Father Pitt

Tag: Houses

More Fairy Tales in Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

A week or so ago we saw a fairy-tale palace by Paul Scheuneman in Cedarhurst Manor. That house is perhaps the grandest in the plan, but some others are not far behind. Several other fine houses went up in the 1930s; they must have been even more like fairy-tale palaces in their first years, since much of Cedarhurst Manor was sparsely settled until after the Second World War, and these houses would have loomed suddenly out of the woods. They are in different styles, but they all share that prioritizing of the picturesque that is the hallmark of what Father Pitt calls the fairy-tale style of the 1920s and 1930s. Above and below, what Pittsburghers call a Normandy, with a turret cozily tucked into its corner.

This house is of more modest dimensions, and it is similar to many other houses that went up in the suburbs during the Depression. (Many of them were designed by Joseph Hoover, a prolific producer of fairy-tale cottages who went full-on Moderne when he turned to commercial projects: he was the architect of the first Pittsburgh International Airport.) Here we see how the fairy-tale style has filtered down to the middle of the middle class: you may be limited in your resources, but you can still have the little cottage of your childhood dreams. Father Pitt suspects the half-timbered gable has been simplified from an original that would have had more timber.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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January 11, 2025
A Late Holiday Feature: Negley-Gwinner-Harter House, Shadyside

Old Pa Pitt had meant to publish these pictures a little before Christmas, but he lost track of them. And since he doesn’t want to wait till next year, here they are now. This is the Negley-Gwinner-Harter House in Shadyside, with a crew installing its Christmas ribbon. This was the house that sat derelict for years after a disastrous fire, so it is always a cheerful sight when Father Pitt walks past and sees it in fine shape like this. But it is even more cheerful all tied up in a Christmas bow.

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

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January 10, 2025
Row of Houses on Penn Avenue, Strip

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Strip was a chaotic and lively mess of huge industries, small business, and rowhouses. Few of the houses remain; here is one of the surviving rows. These are what old Pa Pitt calls Baltimore-style rowhouses: a row where the houses are all put up as more or less one building, flush up against the sidewalk, with only a set of steps to the front door to separate them from the city outside. These were built as rental houses, probably in the 1890s or very early 1900s; they were still all under the same ownership in 1923, according to old maps. At first they had small back yards on the alley in the rear, but by 1910 those back yards had been filled in with tiny alley houses, which are still there today, and some day when it isn’t so cold old Pa Pitt will walk around to the alley and get their picture, too.

Surprisingly, all the houses in the original group survive. The house on the right end had its front completely rebuilt about ten years ago; the fourth house from the left has had a “picture window” installed in the parlor. The rest of the houses look more or less the way they have always looked.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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January 10, 2025
A Monochromatic Stroll on Firwood Drive in Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

Cedarhurst Manor began to fill up in about 1930, though much of it was empty until after the Second World War. The block of Firwood Avenue just off Bower Hill Road has a representative mixture of houses from the 1930s and early 1940s. Since it was a dim day anyway, we present these pictures in black and white, which makes it easy to compare the forms and masses of the houses without being distracted by details of color.

This house seems to have been a builder’s standard design; it is almost identical except in material to the house next to it.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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January 9, 2025
The Blinker House in Murdoch Farms

This house, built in 1925, was designed by Charles Tattersall Ingham, according to an article in the Trib from back in September. Ingham was half of the firm of Ingham & Boyd, a big deal around here—they designed many of our biggest schools, including all the schools in Mount Lebanon for decades. Both Ingham and Boyd had a mania for symmetry. They also had a taste for the classical in architecture, but they disliked columns. It takes all kinds.

But why is it called the “Blinker House”? The Trib article explains that it sits at a very complicated five-way intersection, where years ago there used to be a flashing red light. The blinker is long gone, but Pittsburghers have long memories, and everyone in the neighborhood knows it as the Blinker House.

As of this writing, the house is for sale, and the asking price is a little under 2½ million dollars—down from 2.6 million when the Trib article was written.

Sony Alpha 3000.

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January 8, 2025
Murdoch Farms in the Snow

Murdoch Farms, a dairy farm until the early twentieth century, is the most expensive section of Squirrel Hill. In the 1920s it filled up with mansions designed by our leading architects, and most of them are still in close to original shape, at least on the outside. Father Pitt took a stroll on a dim and snowy afternoon to get a few pictures.

