Father Pitt

Tag: Italianate Architecture

  • Rowhouses on Sarah Street, South Side

    2330 Sarah Street

    Sarah Street was the prime residential street of East Birmingham (the part of the South Side between 17th and 26th Streets), and it retains some of Pittsburgh’s most distinguished rowhouses. The one above is a splendidly eclectic mix—a bit of Italianate, a bit of Gothic, a bit of Second Empire. Note how much effort has gone into making interesting patterns in the bricks.

    2112 Sarah Street

    Here is another house in a similarly eclectic style. The parlor window is treated almost identically, but the upper floors vary the theme considerably.

    Italianate house

    This is not strictly a rowhouse, since it is detached from its neighbors by a narrow alley on each side; but since it is connected to those neighbors by a pair of gates, it is as near a rowhouse as makes no difference. This is a fine example of the Italianate style in a city house, and the owners have had some fun picking out the ornamental details with an unusual but effective paint scheme.

  • Letitia Holmes House, Allegheny West

    Letitia Holmes House

    The Letitia Holmes house, with Harry Darlington’s one-room-wide mansion clinging to the right of it. Mrs. Holmes’ splendidly dignified Italianate house was built in about 1870, and instead of repeating its history here old Pa Pitt will simply refer you to a well-researched page on the Holmes house in the Allegheny West neighborhood site. Letitia Holmes was a widow when she built this house, but she built it for elegant entertainments: the room with the tall windows to the right of the front door is a ballroom that spans the entire depth of the house.

  • Row of Windows, Carson Street

    A row of more than usually ornate Italianate windows on Carson Street, South Side.

  • 101 Smithfield Street

    101 Smithfield Street

    In the little corner of downtown Pittsburgh near First Avenue there are still some half-blocks that never entered the skyscraper age. Here we can see some of the humbler pre-skyscraper commercial architecture of Pittsburgh. The first floor of the front of this building has been heavily altered, probably by someone who wanted to make it look more Victorian and ended up making it look more 1978. But the rest of the building is a typical small Italianate structure of the 1870s.

  • Brown’s Block, Carnegie

    A block of modest storefronts from 1883, built in the Italianate style.

  • Apartments and Storefronts, Dormont

    This interesting residential-commercial structure on Potomac Avenue seems to combine two styles. The apartment building is a kind of very late Italianate, but the way the projecting storefronts form a sort of courtyard seems very much in the Mission style, as do the sloped roofs, which old Pa Pitt suspects were originally tile rather than asphalt shingles.

  • Victorian Storefront on Market Street

    This beautifully restored building on Market Street is one of an identical pair. Note the properly inset entrance. It was once de rigeur for stores to have their entrances inset from the sidewalk like that, so that the door would not smack a passing pedestrian in the face. How did we forget what a good idea that was?

    The picture is a composite of three photographs, which was the only way to get the whole façade across a very narrow street.