Even the tiniest houses could be romanticized in the age of what Father Pitt calls the Fairy-Tale Style of domestic architecture. The little bungalow above and the mirror-image cottages below probably date from the 1930s. A coating of snow helps the fairy-tale atmosphere.
Except for the replaced and filled-in porch, this house is in remarkably good shape, with most of its characteristic details intact. By chance the Pittsburgh City Photographer happened to capture it on May 27, 1910, while it was still under construction, so we can compare its current state to what it looked like when it was new.
A typical Pittsburgh Foursquare, just like hundreds of others in Beechview and thousands upon thousands in the city and inner suburbs, except that by random chance we happen to know the architect of this one: William Wolfshafer (or Wolfschaffer; like many German architects in Pittsburgh, he had a German and an Anglicized spelling of his name). He was a fairly successful architect, to judge by the occasional substantial apartment buildings we find with his name attached, and he was obviously capable of delivering just the kind of conservative but up-to-date house merchant-class Pittsburghers craved. Note the well-preserved classical details in the dormer.
Four different houses in four different styles. We begin with the biggest: a Georgian mansion with a gambrel roof, built a little before 1910.
A classic foursquare on a generous scale, with “modern Ionic” porch columns and classical detailing in the dormer and oriel.
This “old English” design has some fancy brickwork and even fancier woodwork in the gable, partly obscured by vines.
Finally, an eclectic design of the type Pa Pitt often calls “center-hall foursquare,” with a harmonious mixture of influences from Georgian to Prairie Style.
Espy Avenue is perhaps the highest-toned street in Dormont, lined with fine houses by distinguished architects. We’ve seen a bunch of them before; here are four from the other side of the street.
The beautiful birches make it a little hard to photograph the house behind; old Pa Pitt did the best he could.
A giant standing skeleton was very amusing when it was the first one on your block. It tends to stand around forever, because otherwise you have to figure out where to put it.
We’ve seen this double before, with the sun behind it. Here it is again in cloudy weather, when the details may be a little easier to see.
In the dense back streets of Oakland, now mostly given over to student housing, these elegant double houses stand out. They were built in the late 1880s as Coltart Square, which seems to have been conceived by a Philadelphia developer named Wood. Construction began in 1887, with four doubles (eight houses) on Forbes Avenue and thirteen (twenty-six houses) on Coltart Square, now Coltart Avenue. The ones on Forbes have long since disappeared; eleven of the original thirteen remain on Coltart Avenue.
An item in the Commercial Gazette for March 5, 1888 gives us a thorough description of the houses as they were built.
Seeing the need of good, serviceable and complete houses, thoroughly improved and of latest style of architecture, at reasonable prices and in desirable locations, Mr. Wood, of Philadelphia, Pa., came here and had erected on Forbes street and Coltart square, in the most desirable part of Oakland and one of the very beautiful sections of our city, complete and desirably-arranged brick houses of 11 and 13 rooms, with cement cellar, heater, steel range, open grates all fitted for natural gas, cabinet mantels of choice woods and designs, crystal gas fixtures, electric gas lighting and electric bells, bathrooms, all artistically decorated with fine paper and stained-glass, and compactly built and with abundant closets, showing complete and thorough workmanship, streets and sidewalks well improved and good sewerage, within one square of the cable line [cable cars had just begun to run between the East End and downtown] and on the best drives to and from the city. The lots front Forbes street 23×150 feet and Coltart square, which is 50 feet wide, 35×90 feet. These houses are being sold at a very reasonable price and on very easy payments, and the agents, W. A. Herron & Sons, report that two of these houses have been already sold, one on Forbes street and one on Coltart square. A few will be rented to prospective buyers. Any desiring to purchase a complete house at low figures should call at W. A. Herron & Sons, 80 Fourth avenue, and examine plans and gain full particulars.
The houses have been under separate ownership from the beginning, so they are in varying states of preservation; but several of them retain some fine original details.
It seems that the houses sold quickly, and for a while the Coltart Square community was the haunt of well-to-do upper-middle-class families whose names were often mentioned on the society pages. Not until the second quarter of the twentieth century did the rest of Coltart Avenue become the densely crowded line of rowhouses and small apartment buildings it is today. But this one block still retains an echo of its High Victorian elegance.
Without moving an inch, these old houses have been on three different streets. They were built, probably just after the Civil War (since they appear on an 1872 plat map), on Chestnut Street. After the conquest of Allegheny by Pittsburgh, duplicate street names were eliminated—most often by changing the ones on the North Side, but in this case the Chestnut Street in what had been Allegheny was richer and more influential, so this became Hooper Street, defying the usual rule that the new name should begin with the same letter as the old. When the Lower Hill was deleted by “urban renewal,” Hooper and Washington Streets were merged to make Chatham Square. Through it all, these fairly modest houses have remained intact, and they seem secure now that Uptown is becoming more desirable again.
We’ve seen some of these houses on Longuevue Drive before; others are making their first appearance here. Father Pitt’s ambition is to document every house in the Mount Lebanon Historic District. If he ever succeeds in balancing that ambition with all his other ambitions, he may get it done. Meanwhile, here are a few beautiful houses to enjoy, and we need no more excuse than that for these pictures.
To avoid weighing down the front page for a week and a half, we’ll put the rest of the pictures below the metaphorical fold.
A pair of rowhouses whose elaborate Italianate details have been meticulously restored. And since, as longtime readers know, old Pa Pitt collects breezeways…
The northeastern end of Glenmore Avenue has some of Dormont’s finest houses, most of them obviously designed by architects with taste, though so far old Pa Pitt has failed to find any of their names. Here is an album from one block of Glenmore Avenue. We have more pictures from the next block of the street here and here.
