There’s nothing particularly special about this house, except that it’s a good example of how an architect can vary the incidentals of the usual Pittsburgh Foursquare to produce a pleasing design. The dormer has been altered a bit, but its distinctive central arch remains, though it has been filled with a rectangular stock window.
More houses from Seminole Hills, for which no excuse is needed, since the variety of styles and the imaginative designs speak for themselves.
Most Pittsburghers probably think of Green Tree as the quintessential postwar dormitory suburb. The borough does have a longer history, however, and one small area near the intersection of Greentree Road and Potomac Avenue was built up with unusually fine houses in the 1920s and 1930s. Greenridge Lane is part of that little enclave.
The Highland Park Residential Historic District, which is coextensive with the neighborhood as defined by the city, preserves more good examples of Queen Anne houses than perhaps any other neighborhood, although Shadyside would come in a close second. Here is an especially splendid Queen Anne mansion on Stanton Avenue. (Addendum: This was the home of architect William Smith Fraser, which he designed and built for himself in 1891.1)
This house gives us two common Queen Anne elements that were missing from the mansion above: a turret and curved surfaces in the gable.
Here is a whole row of Queen Anne houses bulging with stubby turrets. They lean toward the Rundbogenstil end of the spectrum, which Father Pitt mentions because he misses no chance to say the word “Rundbogenstil.”
This mansion on Stanton Avenue has been converted to apartments, but its basic outlines remain.
This last one might be better classified as “Stick style,” a closely related style that preceded but overlapped the Queen Anne style. Stick-style houses have more of an emphasis on woodwork, especially boards overlaid on the siding for contrasting trim, as we see here, and less of an emphasis on curves and complexities of form.
It was rainy and dim, so don’t expect too much of these pictures. But old Pa Pitt happened to be in Squirrel Hill just before dark with half an hour to waste, so he took a walk in the rain in Murdoch Farms, one of the richest parts of Squirrel Hill, and did what he could with the camera.
The Shadyside half of Bayard Street is lined with fine houses in a variety of styles. We ambled down one block on a sunny November day, taking pictures of the patterns of light and shadow on the sunny side of the street.
A reader named Tom Slack writes to ask about Pierce Street. “There is a street in Shadyside I’ve always been fascinated with—the block of row houses on Pierce Street—I wondered if you knew anything about the history.”
Old Pa Pitt is always happy to hear from readers, and he was ready to send this one to his article about Pierce Street, with apologies for not knowing any more than is in the article. But he could not find his article on Pierce Street. He distinctly remembered having been to Pierce Street just to photograph those houses, and the pictures turned up when he searched the vast Father Pitt archive. But here it is more than two years after those pictures were taken, and still no article!
Well, we can take care of that right now. Father Pitt regrets to say that he does not know much about these houses, but here is what he does know.
Pierce Street—formerly Parker Street—is a tiny street, two blocks long, that branches off the end of College Street. The rowhouses in the 5800 block are on listed by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation as a historic landmark, and the PHLF tells us that they were built in 1891–1892. Old maps tell us they were owned by A. W. Mellon. This teaches us the valuable lesson that every little investment helps if you want to become the richest family in the world.
From the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, March 18, 1891: “At Baum Grove, near Roup station, Allegheny Co, about fifty dwellings will be erected by A. W. Mellon, of Pittsburg.” Roup Station was just at the west end of Parker Street. A few of the houses on the southeast side of the street have disappeared, replaced by a parking lot. But the block-long row on the northwest side is still intact.
The houses look tiny from the front, and by any standard they are small houses. Like many of these Pittsburgh terraces, though, they are deeper than you might think. Moreover, they make clever use of the space they do have, as we see in this view of the alley behind one of the rows, where projecting oriels add a few more square feet to the upper floors while still leaving room for rear exits and trash cans.
There is a little mystery about the street name. The street was called Parker Street before the houses were built, and after as well, until the great street-name rationalization after Pittsburgh absorbed the city of Allegheny, when duplicate street names were eliminated. (Renamed streets were usually given a name that began with the same letter, as happened here.) But when the houses were built, a street sign was built into the corner house identifying the street as “College Place.” Father Pitt does not know whether the street was ever renamed, or whether Mr. Mellon expected to be able to wangle a renaming for his new little development and was disappointed. The commercial building at the corner of Ellsworth Avenue and College Street was built at the same time, also on A. W. Mellon property, and it bears an identical stone block identifying College Street as “College Ave.”
Three identical houses with all the signature quirks of the Queen Anne style: turrets, odd angles, curved surfaces, oriels, shingles, and every other effect that can be applied to a city house to make it more picturesque.
This frame house across from the train station is a feast of Victorian woodwork, lovingly picked out in a tasteful polychrome paint scheme.
Once again old Pa Pitt turned himself loose with a camera in Seminole Hills—this time mostly in the older and more expensive end. The variety of styles makes the neighborhood a constant delight. For this session, let’s visit Ordale Boulevard.
This is a collection specifically for those readers who like scrolling through house designs of the 1920s and 1930s. The rest can just whiz right past the “more” link and go on to something else.
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