Father Pitt

Tag: Rowhouses

  • More Breezeways of the South Side

    You might have thought one dose of breezeways would have been enough for such an esoteric subject, but you would have been mistaken. With his usual monomania, Father Pitt is building up a large collection of South Side breezeways, with plans to expand the collection into other neighborhoods soon.

    Sometimes curious accidents happen to breezeways. For example:

    This appears to be half a breezeway: the house on the left has been much altered, with its half of the shared breezeway filled in.

    Here is a shared breezeway that has lost one of its houses, so that it has now become a curious lean-to construction on the side of the remaining house.

  • Carved Brackets

    Carved brackets over the front door of a Victorian rowhouse on the South Side.

  • Fall on Sarah Street

    Fall colors persist far into November in the city, though the trees in the suburbs are mostly naked twigs by now.

  • Autumn on the South Side

    Fall colors on the sidewalk of Jane Street.

  • Kosciusko Way, South Side Slopes

    Kosciusko Way, apparently named for the famous Polish hero of the Revolutionary War, is a narrow and crowded street that makes a brave attempt to go straight up from Josephine Street into the South Side Slopes, but makes it only a block before being utterly defeated by topography.

    Map

  • Breezeways of the South Side

    This is certainly one of old Pa Pitt’s most esoteric subjects. In rowhouse neighborhoods, there are often tunnel-like passages through to the rear yard of a house, with the upper storeys built over the passage. These outdoor passages are called “breezeways” in Pittsburgh; in other cities they may be called gangways or alleys. Sometimes the passage runs through one house; sometimes it is shared by two houses. We see examples of both in this little collection.

  • Back End of the South Side Flats

    Edwards Way is the very edge of the South Side Flats. The greenery-covered wall on the left is the stone retaining wall below the railroad that separates the Flats from the Slopes. Of course this tiny narrow space is nevertheless too valuable to leave unbuilt, so the free side of the alley is lined with typical South Side alley houses.


    Map

  • Sidewalk of Jane Street

    The last block of Jane Street on the South Side Flats (as opposed to the resumed Jane Street on the Slopes side of the tracks) feels delightfully private, lined on the north side with charming Second Empire rowhouses facing an old herringbone-pattern brick sidewalk. The colors of the houses and flowers shine out all the brighter in the gloom of a rainy day.


    Map

  • Front Doors of the South Side

    The famous Victorian front doors of the South Side are featured on posters and in picture books on coffee tables all over western Pennsylvania. There is an endless variety to the woodwork on these South Side rowhouses. Old Pa Pitt was out walking on the South Side and decided to concentrate on doors: here is the collection he made in just half an hour’s stroll. Click on any picture to enlarge it.

    Many of these doorways have decorative stained-glass transoms over the door, often with the address worked into the glass:

    Of course, no collection of South Side front doors would be complete without a Kool Vent awning on an alley house:

  • House on Carson Street

    Carson Street is the commercial spine of the South Side, but occasionally we run across a house left over from the time before Carson was almost exclusively commercial. Most of them have small offices on the ground floors now, but they retain their domestic external appearance. This house strikes Father Pitt as a halfway point between Second Empire and Italianate styles in local rowhouses; it’s notable for its prickly decorative ironwork on the roof.