Father Pitt

Tag: Queen Anne Architecture

  • Queen Anne Turrets in Shadyside

    628 and 626 Summerlea Street

    Three quite different interpretations of the Queen Anne turret on Shadyside houses. Above, a pair of faceted turrets on a double house.

    Turret of 733 South Negley Avenue

    An unusual rectangular turret preserves its original farmhouse-Gothic window and woodwork. The turret itself is set at a 45° angle to the rest of the house.

    733 South Negley Avenue
    Turret of 727 South Negley Avenue

    Finally, an octagonal domed turret on a house whose well-preserved details are worth pausing to admire. We note in passing that even the paint is, if not original, at least the dark green color typical of Pittsburgh houses of the turn of the twentieth century: you can scratch the trim of many a Pittsburgh house and find this color at the lowest level.

    727 South Negley Avenue

    An appropriate arrangement of birds on those cables could make a short musical composition.

    Front porch

    A shingly front porch that survived the epidemic of porch amputations in the 1960s and 1970s.

    Parlor window

    The parlor window has some good stained glass under the arch and, in the arch itself, a sunflower ornament for a keystone.

    Sunflower ornament
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • The Queen Anne Style in Coraopolis

    1230 State Avenue

    The “Queen Anne” style is the one people think of most often when they think of Victorian houses. It had very little to do with any queen named Anne. Its defining characteristic is a concern for variety and picturesqueness: there is always a surprise lurking around the corner of a Queen Anne house. Turrets and Dutch gables and curiously shaped dormers and fits of Renaissance detailing are favorite devices of Queen Anne architects, but there is no single thing that defines the style.

    Coraopolis has an exceptionally fine collection of Queen Anne houses, and some of them preserve exquisite details usually lost to the ravages of time. Enlarge the picture above, for example, and admire the original windows.

    1310 State Avenue

    This one has had many revisions over the years, but the irregular shape of a Queen Anne house, and the dominant turret, are still there to mark the style.

    1324 Ridge Avenue

    Here is a house that has kept many elegant details, including its slate roof and wood trim. And note the windows in the turret:

    Turret

    The glass curves to match the curve of the wall.

    Dormer

    A curious dormer with remarkable tracery in the window.

    1324 Ridge Avenue
    1324 Ridge Avenue
    1302 State Avenue

    Another house with some alterations, but they do not disguise the turret and the big rounded bay in front.

    1303 Ridge Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    This house has also been through some alterations: the porch might have wrapped all the way around to include both doors, and the vertical siding on the second-floor oriel doubtless replaced wood shingles. The shingles are still there on the third-floor gables, however.

  • Some Houses on Beaver Street, Sewickley

    36 Beaver Street

    Sewickley is known for its grand houses, and some of the grandest are along Beaver Street, the main street of the village.

    36 Beaver Street
    26 Beaver Street
    26 Beaver Street
    56 Beaver Street
    56 Beaver Street
    56 Beaver Street
    66 Beaver Street
    66 Beaver Street
    59 Beaver Street
    59 Beaver Street

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1281; Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • House Turned Synagogue in Highland Park

    House turned synagogue

    Several synagogues in Pittsburgh have been adapted from private houses—one of them half a block away from here. This one seems no longer to be a synagogue, so it has gone from residential to institutional to residential again. The inscription is mostly in Hebrew, which old Pa Pitt regrets that he does not read, so perhaps a reader can inform us which congregation was here. The English part of the inscription memorializes Mr. & Mrs. Bennie Fineberg, perhaps the donors.

    We could try to imagine what the front of this house looked like before its conversion. But we needn’t put in the effort, because a nearly identical house is right next door:

    A similar house

    This one has been converted to apartments, and it has suffered some alterations, but nothing that takes very much imagination to remove in our mind’s eye and restore the original look of the house.

  • Old Church in Aspinwall

    Old church, perspective view

    This old Lutheran church1 is no longer a church, but the exterior has been preserved very well. It is an unusual style for a small church, much like a Queen Anne house with a corner tower. The woodwork in the front gable is especially ornate.

    Decorative woodwork in the gable
    1. It appears on a 1906 Hopkins map as “Evan’l Luth. Ch.” ↩︎

  • A Stroll Up Devonshire Street

    Georgian mansion and fence

    Today we are going to take a stroll up one block of Devonshire Street; and although it will be a short stroll, it will be a long article, because almost every single house on this block is an extraordinary mansion by some distinguished architect. Old Pa Pitt regrets that he does not know which architect for most of them, but he is feeling lazy today and has decided not to spend the rest of the day researching the histories of these houses. Instead, he will simply publish these pictures, which are worth seeing both for the houses themselves and for the poetic effect of the late-autumn landscapes, and will update the article later as more information dribbles in.

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  • Queen Anne House on Ellwood Street, Shadyside

    House on Ellwood Street

    This house was built, probably in the 1890s, as one of a row of four similar or identical houses. Of the other three, one was converted to a duplex and two to three-unit apartment buildings: this is the only one that remains as built. The ornamental woodwork is worth observing.

    Gable of the house with ornamental woodwork

  • The Witches’ Caps on Negley Avenue

    625 to 633 South Negley Avenue

    This row of Queen Anne houses on Negley Avenue in Shadyside surely strikes every passer-by, if for nothing other than their turrets with witches’ caps. The other details are also worth noticing: the ornamental woodwork and the roof slates, for example. The houses are just detached enough that we can see that the sides are made of cheaper brick rather than the stone that faces the street.

    629 South Negley Avenue

    The last one in the row lost its cap many years ago, but in compensation has been ultra-Victorianized with extra polychrome woodwork, as we see on the dormer below.

    Dormer

  • Row of Queen Anne Duplexes on Sidney Street, South Side

    2315 to 2325 Sidney Street

    These three Queen Anne duplexes were once identical, or nearly so. Each one has had separate adventures, and each one has preserved some details and lost others.

    2323 and 2325

    This one probably preserves the original appearance best, though it has lost the stained glass in the parlor windows.

    2319 and 2321

    This one has suffered badly from separate ownership of the two sides. Some contractor charged quite a bit of money for mutilating the left-hand side. The right side has also been modernized, but with more taste, using windows that are the right size and shape for the wall.

    2315 and 2317

    This one has had similar alterations, but at least the parlor windows have not been filled in with toy blocks.

    Old Pa Pitt is constantly surprised by the number of Pittsburgh homeowners who say, “I hate all that natural light and fresh air! Block in those big ugly windows and give me just enough glass to see what the weather is out there.”

    Row of Queen Anne duplexes

  • One Block of Sidney Street on the South Side

    2109 Sidney Street

    The 2100 block of Sidney Street has some of the finest high-Victorian houses on the South Side, and several of them have unusual decorative details worth a closer examination. Old Pa Pitt took an evening stroll down Sidney Street the other day and, as always, came back with a few pictures. We’ll start with No. 2109. Note the multiple shapes of roof slates, the woodwork in the dormers, and the rusticated lintels in the picture above.

    Since we have fifteen pictures, we’ll put the rest below the fold to avoid slowing down the main page for a week.

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