Three fine houses in three different styles. We begin with a house in the fairy-tale style of the 1920s and 1930s, whose steeply pitched roof, open arch on the side of the house, and Jacobean entrance combine to give it a storybook picturesqueness.
A dignified version of Queen Anne style; some alterations have changed the original character a bit, but the house still leaves a strong impression of comfortable prosperity.
It is a little hard to tell what this house was originally; it may have begun as a Queen Anne house similar to the previous one, but it seems to have been accumulating expensive renovations over the years, so that today it is an eclectic but tasteful mixture.
In the dense back streets of Oakland, now mostly given over to student housing, these elegant double houses stand out. They were built in the late 1880s as Coltart Square, which seems to have been conceived by a Philadelphia developer named Wood. Construction began in 1887, with four doubles (eight houses) on Forbes Avenue and thirteen (twenty-six houses) on Coltart Square, now Coltart Avenue. The ones on Forbes have long since disappeared; eleven of the original thirteen remain on Coltart Avenue.
Seeing the need of good, serviceable and complete houses, thoroughly improved and of latest style of architecture, at reasonable prices and in desirable locations, Mr. Wood, of Philadelphia, Pa., came here and had erected on Forbes street and Coltart square, in the most desirable part of Oakland and one of the very beautiful sections of our city, complete and desirably-arranged brick houses of 11 and 13 rooms, with cement cellar, heater, steel range, open grates all fitted for natural gas, cabinet mantels of choice woods and designs, crystal gas fixtures, electric gas lighting and electric bells, bathrooms, all artistically decorated with fine paper and stained-glass, and compactly built and with abundant closets, showing complete and thorough workmanship, streets and sidewalks well improved and good sewerage, within one square of the cable line [cable cars had just begun to run between the East End and downtown] and on the best drives to and from the city. The lots front Forbes street 23×150 feet and Coltart square, which is 50 feet wide, 35×90 feet. These houses are being sold at a very reasonable price and on very easy payments, and the agents, W. A. Herron & Sons, report that two of these houses have been already sold, one on Forbes street and one on Coltart square. A few will be rented to prospective buyers. Any desiring to purchase a complete house at low figures should call at W. A. Herron & Sons, 80 Fourth avenue, and examine plans and gain full particulars.
The houses have been under separate ownership from the beginning, so they are in varying states of preservation; but several of them retain some fine original details.
It seems that the houses sold quickly, and for a while the Coltart Square community was the haunt of well-to-do upper-middle-class families whose names were often mentioned on the society pages. Not until the second quarter of the twentieth century did the rest of Coltart Avenue become the densely crowded line of rowhouses and small apartment buildings it is today. But this one block still retains an echo of its High Victorian elegance.
A particularly fine house built in the 1880s and lovingly restored. It had the good luck to be just missed by the Ohio River Boulevard when it tore through the heart of Manchester.
Picturesquely wavy shingles still decorate the gable.
Not surprisingly, considering the fashion that Richardson’s courthouse set throughout the Pittsburgh area, this house has more than a touch of the Romanesque. Note the former address, 22, carved in stone.
A more modern architect might ask, “Why is there an oval window?” But in the Queen Anne style, which is devoted to the picturesque, the proper question to ask is, “Why should there not be an oval window?”
A house in a dignified version of the Queen Anne style, but still with plenty of picturesque details, which take on added picturesqueness in sunset light.
The elaborate woodwork and shingles in the gables have been preserved.
A pattern of stock terra-cotta tiles set in the wall may have taken the place of a filled-in window.
Fifth Avenue in Shadyside was the most famous of the millionaires’ rows in Pittsburgh. But there were some more modest houses as well—“modest” being a comparative term here. Some predated the arrival of the millionaires, and some were beyond the main stretch of mansions. Many have been replaced by postwar apartment buildings, but a number of these houses survive. A while ago, Father Pitt took an evening stroll on Fifth Avenue to have a look at some of them. Above, a wood-frame Queen Anne mansion with picturesque protrusions in all directions.
A center-hall house in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century interpretation of Georgian style.
Another center-hall house of the sort old Pa Pitt would call a center-hall foursquare. Walking around to the side reveals a fat turret that must add to the interest of the interior.
Another Georgian house, though the Georgian era was lamentably ignorant of buff Kittanning brick.
Sony Alpha 3000.
From the old days, before the millionaires, here is a wide I-house whose main part seems to have been built before 1872.
Here’s a house in an eclectic style made up of bits of other eclectic styles, but they all fit together well. The heavy arches picked out in darker brick remind us of the Rundbogenstil, a word we like to say as often as possible; but the irregular picturesque arrangement of parts takes inspiration from the style that, in defiance of history, was called Queen Anne.
The turret has a well-preserved witch’s cap and a rim of foliage scrollwork.
The oriel and the porch pediment are both decorated with grotesque foliage ornaments.
The house next door is a duplicate, but reversed.
Finally, a house that shares the same general shape, but is distinguished by its shingly top with curved surfaces and ornamental swags and foliage picked out in contrasting paint.