Sony Alpha 3000.

We’ll see more of Murdoch Farms from this same expedition, including some individual houses whose architects old Pa Pitt can identify.

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January 8, 2025
Fairy-Tale Palace in Cedarhurst Manor, Mount Lebanon

This fairy-tale palace, finished in 1930 or 1931, was designed by Paul Scheuneman, whom old Pa Pitt has already pointed out as a skilled practitioner of what we call the fairy-tale style—see these two houses in Green Tree. This one was featured in the Sun-Telly on Washington’s Birthday in 1931:

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, February 22, 1931. Note how much lighter the stones were when they were new.

“English Design—Caste Brothers, builders, have recently completed this home in Cedarhurst Manor, new residential park on the outskirts of Mt. Lebanon. The architect was Paul R. Scheuneman. Several more homes are being planned.”

Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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January 3, 2025
The Back Streets of Coraopolis

Coraopolis is notable for the variety of styles in its houses. Many have been altered over the years, but the back streets are still very pleasant. A few weeks ago, old Pa Pitt took a long walk through Coraopolis on a slightly drizzly day.

This seems to be the parsonage for the Methodist church next door.

The siding has swallowed the original details in this house, but it is neatly kept, and the Georgian form of it still carries a load of dignity.

This is a sad thing to happen to any house, especially a fine Dutch colonial on a pleasant street like this. We hope insurance will cover putting the house back together; we place it here in the middle of the album so that it will be documented if it has to be demolished, but there are still plenty of cheerful pictures to follow.

A pair of brick-and-stucco houses that stand out for their unusual choice of material by Coraopolis standards.

The Colonial Revival comes to Coraopolis in an exceptionally tasteful small house.

This center-hall house is remarkable, but not more remarkable than the trees in the front yard.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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January 2, 2025
A Stroll on Glenmore Avenue in Dormont

A few pictures from a very brief walk after a day of rain. Glenmore Avenue may not be quite as tony as Espy Avenue a block away, but it has its share of elegant homes. As in many other streets in Dormont, the elegant homes are mixed in with pleasant little apartment houses and duplexes—a core principle of what old Pa Pitt calls the Dormont Model of Sustainable Development.

We start with a house that, although it is addressed to Glenmore, actually faces the cross street, Lasalle Avenue.

This Tudor seems to present a modest front to LaSalle Avenue, but turning the corner to Glenmore Avenue reveals a long side of dimensions that would almost qualify it for mansion status.

Next to the Tudor mansion, a symmetrical double house arranged as two Dutch Colonial houses back to back.

A typical Pittsburgh duplex—except that the typical Pittsburgh slope of the lot gives it the opportunity for a third apartment in the basement, with a ground-level entrance on the side street, Key Avenue.

An apartment building that looks like many other small apartment buildings in Dormont. They probably all share the same architect: Charles Geisler, who lived nearby in Beechview and designed dozens of buildings in Dormont and Mount Lebanon.

Even though he has walked on Glenmore Avenue many times before, old Pa Pitt never made this association before now. This is a smaller cottage, but it was clearly designed by the same hand that drew this overgrown bungalow on Mattern Avenue:

This is what you get if you tell your architect, “I want a bungalow, but with three floors.” The house on Glenmore may originally have had stucco and half-timbering like this: there’s no telling what’s under that aluminum siding.

Canon PowerShot A540; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

This striking house in a subdued version of Prairie Style has been rescued from decay, with tiny plastic paste-on shutters as a signifier of a high-class renovation. Here they are installed behind downspouts, which makes them even more conceptually absurd.

More pictures of Glenmore Avenue.

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January 1, 2025
A Stroll on Vernon Drive in Washington Park, Mount Lebanon

Washington Park is one of those 1920s plans in Mount Lebanon that filled up with houses by different architects in different styles, until—like the others—it became a museum of the styles of the era. It’s part of the Mount Lebanon Historic District. This collection is the product of two walks on Vernon Drive, one just yesterday, and one back in May, so don’t be too surprised to see the seasons changing as we stroll.

We begin with an outlier: a Mediterranean villa in a neighborhood where most of the houses range from Georgian to fairy-tale Northern European.

We have dozens more pictures to show you, which we’ll put below the metaphorical fold to keep from weighing down the front page.
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December 28, 2024