Father Pitt

Tag: Rowhouses

  • A Walk on Boyle Street, North Side

    Boyle Street street sign

    A short evening stroll on two blocks’ worth of Boyle Street, one of those narrow rowhouse-lined streets on the North Side near Allegheny General Hospital. The street sign above is on a corner house; the sign probably dates from the late 1800s, and the house, though altered with new windows and other adaptations, may date from before the Civil War.

    1300 Boyle Street

    The basement door makes us think of Alice in Wonderland.

    Houses in the 1200 block

    This Second Empire row was probably put up in the 1870s or 1880s, replacing earlier smaller houses. Thirty years ago this was a poor neighborhood, but now much restoration is being done, without wholesale displacement of the older residents.

    Rowhouse with sea-turtle mural

    You have a blank wall facing an alley? We can do something about that. The mural is by Jeremy Raymer, who has beautified many spots around the city, especially in Lawrenceville and on the North Side.

    Rowhouse with sea-turtle mural
    An Italianate house

    An Italianate house, again altered with new windows, but preserving a splendid doorframe and some original carved wooden brackets.

    Woodwork above the front door
    Brackets
    1320 Boyle Street
    Small apartment building

    An unusually attractive small apartment building whose details are well preserved. Addendum: It was built in about 1910, and the architects were Allison & Allison.1

    Front elevation of the apartment building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
    1. Philadelphia Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide, October 27, 1909, p. 684: “Architects Allison & Allison, Westinghouse Building, have prepared plans for a brick and cement apartment house, to be erected at Boyle and Hemlock streets, North Side, for W. B. Nelson. It will be of brick, with stone trimmings, hardwood finish, steam heat and electric lights.” Thanks to David Schwing. ↩︎
    Comments

  • Alley Houses on Halket Place, Oakland

    Alley houses on Halket Place
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    In the shadows of the ever-encroaching university and hospital buildings, these tiny rowhouses still survive in a little alley in the back streets of Oakland.

    Comments

  • 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.
    Comments

  • 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. ↩︎
    Comments

  • 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.
    Comments

  • 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.
    Comments

  • 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.

    Comments

  • 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.
    Comments

  • 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.
    Comments

  • 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
    Comments