Father Pitt knows nothing about this pair of storefronts other than what he can deduce from their appearance. The narrow dormers are typical of the middle nineteenth century; with their Italianate brackets and windows, these buildings look as though they were put up in the 1870s, or possibly the 1860s. On the whole they are in a very good state of preservation. Now that Sharpsburg is filling up with art galleries and breweries, perhaps they can be profitably restored.
Short of a miracle, nothing can save this rambling manse from the middle 1800s, so we can only remember that it was here with these pictures. It was built in various stages by the Ewart family, who once owned all the land on both sides of Centre Avenue in this part of the Hill. The earliest part was probably built in the 1850s or 1860s; the frame addition may be as late as the twentieth century. The whole building will be demolished when the city gets around to it: it is only blocks from million-dollar houses in Schenley Farms, but those blocks make the difference.
This pair of houses is obscured by trees all through the leafy months, but in the winter we can appreciate the simple but tasteful Italianate details.
The difference in bricks suggests that the third floor was added later, but still early enough that the Italianate details were matched exactly.
All the South Side histories tell us that this school was originally built in 1871, the year before Birmingham was taken into the city of Pittsburgh as part of the South Side. From old maps, however, it appears that only the central part of the school, invisible from the street today, was built that early. The two identical fronts, this one on 15th Street and the other on 14th Street, seem to date from the 1880s. In 1940, the building was sold to St. Adalbert’s parish up the street, which used it as a middle school. It spent more than sixty years as a Catholic school of one sort or another. The last incarnation of the Catholic school closed in 2002, and after that the school—like all the other closed schools on the South Side—was converted to apartments.
Update: A kind correspondent corrects us: these are postmodern Victorian buildings designed by Gunther J. Kaier Architects, which earned the company that built them an award for fitting them so neatly into the streetscape. Father Pitt keeps the original text of the article below to point out how delightful it is to be wrong sometimes.
These two Italianate buildings are alike in their decorative detailing, and at first glance we might take them for identical twins (discounting the altered ground floors). The one on the right, however, is wider by a small but significant amount. They were built in the 1880s, to judge by old maps, and they appear to have been separately owned from the beginning. The one on the left belonged to S. Bornshire in 1890, and still belonged to S. Bornshire thirty-three years later in 1923.
This pair of Italianate houses dates to the 1870s. Like many other houses around here, these have made some extreme adaptations to Pittsburgh topography. Some fake siding has been added on the dormers, and the porch has probably been rebuilt more than once, but the general aspect of these houses probably hasn’t changed much in a century and a half.
This Italianate house has been altered to make it into a duplex, and it is continuing its adventures. That rectangular front window on the filled-in section was added only this past year. But the rest of the house looks very much the way it did when it was built in the 1870s or thereabouts.
The two sides of this duplex, which probably dates from the 1870s or 1880s, have gone their separate ways, but the whole building is well preserved. The demolition of a badly mutilated house next door gives us a chance to appreciate some of the details on the side of the house.
This rear view shows us a very inartistic addition to the third floor of one side, which is fortunately invisible from the front.
We have a good number of houses from a century and a half or more ago, but very few public buildings remain in Pittsburgh from the Civil War era. Here is one. This Odd Fellows Hall was built in 1865, when the West End was Temperanceville. It seems to have been extended by one bay on the right not long after it was built.
It seems to old Pa Pitt that this ought to be one of our high preservation priorities. It is nearly unique in being a secular public building from the middle nineteenth century; Pittsburgh’s prosperity and rapid growth meant that most others were replaced by bigger ones around the turn of the twentieth century. It is also in very good historical shape: aside from the mutilated ground floor, it is in very close to original condition. But it is in a neglected neighborhood where it could not yet be turned into profitable loft apartments, in spite of ongoing efforts to turn the West End into an artsy village.
This building inspires Father Pitt to imitate the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and classify our vulnerable landmarks in six categories: Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, and Demolished. We shall call this building Vulnerable, because it is a large building in a neglected neighborhood, on a street where a majority of the buildings have been demolished.
Seen from the Birmingham Bridge, this row of Italianate storefronts retains most of its Victorian magnificence, although the newer windows blight the one on the end.
