One of the grandest of the Second Empire houses in Allegheny West, this one has an elaborate cornice with delightfully folksy wood-carving.
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Second Empire House, Allegheny West
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Joseph & Elizabeth Horne House, Allegheny West
An early work of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow in Pittsburgh, this house was given the Carol J. Peterson treatment, so that it has its own little book of its history. Old Pa Pitt will not repeat everything the late Ms. Peterson found out about it, but this is the outline: Joseph O. Horne, son of the department-store baron, married Elizabeth Jones, daughter of the steel baron B. F. Jones, and her father had Longfellow, Alden & Harlow design this cozy little Romanesque house for the young couple. It was one of the many houses restored in the late twentieth century by serial restorationist Joedda Sampson, and now it looks pretty much the way the architects drew it, minus some erosion and a century of soot.
The decoration on the dormer is a bit eroded, but that probably makes it more picturesque than it was when the house was new.
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Graham–Teufel House, Allegheny West
This house has an unusual history, which we take from Carol Peterson’s detailed research at the Allegheny West site. It was built in the early 1860s as a typical modest Pittsburgh rowhouse. In 1918, new owners decided they wanted something less embarrassingly old-fashioned, so they hired the most modern and up-to-date architects—Kiehnel & Elliott—to remodel the house in the most modern and up-to-date style—Spanish Mission. The result is something that would have been right at home in Florida, where Kiehnel and Elliott were beginning a flourishing practice that would persuade them to move to Miami in 1922. It would also have matched the neighborhood aesthetic in many of the new Pittsburgh streetcar suburbs like Carrick or Beechview. It seems a little out of place on Lincoln Avenue in Allegheny West.
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Hoffstot House, Allegheny West
Like many of the houses in Allegheny West, this grand Second Empire house had a detailed history prepared by the late Carol Peterson, so old Pa Pitt will tell you only that it was built in 1880 for Gideon and Mary Hoffstot, and for the rest we can let Ms. Peterson take over.
