We often see diamond-shaped asbestos-cement siding like this in neglected neighborhoods, but seldom in such good shape. Note that this old house, which old Pa Pitt would tentatively date to the 1870s, has also preserved its fine Victorian woodwork in front. The original wood siding can still be seen under the porch roof.
The splendid Queen Anne mansion next door looks as though it needs a new roof, but is otherwise in a good state of preservation.
The 2100 block of Sidney Street has some of the finest high-Victorian houses on the South Side, and several of them have unusual decorative details worth a closer examination. Old Pa Pitt took an evening stroll down Sidney Street the other day and, as always, came back with a few pictures. We’ll start with No. 2109. Note the multiple shapes of roof slates, the woodwork in the dormers, and the rusticated lintels in the picture above.
Since we have fifteen pictures, we’ll put the rest below the fold to avoid slowing down the main page for a week.
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These tiny houses at the corner of 24th Street and Carey Way were probably built as rental properties, meant to be the cheapest possible construction that could still be rented as a “house” rather than a tenement. They are what old Pa Pitt might call Baltimore-style rowhouses, where the whole row was built as one building, although in Baltimore the building would typically cover a whole block. The ones on 24th street were built between 1903 and 1910; the ones around the corner on Carey Way were built between 1910 and 1923. Yet we notice that, in those days, even these utilitarian shoeboxes for poor millworkers were not allowed to show their faces in public without a proper ornamental cornice.
This is also an excellent view of a typical Pittsburgh system of utility cables.
This Queen Anne house in McKeesport is probably doomed as soon as the city has the budget to demolish it. Something could be made of it, but it would take a complete reconstruction of the interior, and in a city where the median property value is about $20,000 that is not likely to happen. In Shadyside, it could be profitably restored, but not in McKeesport.
Google Street View shows this house in the same condition as far back as 2007, the first year of Street View. Until recently, another equally decrepit and equally splendid Queen Anne house sat right next to this one, but it was demolished some time after Google Street View pictured it in 2019, possibly because someone was fixing up the baroque mansion on the other side.
This is an odd anomaly in a block of some of the finest houses on the South Side: a substantial brick house built as a kind of lean-to parasite on the house next door.
No. 2317 is set far back from the street, with a shaded porch—the only porch on the block—almost like a country house in the city. It clings dependently to the side of No. 2315 next door.
What was the reason for this unusual construction? Old maps may give us a clue. Both houses appear first on the 1890 layer of the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, so they were built between 1882 and 1890. The larger one is marked as owned by a Wm. J. Early, and the set-back lean-to house by Annie E. Early. We can speculate that Mr. Early built a large main house for his own family, and a smaller one for a female relative—perhaps a widowed mother.
This house is clearly the work of a distinguished architect, and old Pa Pitt would be delighted if any McKeesport readers could give him more information. It sits diagonally across Shaw Avenue from the old Temple B’nai Israel, and its exterior is still in excellent shape, although it looks as though it wants chimney pots. The baroque details are distinctive.
An album of fine Victorian houses from one block of Sarah Street on the South Side. These are not all the distinguished houses in this block: these are just the ones Father Pitt managed to get good pictures of in an after-sunset stroll.
Since we have fourteen pictures in this article, we’ll put the rest below the metaphorical fold to avoid weighing down the main page.
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This is one of those only-in-Pittsburgh views: a glorious Romanesque church on the Slopes hovering over little frame alley houses on the Flats. St. Michael’s (now the Angel’s Arms apartments) was designed by Charles F. Bartberger, father of, and often confused with, the prolific Charles M. Bartberger.
