things that led to its appearance today and encourage you to see the Peterson history for more details. It was built in about 1870 as an Italianate house. In 1890 Augusta and Jacob Kaufmann of the Kaufmann Brothers department store bought the house. It was given a third floor, and the whole house was made over in the Romanesque style with Queen Anne overtones.

    Front door
    907 Brighton Road

    The house next door was probably built at about the same time as its neighbor. Without the help of Carol Peterson, we can only report what we observe. It was also built in the Italianate style, and it looks as though the third floor is an addition here as well. But the addition may have been made earlier than the alterations to its neighbor, since the tall windows were done in the same Italianate style as the ones below the third floor. The round bay in front was finished off with a mansard roof, showing the influence of the Second Empire style that was popular here before Romanesque became the big fad.

    907 Brighton Road
    Window
    Lintel
    907 Brighton Road
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

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  • Some Houses on Stanton Avenue, Highland Park

    5521 Stanton Avenue

    Four houses on Stanton Avenue, which is the line that separates Highland Park from East Liberty. First, two that obviously go together, though they differ in a few details.

    Upstairs window
    5521
    5523
    Upstairs Window
    5515 Stanton Avenue

    Here is a house we might describe as center-hall-Colonial-Baroque.

    Dormer

    The Baroque details of the central dormer need a bit of restoration. We hope they can be repaired rather than simply replaced with simpler wood (or aluminum or vinyl).

    5515 Stanton Avenue

    Finally, a house that is more than twenty years younger than its neighbors; the lot was still vacant in 1923, according to plat maps.

    5527
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • Tudor Manse by Henry Gilchrist in Highland Park

    5916 Callowhill Street

    Henry Gilchrist designed many fashionable mansions for the rich and the upper middle classes. This 1904 Tudor house on Callowhill Street is typical of the “English style” of the time, but the details of the half-timbering are unusually rich. The house is very similar, but not identical, to one Gilchrist designed two years later in Schenley Farms. In this house, though, the small-paned Tudor windows have been preserved, and they add to the picturesque old-English effect.1

    5916 Callowhill Street
    HDR picture of 5916 Callowhill Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    This HDR picture of the house, made up of three different exposures, looks a bit artificial but brings out the details in the woodwork.

    1. Source for the attribution: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, August 31, 1904, p. 563. “Mr. E. E. Arensburg will erect a dwelling on Callowhill street, from plans prepared by Architect H. D. Gilchrist, Frick Building.” Confirmed by a 1923 plat map, where the house belongs to “M. Arnesburg” (note spelling). ↩︎

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  • R. P. McAllister House, Highland Park

    R. P. McAllister House

    Paul Irwin designed this house for R. P. McAllister; it was built in about 1920. (Father Pitt knows this information because the owners of the house helpfully inscribed it on a bronze plaque around the corner at the delivery entrance.) Though it is eclectic in its influences, everything works in harmony, from the Georgian front door to the Japanese eyebrow in the roofline to the surprising outbreaks of half-timbering in the rear.

    1401 North Highland Avenue
    Perspective view
    From Down the Street
    Rear of the house
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • Terrace on King Avenue in Highland Park

    1147–1155 King Avenue

    The late Franklin Toker believed that these houses were probably designed by Frederick Scheibler. He was following the original scholars of Frederick Scheibler, Shear and Schmertz, who brought poor old Scheibler out of obscurity in his old age in time to see himself hailed as a prophet of modern architecture.

    Father Pitt hates to contradict Dr. Toker, whose encyclopedic knowledge of Pittsburgh architecture was probably unmatched; but Toker has been wrong before. Martin Aurand, whose biography of Scheibler will probably remain the definitive one for generations to come, lists these houses under the “misattributions.”

    Old Pa Pitt himself is of the Aurand opinion, and in fact Father Pitt has probable grounds for attributing these houses—without, however, claiming complete certainty—to Benno Janssen. His reason is that there is a very similar terrace in Oakland (368–376 McKee Place) that is almost certainly by Janssen & Abbott. Father Pitt hopes to have pictures of those houses soon; meanwhile, you can take his word for it—or look them up on Google Street View—that it would be odd if one of these terraces were by Janssen & Abbott and the other by Scheibler.

    1147–1155 King Avenue
    1153 and 1155 King Avenue
    1149 King Avenue

    These houses are yet another clever answer to the question of how to design a terrace of relatively inexpensive houses so that they are architecturally attractive and distinctive—so that, in other words, they make potential tenants think they’re getting something special. Compare them, for example, to the row just next door to the left, which was built on a lower budget to a much more ordinary design.

    1123–1145 King Avenue
    Terrace on King Avenue

    Which design makes you feel special?

    1147–1155 King Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • The Robinson & Winkler Block in Highland Park

    Portland Street

    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.

    Portland Street houses
    1121 Portland Street
    1110 Portland Street

    Just the dormers could form an album for the instruction and amusement of other architects.

    Round dormer
    Baroque dormer
    1115 Portland Street
    1145 Portland Street
    Portland Street houses
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
    1. Source: Pittsburg Press, September 29, 1905. “The Highland Realty Co. has applied for a Pennsylvania charter. The company has been organized by Architects Charles M. Robinson and George Winkler, Contractors D. M. Fair and the East End Attorneys J. E. Wise and W. E. Minor. Its primary purpose is the building of high-class houses in the East End. Six such residences, to cost about $10,000 each, have already been started by Mr. Fair on the west side of Portland Avenue, near Hampton street, in the North Negley district.” All the houses on both sides of the 1100 block of Portland Street, north of Hampton, are of the same dimensions, with flamboyant details that mark them as probably all the work of the same designers. They appeared between the 1903–1906 layer and the 1910 layer at Pittsburgh Historic Maps. ↩︎

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