Parking garages sometimes give us good views of the surrounding buildings, and no one questions your right to be there as long as you look respectable enough. (The powdered wig helps.) Here are three interesting houses on Aiken Avenue seen from the Shadyside Hospital garage. First, an unusually well-preserved Shingle-style house with a lush crop of shingles.
This Queen Anne house has been turned into seven apartments, to judge by counting mailboxes and doorbells.
Finally, this mansion in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century interpretation of Colonial style has grown an apartment building in its back yard, a disease to which some old houses are subject in urban neighborhoods. It appears on Google Maps as a “community correction center,” so if you make a mistake in typing you can probably come here to have it corrected professionally. Old Pa Pitt prefers to make his own corrections, but he is glad there is a service for people who need it.
St. Richard’s parish was founded in 1894 and immediately put up a temporary frame church. Two years later, a rectory—obviously meant to be permanent—was designed by J. A. Jacobs in a restrained version of the Queen Anne style.
In 1907, the parish started building a school, which would also have temporary facilities on the ground floor for the church until a new church building could be built. It was partly financed by “euchre and dance” nights.
Father Pitt has not yet succeeded in finding the name of the architect, but he has found a lot of newspaper announcements of euchre and dance nights.
The permanent church was not yet built in 1915 when this convent, designed by Albert F. Link, was put up. Although the second-floor windows have been filled in with much smaller windows, and the art glass has been replaced with glass block, the proportions of the building are still very pleasing.
We note a pair of stained-glass windows in one of the filled-in spaces on the second floor. If Father Pitt had to guess, he would guess that they came from one of the central windows that are now filled in with glass block.
It turns out that the permanent church was never built. The dwindling congregation continued to meet for Mass on the ground floor of the school until the parish was suppressed in 1977. The school became St. Benedict the Moor School, and the ground floor was finally converted into the classrooms it had been designed for. Later the school moved to larger facilities at the former Watt Public School, but the parish kept up the old building as an events center.
A while ago, Father Pitt took a walk on Thomas Boulevard in the light rain, so don’t be surprised to see raindrops in some of these pictures. Thomas Boulevard, like McPherson Boulevard, has an eclectic mixture of housing from duplexes through Shingle-style mansions to medium-sized apartment buildings. Today we’re concentrating on the houses, some of which are magnificent. Above, a Shingle-style house with all its shingles in place.
If you ever asked yourself how much difference materials really make in the appearance of a house, compare this Shingle-style house, where the shingles have been replaced with fake siding and paste-on shutters, to the one above.
A typical Pittsburgh Renaissance palace that has turned into an apartment building.
A house with Queen Anne outlines that has been modernized with reasonably good taste.
This frame house was in deplorable condition before it was updated and made to look like a product of the twenty-first century. You can look on Google Street View to see the specific meaning old Pa Pitt assigns to “deplorable.” With an unlimited budget, Father Pitt would prefer to restore a house like this to its original design. With a limited budget, this was a good result.
This turret with house attached needs some rescuing. It has what the real-estate people call good bones, and that turret ought to be attractive to a well-off eccentric now that the neighborhood is on the upswing.
A big center-hall house that is now solar-powered.
A stony foursquare with Queen Anne details. It has lost its porch, but the third floor retains fine original woodwork and windows.
A center-hall colonial from early in the Colonial Revival, when Georgian was filtered through a late-Victorian lens.
This is a variation on the same plan as the previous house, which is right next to it; they were probably built at the same time and designed by the same hand. The porch has been replaced with a modern construction that does not quite fit, but the house looks much better with this porch than it would look with no porch at all.
This towering center-hall manse makes spectacular use of Kittanning brick in Frederick Sauer’s favorite color. The beefiness of it, along with the well-balanced selection of picturesque details, makes us think that Sauer is a good suspect for the architect.
This house grew a large balcony when it was turned into a duplex.
A big square house with typical Queen Anne details, especially the little balcony and the curved surfaces covered with shingles.
North Point Breeze is an eclectic mixture of every kind of housing from Queen Anne mansions to duplexes to medium-sized apartment buildings. A walk on just one block of McPherson Boulevard passes a jumbled assortment of styles. Since the neighborhood has not been rich in the past few decades, many of the buildings preserve details that would have been lost if their owners had been wealthier.
We begin with a Shingle Style house that has lost its shingles but retains its angular projections and low-sloped roof.
A narrow stone-fronted Queen Anne house with a square turret. For some reason the stone has been painted white. The porch pediment preserves some elaborate woodwork.
A brick house laid out like a narrow Pittsburgh Foursquare; its outstanding feature is the round oriel on the second floor.
Here is a simple but large Pittsburgh Foursquare. Many of its distinctive details have been lost, but the round bay in the dining room must be very pleasant from the inside.
An older foursquare with original shingles and elaborate woodwork.
A double house, probably from the 1920s, that keeps its Mediterranean-style tiled roof.
A small apartment building.
A matched set of duplexes with Mission-style tiled overhangs.
Finally, a double duplex that must have looked up to date when it was built. It probably had a tiled overhang along the roofline above the second-floor windows.
