Father Pitt

Tag: Rowhouses

  • Not Frederick Scheibler

    Row of houses on Alder Street

    This row of houses on Alder Street in Shadyside has been attributed to Frederick Scheibler, Pittsburgh’s most famous home-grown modernist, by the guesswork of certain architectural historians. But Martin Aurand, Scheibler’s biographer, could find no evidence that Scheibler designed them. Then who was responsible for this strikingly modern early-twentieth-century terrace?

    5931–5937 Alder Street

    Old Pa Pitt is confident that he has the answer. The architect was T. Ed. Cornelius, who lived all his life in Coraopolis but was busy throughout the Pittsburgh area. We can be almost certain of that attribution because the houses in the middle of the row are identical to the ones in the Kleber row in Brighton Heights:

    Kleber row in Brighton Heights

    And the Brighton Heights houses were the subject of a photo feature in the Daily Post of March 5, 1916, in which T. Ed. Cornelius is named as the architect.

    1916 picture of row in Brighton Heights

    The Alder Street houses are bookended by larger double houses, one of which—this being Pittsburgh, of course—is an odd shape to fit the odd lot.

    Row of houses on Alder Street
    5927 and 5929 Alder Street

    So remember the name of T. Ed. (which stands for Thomas Edward) Cornelius when you think of distinctive Pittsburgh architecture. It is quite a compliment to have your work mistaken for Frederick Scheibler’s.

    5931–5937 Alder Street
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Beaux-Arts Terrace in Sheraden

    3118–3112 Bergman Street

    Thomas Scott designed this terrace of four houses, built in 1912,1 and they are kept in remarkably fine shape. The updates have been handled with taste and an understanding of the original style, so that today there is hardly a finer Beaux-Arts terrace of cheap little rowhouses in the city. We have talked before about the challenge of making inexpensive housing seem attractive; it was a challenge that Scott met and conquered.

    3116 and 3114
    Front door

    The doors of the two end units are framed in scrupulously proper Doric fashion.

    Sawed-off Moravian arch

    The two inner units have these unique sawed-off arches over their front doors.

    3118–3112
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.
    1. Source: The Construction Record, December 2, 1911: “Architect T. M. Scott, Machesney building, has completed plans for four 2-story brick residences, to be erected on Bergman street, Sheraden, for W. McCausland, 3022 Zephyr avenue, Sheridan. Cost $15,000.” McCausland still owned them in 1923, according to plat maps. ↩︎
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  • Three Civil War Veterans Uptown

    20, 18, and 16 Chatham Square

    Without moving an inch, these old houses have been on three different streets. They were built, probably just after the Civil War (since they appear on an 1872 plat map), on Chestnut Street. After the conquest of Allegheny by Pittsburgh, duplicate street names were eliminated—most often by changing the ones on the North Side, but in this case the Chestnut Street in what had been Allegheny was richer and more influential, so this became Hooper Street, defying the usual rule that the new name should begin with the same letter as the old. When the Lower Hill was deleted by “urban renewal,” Hooper and Washington Streets were merged to make Chatham Square. Through it all, these fairly modest houses have remained intact, and they seem secure now that Uptown is becoming more desirable again.

    20, 18, and 16 Chatham Square
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Pair of Italianate Houses in Manchester

    1429 and 1431 Pennsylvania Avenue

    A pair of rowhouses whose elaborate Italianate details have been meticulously restored. And since, as longtime readers know, old Pa Pitt collects breezeways…

    Breezeway
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Italianate Double House in Manchester

    1428 and 1426 Pennsylvania Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR (a stack of three different exposures).

    A pair of houses probably built in the 1860s or 1870s, according to old maps, with an addition in the rear in the 1880s.

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  • Rafferty Rows, Squirrel Hill

    Rafferty row on Beeler Street

    We saw these houses last fall on a dim and rainy evening, and at that time we explained what little we knew about their history. Here are the ones on Beeler Street in bright sunshine.

    Rowhouses on Beeler Street
    Rowhouses
    Rafferty row on Beeler Street
    Olympus E-20N.
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  • Terrace of Three Houses on Friendship Park, Bloomfield

    4911–4915 Friendship Avenue

    Old Pa Pitt enjoys pointing out how architects and builders have approached the problem of making cheap housing attractive. These three houses face Friendship Park, where they sit among elaborate apartment buildings and much grander houses. They are very small and quite cheap. Yet because someone put effort into the design, they do not bring down the tone of the neighborhood. Instead, they contribute to a delightful sense of variety.

    Terrace of three houses
    Olympus E-20N.
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  • Row of Houses on Dawson Street, Oakland

    3821–3825 Dawson Street

    Frederick Sauer was probably the architect of these rather German-looking houses. They were built as rental properties on land that belonged to developer John Dimling, and in every case where we have found an architect listed for a Dimling project, it is always Frederick Sauer.

    3821–3825 Dawson Street

    It is a little hard to tell how the right end of the row looked originally. Alterations that look as though they were made in the 1970s have obscured the original design, which—with its curved corner—would have been something interesting.

    3821–3825 Dawson Street
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  • Terrace by Janssen & Abbott on McKee Place, Oakland

    368–378 McKee Place

    This striking design was by Janssen & Abbott, and it shows Benno Janssen developing that economy of line old Pa Pitt associates with his best work, in which there are exactly the right number of details to create the effect he wants and no more. The row was built in about 1913.1 The resemblance to another row on King Avenue in Highland Park is so strong that old Pa Pitt attributes that row to Janssen & Abbott as well.

    Terrace on King Avenue, Highland Park
    The terrace on King Avenue, Highland Park. In some secondary sources, this one is misattributed to Frederick Scheibler, but Scheibler’s biographer Martin Aurand found no evidence linking him to this terrace.
    Row of houses by Janssen & Abbott

    These houses are not quite as well kept as the ones in Highland Park. They have been turned into duplexes and seem to have fallen under separate ownership, resulting in—among other alterations—the tiniest aluminum awnings old Pa Pitt has ever seen up there on the attic dormers of two of the houses.

    Two of the houses

    Nevertheless, the design still overwhelms the miscellaneous alterations and makes this one of the most interesting terraces in Oakland.

    Brick gatepost with number 378 and a half
    Two end houses
    Terrace
    Perspective view down the row
    Terrace on McKee Place
    Perspective view from the other direction
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Narrow Rowhouses in Lawrenceville

    300 block of 46th Street

    The houses in this row at the upper end of 46th Street were all built on the same plan. They were put up in two stages around the turn of the twentieth century, though they are not much different from Pittsburgh rowhouses of a hundred years earlier. The rising value of Lawrenceville real estate has caused an epidemic of third-floor expansions recently; Father Pitt will admit to thinking they are ugly, but by matching the square footage to the value of the location they keep the main structure of the house in good shape. Below we see one house with its original dormer (and classic aluminum awning) and one house with a new third floor (and apologetic little contemporary awningette).

    335 and 337 46th Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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