Old Pa Pitt does not mean that title entirely facetiously. Artificial sidings are a big part of Pittsburgh’s identity. Many neighborhoods are almost defined by the long rows of frame houses clad in aluminum and vinyl. But few neighborhoods can show us such a concentrated collection of every kind of fake siding from every era as Spring Garden. Often we see almost all of them on the same house. The house above, for example, has aluminum on the front, but around the side we see an older layer of grey Insulbrick, some asphalt shingles on the dormer, some multicolored asphalt or asbestos-cement shingles in the gable, along with large rectangles of something that caused Father Pitt to throw up his hands and give up his attempts to identify it. We can see that the siding was done in layers; the multicolored shingles were covered over with the big rectangles of whatever, which in turn were covered with Insulbrick, and then the aluminum came last. Each of these was probably peddled as a lifetime solution, but the house has outlived all of them.
The house sits on a street of similarly altered houses, each one mutilated in its own way. Yet the combined effect is a cheerful and welcoming streetscape. These are houses that have been loved, decade after decade.
Here is another house with a variety of sidings. On the side we see asbestos-cement diamonds—once very common, but now becoming rarer and rarer, except in Spring Garden. If you have a house with asbestos-cement siding like this, don’t spend much time worrying about it. Even the companies that make their money from asbestos remediation will tell you that, if the siding is stable, it is safe, and you should leave it in place.
That same house has some sort of vinyl or plastic tiles on the front with a fake wood-grain pattern.
This little house is condemned, which is unfortunate. The siding wasn’t that bad. Behind a brick porch, the house is sheathed in aluminum, which of course does not rust, but is commonly stained with rust from the fasteners and other steel parts used to install it.
Barely visible behind the lush growth of jungle, this house is covered in multicolored asbestos-cement hexagons. There was a time when that seemed like a good idea, and many relics of that time are preserved in Spring Garden.
Here is another house of many sidings—aluminum on the front, asbestos-cement hexagons and Insulbrick on the side.
Even the Lutheran church (of which we’ll see more soon) is a frame building covered with fake stone.
Often siding marks where a neighboring building has disappeared. Here we see an odd phenomenon: a wood-sided house that was covered with aluminum, but then lost an attached neighbor, whereupon the scar was covered with vertical wood planking. Behind it is a house with two different kinds of aluminum siding and what appears to be vertical vinyl siding covering an old storefront.
Father Pitt likes to make fun of the many varieties of artificial siding in Pittsburgh, although his fun is mixed with a certain amount of awe. He even has a name for the most common ones: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Aluminum, Vinyl, Insulbrick, and Permastone). But if you live in one of these houses, do not suppose that old Pa Pitt is mocking you. If you are keeping the house standing, you are doing a good thing. If you love your home, give it all the attention it deserves. And maybe some happy day, when your ship comes in, you can afford to restore the house to the way it would have looked when it had wood siding and big, bright windows.
Doubtless we’ll be seeing more of Spring Garden’s historic bad siding, because one article can only scratch the surface. But we hope our readers have enjoyed a trip to one of Pittsburgh’s many odd little corners.
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