Father Pitt

Tag: I-Houses

  • Two Civil-War-Era Houses in Marshall-Shadeland

    2640 California Avenue

    Two houses that both seem to date from the Civil War era; they both appear on an 1872 plat map of Allegheny City. This one has just had some spiffing up. It is an Italianate variant of the typical Pennsylvania I-house with an addition in the back (although the addition in this case may have been part of the original plan). It has been divided into two dwellings, but the outlines of the house and many of its details are well preserved.

    2640
    Side of the house, showing rear wing

    The outline of the house on the 1872 maps shows the wing in the rear, so it is at least that old.

    2628 California Avenue

    This house was inhabited until recently; it looks as though it had a fire and is undergoing repairs. It has a more complicated history. It also appears on the 1872 map, and later maps that distinguish the materials of buildings show that this was a wood-frame house. At some point around 1900 it was divided into two dwellings. Some time after 1923 it was sheathed in buff Kittanning brick, giving us an 1860s form with 1920s exterior details.

    2628
    Canon PowerShot S45; Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Knowlson House, Brookline

    Knowlson house

    Set back in the woods along Pioneer Avenue, this house obviously belongs to a different era. It looks like a typical Pennsylvania farmhouse, because—as far as we can tell from old maps—that is what it was: an I-house with a plantation-style colonnaded porch added in a moment of prosperity. The Knowlsons owned much of the land that became southwestern Brookline, and they gave the neighborhood its name. They certainly did prosper when they sold their land to developers, along with their relatives the Flemings.

    2809 Pioneer Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • A Few Houses on Fifth Avenue in Shadyside

    5501 Fifth Avenue

    Fifth Avenue in Shadyside was the most famous of the millionaires’ rows in Pittsburgh. But there were some more modest houses as well—“modest” being a comparative term here. Some predated the arrival of the millionaires, and some were beyond the main stretch of mansions. Many have been replaced by postwar apartment buildings, but a number of these houses survive. A while ago, Father Pitt took an evening stroll on Fifth Avenue to have a look at some of them. Above, a wood-frame Queen Anne mansion with picturesque protrusions in all directions.

    5529

    A center-hall house in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century interpretation of Georgian style.

    5537

    Another center-hall house of the sort old Pa Pitt would call a center-hall foursquare. Walking around to the side reveals a fat turret that must add to the interest of the interior.

    5537 with turret
    5321

    Another Georgian house, though the Georgian era was lamentably ignorant of buff Kittanning brick.

    5321
    5317
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    From the old days, before the millionaires, here is a wide I-house whose main part seems to have been built before 1872.

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  • Gothic I-House in Point Breeze

    This house probably dates from the 1870s, making it much earlier than the city neighborhood that filled in around it. Because Point Breeze is such a desirable neighborhood (this house is just around the corner from the Frick Art Museum), it has been worth the expense to restore this house to something like its original appearance.

  • A Rare Survivor on the South Side

    Father Pitt was out for a walk yesterday and suddenly realized that he had spotted an odd anomaly: a country I-house with a neat little yard and a fence and gate—but that’s the top of the Birmingham Bridge right behind it. A little research confirmed what he suspected. This old house is a rare, and maybe even unique, survivor from the time before this part of the South Side was urbanized. It appears on the 1872 layer at the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, where it is an isolated house along the river in a section the urban sprawl has not reached yet. It belonged to Mrs. Sarah M. Phillips, whose property went all the way back to the river, the banks of which were as yet unencumbered by railroad tracks. The house has been much altered externally, with fake siding and new windows with fake shutters, but the shape (as viewed by satellite) is the same today as on the 1872 map.

  • Condemned House in Sharpsburg

    Condemned house in Sharpsburg

    This house is under sentence of condemnation. There is nothing really special about it, except that it is probably about 150 years old and a good representative of the Gothic I-house. The I-house is a vernacular style of house common in Pennsylvania and much of the Midwest, with a center hall and two rooms on either side. When the simple plan is complicated by a peaked central gable, as in this house, it is it is described as a Gothic I-house. Often the I-house is extended by additions that give it an L shape—and sometimes more than one addition accumulates over the years, as we see with this one, where the smaller addition in the foreground was probably added around the 1920s, to judge by the 3-over-1 window on the second floor.

    From the side

    Note the pointed vernacular-Gothic windows in the attic.

  • Old Farmhouse, Cranberry Township

    Farmhouse in Cranberry

    This is a typical Pennsylvania I-house with an attractively gingerbreaded front porch. Cranberry Township in Butler County is one of the hottest development zones in the suburbs, but in among the townhouses and shopping centers there are still active farms, and a considerable number of old farmhouses from the middle 1800s. This one could use some touching up here and there, but it might be worth the expense.

    Front porch
    Side view
    Fron a distance

    The silo in the background at right belonged to a barn that has collapsed.

  • I-House in the West End

    House in the West End

    This well-preserved house from 1870 or 1876 (according to different sources) has kept its splendid Victorian ornamental woodwork. Architectural historians would call this an I-house, a standard variety of vernacular house very common in this part of Pennsylvania. Its form is very simple: two floors, each a central hall with a room on the left and a room on the right. Often, as on this house, more rooms are added on the back. For many years this house was used as the parsonage for the Methodist church next door.

    I-house