Frank Alden of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow (later just Alden & Harlow, after the partners agreed to divide up the business) designed this house for himself; it was built in 1890, when most of Linden Avenue was vacant. As we might expect, he lavished attention on the details. It surprised old Pa Pitt to discover that there were no pictures of the house in Wikimedia Commons. That lacuna has now been filled.
This little house is one of the few survivors from the days when much of Carson Street in East Birmingham was residential. It preserves most of its fine mid-Victorian Italianate detail, so it is worth a closer look than most pedestrians on the busy sidewalk of Carson Street usually give it.
One unfortunate change is the entrance. Instead of double doors with an art-glass transom, we have a stock door from the home center and pieces of plywood around it. But the elaborate woodwork surrounding the entrance is still intact.
It is typical of Italianate houses that the downstairs windows are very tall. This is the bright and cheerful branch of Victorian domestic architecture.
The windowsills rest on ornate iron brackets.
A few houses in different styles within one block of Perrysville Avenue. We begin with a house that, in its layout, is a typical Pittsburgh Foursquare, but blown up to mansion dimensions.
The porch with its rounded ends is a treasure, and we hope it can be preserved. Porches are the first things to decay in a house like this, and it would be hard to find a craftsman who could duplicate this one.
A later generation of foursquare; this one preserves a fine tile roof.
Yet another generously sized foursquare. This one combines some classical detailing with a bit of the Victorian incised decoration of a generation earlier.
This one is clearly a traditional Pennsylvania I-house from the days when this area was way out in the country on the Perrysville Plank Road. If we interpret the old maps correctly, it was there at least as early as 1882, but probably well before then. It was a frame house, however. At some point probably in the 1920s or later, it was neatly dressed in a new coat of bricks and given a new front porch.
This little cottage has a distinctive angular Craftsman style, and many of the details of its woodwork are well preserved.
Finally, here is a unique house that has just come out from under sentence of condemnation and is now being refurbished for a new life. The entrance with classical pilasters and rounded pediment is unusual and attractive, and the bright sunroom in front would make a fine small conservatory for an orchid collector.
It is a legal principle that a man’s home is his castle. The attorney Joseph Langfitt took that principle quite seriously. Charles J. Rieger designed this stony turreted and battlemented mansion for him, which indicates that his client was prospering in his profession when it was built in 1901.
For those who are interested or obsessive enough to care, here is the chain of evidence that identified the architect for us.
A Hopkins plat map from 1904 shows the house, which does not appear on earlier maps, as owned by M. A. Langfitt.
Since Langfitt is an unusual name, old Pa Pitt guessed that he might have some luck finding it in construction listings, and indeed his first search in the old reliable Philadelphia Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide found exactly what he was looking for.
Record & Guide, March 28, 1900, p. 200.
Joseph A. Langfitt, attorney at law, has bought a building site on Linden avenue, East end, and will improve it by the erection of a handsome dwelling to cost about $15,000.
The initials M. A. on the map probably belong to Mrs. Langfitt, since property was often put in the name of the wife. To confirm that this is our Langfitt, we looked in the 1904 Social Register, where we find “Langfitt Mr & Mrs Jos A” at this address.
Record & Guide, October 24, 1900, p. 687.
Charles J. Rieger, Smith Building, has prepared plans for a dwelling to be erected for J. Langfitt, and will receive estimates for its construction about November 1st.
Record & Guide, December 5, 1905, p. 795.
Charles Rieger, Smith Building,…is receiving estimates for the erection of a stone veneered dwelling to be erected on Linden avenue for Attorney Langfitt.
Thomas Benner Garman, one of the leading architects of Mount Lebanon, designed this as a builder’s “Triple-Insulated” model house. It was promoted by the Sun-Telegraph as it was going up in 1937. “Triple-insulation, the builder explains, means the use of materials to armor the house against fire, water and weather.”1
Given a corner lot, Garman responded by giving the house two fronts. The front door is on a typical Colonial Revival façade of the sort that we see hundreds of in Mount Lebanon—many of them designed by Garman.
But around the corner is a porch with two-storey columns, giving the house a secondary plantation-style front.
It’s a little hard to date this house from its appearance; it seems to be a late example of the Second Empire style. The corner was probably a small storefront or professional office.
The house has been going through some considerable renovation, but so far the exceptionally fine front door with leaded glass all around has been left intact. We hope it can be restored and not replaced.
The porch may also pose some problems; the columns and the brick pillars that support them need work, and it may be cheaper to replace them. We hope they can stay.
Fordham Avenue in Brookline includes some unusually expensive houses for the neighborhood. The one above has had some updates, but the outlines are still handsome.
The picture above is included especially for connoisseurs of aluminum awnings.
A well-preserved foursquare of a very high grade—stone on the ground floor, shingle above. It is unusual to find houses like this where the shingles have not been replaced by aluminum or vinyl siding.
This one has had its side windows blocked in by some heliophobe long past, but is otherwise in fine shape.
This house has changed very little since it was built. It was offered for sale for $6,900 in 1913, and a photograph in the advertisement shows the house looking pretty much the way it looks now, including the original windows.
Note the seller: Walter R. Fleming. If you had bought this house, Mr. Fleming would have been your next-door neighbor. He had just finished his own house, which was pictured a few weeks earlier in the same paper.
Perhaps it is stretching a point to call this first one a mansion, but it is a big house built with the best materials.
A Georgian mansion that would look at home in Annapolis or Williamsburg.
A different and less pedantically correct take on Colonial Revival. Note the shutters that actually shut.
The garage has a comfortable apartment for your chauffeur.
The Smith mansion is built of very dark brick in a subdued Flemish Renaissance style. Appropriately, the bricks are laid in Flemish bond.
Five houses on Parkman Avenue, and once again we take our attributions with gratitude from the anonymous Google Maps user who built a map of Architects of Schenley Farms Residences. The one above was designed by Louis Stevens and built in 1910.
Designed by D. Simpson & Co. and built in 1915.
Designed by Louis Stevens and built in 1915.
Designed by Maximilian Nirdlinger and built in 1911.
Designed by Maximilian Nirdlinger and built in 1911.
This row of seven houses presents a pleasingly varied streetscape, but the houses were clearly all part of the same development. Old Pa Pitt is fairly sure the architects were Rieger & Currier, and for the obsessive historians in the readership, here is his evidence. In the Philadelphia Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide for February 27, 1901, p. 136, we find this item:
Rieger & Currier, Smith Building, have prepared plans for four brick dwellings to be erected on Ditheridge [sic] street for Mr. J. Friday.
A plat map from about 1903 shows that J. Friday owned land along Dithridge Street on which at least eleven houses, some possibly doubles, were built. Three were on the east side of the street where the Latter Day Saints church is now. The others were on the west side and still stand. Numbers 229–253, part of the Friday property, clearly form a group, and probably the only group in which four houses could have been built together at one time. If we assume that they were built in one group of three and one group of four, these are all Rieger & Currier houses.
The houses have been divided into apartments, and a couple of them have had porch amputations or reductions, but on the whole the look of the row is well preserved.
And now a bonus house, just past the Friday row, a fine center-hall house in the free turn-of-the-twentieth-century version of Georgian.
