Seminole Terrace is not included yet in the Mount Lebanon Historic Discrict, but the older part of the plan is a museum of good domestic architecture from the 1920s and 1930s—a time when the Colonial Revival, the Fairy-Tale Style, and various other fantasies of an elegant past could coexist comfortably in a newly laid-out automobile suburb. Here are some of the houses we saw on a walk along Navahoe Drive. We’ve seen some of these houses before, but we can always see them again.
With almost complete confidence, old Pa Pitt attributes this Episcopal church to Ingham & Boyd. It speaks the same dialect of Gothic as some of their other churches, and they are known to have designed the parish house that was built just before the church. However, Father Pitt has not yet found the documentary evidence that would remove the “almost” from his statement.
The cornerstone was laid on October 5, 1930. At the same time, one stone taken from the foundation of Old St. Luke’s in nearby Woodville was also laid in the foundation of this church, to tie it to the pre-Revolutionary tradition of Episcopalianism in Allegheny County.1
This parish house is known from several listings to have been the work of Ingham & Boyd,2 and it was built just a little before the church itself. The architects looked to vernacular Western Pennsylvania farmhouses for their inspiration. We do not know what inspired the designer of the modern vestibule.
Some houses on Heberton Street in a variety of styles, from Shingle Style to Pennsylvania Farmhouse Revival.
