Father Pitt

Tag: Mansions

  • Russell H. Boggs House and Trinity Lutheran Church, Mexican War Streets

    Russell H. Boggs house

    Designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow very early in their practice, this house was built in 1888. For a long time it served as the parsonage for Trinity Lutheran Church next door, which created the odd spectacle of a church whose parsonage was taller and grander than the sanctuary.

    Trinity Lutheran Church

    If you look for downspouts on this house, you won’t find them. Oral tradition says that Mr. Boggs, one of the founders of the Boggs & Buhl department store, hated gutters; at any rate, his architects devised a system of internal drainage that, when it works, carries runoff through channels in the walls. When it doesn’t work, the grand staircase is a waterfall on a rainy day. When the church sold the house, the buyers had to spend a million dollars refurbishing it, and making the drainage system work again was where a lot of the money went. The house is now a boutique hotel under the name Boggs Mansion.

    Front of the house
    Russell H. Boggs house
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • A Late Holiday Feature: Negley-Gwinner-Harter House, Shadyside

    Negley-Gwinner-Harter House

    Old Pa Pitt had meant to publish these pictures a little before Christmas, but he lost track of them. And since he doesn’t want to wait till next year, here they are now. This is the Negley-Gwinner-Harter House in Shadyside, with a crew installing its Christmas ribbon. This was the house that sat derelict for years after a disastrous fire, so it is always a cheerful sight when Father Pitt walks past and sees it in fine shape like this. But it is even more cheerful all tied up in a Christmas bow.

    Negley-Gwinner-Harter House
    Negley-Gwinner-Harter House
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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  • Murdoch Farms in the Snow

    5421 Maynard Street

    Murdoch Farms, a dairy farm until the early twentieth century, is the most expensive section of Squirrel Hill. In the 1920s it filled up with mansions designed by our leading architects, and most of them are still in close to original shape, at least on the outside. Father Pitt took a stroll on a dim and snowy afternoon to get a few pictures.

    1411 Inverness Avenue
    1342 Inverness Avenue
    1342
    1342
    1342
    1331 Inverness Avenue
    1331
    1330 Inverness Avenue
    1330
    1324 Inverness Avenue
    1310 Inverness Avenue
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    We’ll see more of Murdoch Farms from this same expedition, including some individual houses whose architects old Pa Pitt can identify.

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  • Gothic Meets Modern on Acorn Hill

    3084 Marshall Road

    This stone mansion on Acorn Hill, with its eye-catching combination of Gothic and modernist details, was designed by William C. Young and built in 1937.

    “One Model Home Finished, Another Nears Completion,” Pittsburgh Press, February 21, 1937, p. 50
    Pittsburgh Press, February 21, 1937, p. 50.

    “The above drawing by William C. Young, architect and builder, is of the model home being erected at the intersection of Watsonia Blvd. [now Marshall Road] and Norwood Ave., North Side, for Mr. and Mrs. John H. Phillips by the Young firm. The home is a combination of all that is modern in electrical equipment and labor saving devices with all that is charming and quaint from the old Norman English Architecture.” Old Pa Pitt thinks of “Norman” as implying the English branch of Romanesque rather than Gothic, but he will not argue about the charm.

    3084 Marshall Road
    Steps to the house

    The steps leading up to the house from Marshall Road are a masterpiece of romanticism in landscape design.

    3084 Marshall Road
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • Moreland-Hoffstot House, Shadyside

    Putti on the porch roof of the Moreland-Hoffstot House

    If you wanted your house to convey the message “I’m rich ppttttttthhht,” then Paul Irwin was the architect to hire. This Renaissance palace uses every trick in the architect’s vocabulary to tell the world that a millionaire lives here, and he is richer than you are. It was built in 1914 on the Fifth Avenue Millionaires’ Row, where, although it is not the biggest of the surviving mansions, it somehow manages to look like the most expensive.

    Moreland-Hoffstot House
    Moreland-Hoffstot House
    Porch
    Porch roof with putti
    Urn
    West side of the house
    Moreland-Hoffstot House
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • More of Robin Hill, Moon Township

    Robin Hill from the front

    The only excuse we need for publishing more pictures of Robin Hill is that we have more pictures of Robin Hill. It’s a beautiful Georgian house designed by Henry Gilchrist for Francis and Mary Nimick; it was left to the township by Mary to be a park for the residents. We’ll walk around the house counterclockwise.

    Front door
    Perspective view of Robin Hill
    Right side of Robin Hill
    Perspective view of the garden side
    Garden face of the mansion
    Robin Hill mansion seen from the gazebo
    Back door of Robin Hill
    Window of Robin Hill
    Stairs up from the garden
    Left side of Robin Hill
    Garden face of Robin Hill
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

    More pictures of Robin Hill, and a composite of the garden face.

  • Front Door of the B. F. Jones House, Allegheny West

    Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    Steel baron B. F. Jones’ front doorway is a feast of elaborate terra cotta. This is a very large picture: enlarge it to appreciate the details of the terra cotta and ironwork.

  • Warwick House, Squirrel Hill

    Front of Warwick House

    Warwick House was built in 1910 for Howard Heinz, son of the ketchup king H. J. Heinz. The architects were Vrydaugh & Wolfe, who designed several other millionaires’ mansions around here, as well as a number of fine churches. The house now belongs to the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, and it is rented to Opus Dei for a dollar a year, under the condition that the tenants undertake the maintenance, which is enormous.

    Once a year the residents throw a big open house, which gave us a chance to get a few pictures. We would have got more, but we were having too much fun.

    Warwick House
    Front of Warwick House
    Front door
    French door in the rear

    A French door in the back leading out into the garden.

    Warwick House

    The rear of the ballroom, an addition built in about 1929. It is now a chapel.

    Arbor

    An arbor with some splendid ironwork runs along the back of the garden.

    Decorative ironwork along the arbor
    Ironwork

    From an earlier visit, we also have several pictures of the interior of Warwick House.

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10. Most of the pictures are HDR stacks of three photographs at different exposures.

  • Garden Face of Robin Hill, Moon Township

    Robin Hill from the back patio
    Composite of three photographs from a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.

    Old Pa Pitt had intended to place this picture with the rest of the pictures of Robin Hill the other day, but his automatic stitching software failed him. He had been reasonably careful in taking the three photographs so that they would line up nearly perfectly, but the stitching software produced a comical monstrosity reminiscent of Frank Gehry. What went wrong? Only because Father Pitt was stubborn enough to edit the “control points” himself—“control points” being identical features marked in two pictures, so that the software knows how to align them properly—did he discover the problem. The parade of identical windows was too much for the program. The extreme symmetry caused it to identify this window as the same as that window, which caused the whole building to collapse in a heap.

    So old Pa Pitt stubbornly picked out all the control points himself, and produced a nearly perfect rendering of the garden side of the mansion. Stubbornness is a character flaw, but it has its uses.

  • Robin Hill, Moon Township

    Robin Hill

    Robin Hill was designed for Francis and Mary Nimick by Henry Gilchrist. He gave them a classic Georgian country house, and, like many country houses, it is really meant to be enjoyed from the garden side.

    Back of Robin Hill

    The house was built in 1926, and for nearly half a century the Nimicks enjoyed it. When Mary died in 1971, she willed the whole estate to the township to be preserved as a park.

    Back of Robin Hill
    Back door
    Back door
    Robin Hill
    View of the house through the trees
    Window
    Chimney
    Another chimney
    Side of the house
    Front of the house

    The front of the house presents a dignified appearance to the visitor.

    Front door
    Front of the house
    View of the house through the trees

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000; Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.