The Brookline Theatre on Brookline Boulevard in Brookline was a typical neighborhood movie house of the silent era. According to Ed Blank, the well-known newspaper critic, who has made a thorough study of Pittsburgh movie houses, it opened on March 28, 1921. It ceased to show movies about half a century ago, and since then has had a varied career as a thrift shop, a bar, and currently a sports bar with two competing cell-phone dealers. The Mission style of the building, with its tiled overhang and exaggerated wooden brackets, was popular in the 1920s, especially in the South Hills neighborhoods.
It is never pleasant, but old Pa Pitt feels as though he has a duty to document things that might be gone soon. Sometimes miracles happen, and we can always hope, but without a miracle we can only turn to the photographs to remember what has vanished.
“Berg Place,” a group of three apartment buildings along Brownsville Road in Carrick, probably cannot be saved. It’s a pity, because the buildings, in a pleasant Arts-and-Crafts style flavored with German Art Nouveau, have a commanding position along the street, and their absence will be felt. They were abandoned a few years ago, probably declared unsafe, and since then they have rotted quickly.
Some of the simple but effective Art Nouveau decorations in brick and stone.
These two buildings across the street from Berg Place, damaged by a fire, may possibly still be saved. At present one of them is condemned, but that is not a death sentence, and it looks as though prompt action was taken to secure the one on the corner after the fire. They are typical of the Mission-style commercial buildings that were popular in Carrick and other South Hills neighborhoods, and they ought to be preserved if at all possible. Carrick is not a prosperous neighborhood, but much of the commercial district is still lively, and with the increase in city property values the repairs might be a good investment.
A commercial building and apartment block in the eclectic style popular in the 1920s: it carries a whiff of Spanish Mission, but also a bit of Renaissance. Liberal use of terra cotta enlivens the façade.
An attractive duplex built on what had been part of the Neeld estate; it was probably put up in the 1920s. It has retained most of its original details, including its tile roof and flamboyant wooden brackets.
Charles Geisler, who lived in the South Hills neighborhoods all his working life, was a successful architect who specialized in small to medium-sized apartment and commercial buildings. Much of his work had a tint of the Spanish Mission style. The ground floor of this building, put up in 1923, has probably changed, but the upper floors are unusually well preserved, with tiled overhang, nine-over-one windows, and carved wood brackets, making this an excellent example of Geisleriana.
This little building looks like the little brother of the building next door. Father Pitt has no direct evidence that Geisler designed it, but the two properties were under the same ownership in 1923. Given the notable similarity in the treatments of the rooflines, it is reasonable to suspect Geisler, even if we cannot yet convict him of the design.
The Rex is attributed to Geisler in city architectural surveys, although it has been remodeled more than once, and old Pa Pitt would not be surprised if one of those remodelings was under the direction of Victor A. Rigaumont, who had a prosperous practice converting the silent generation’s movie houses to up-to-date Art Deco palaces for the talkie era.
Pittsburgh is full of tiny houses like these, and there’s not much special about these four in particular, except that they demonstrate how even the humblest dwellings have stories to tell after a century of history. These little doubles were originally identical, but they have had separate adventures. Two of the houses have had one of their upstairs windows bricked in; one of them has had the window replaced with a three-staggered-light front door, which is an amusing trick to play on houseguests. The pair on the left have had their flat porch roofs replaced with peaked roofs. All of them probably had green tile (or possibly red) on the overhangs above the upstairs windows. The main purpose of those overhangs is to serve as a signifier of the Spanish Mission style, which was very popular when these houses were built. The overhangs may also serve as a talisman to ward off the aluminum-awning salesman, and it worked in three out of four of the houses.
This odd-looking apartment building on Stanton Avenue in Highland Park makes some sense once we peel apart its history. At first old Pa Pitt didn’t know what to make of it, but looking on old plat maps made him realize that the central section was a grand house in the Second Empire style, probably built in the 1870s.
In your imagination, take away those sunrooms on the first and second floors. Add a front porch the width of the house. You might put a Second Empire mansard cupola on the central tower. The result would be a lot like this:
This is Baywood, the Alexander King mansion at the other end of Highland Park (pictures here and here). The house at the core of this apartment building probably looked much like Baywood when it was new. It seems to appear first on the 1882 layer at Pittsburgh Historic Maps, where the property owner is not identified. In 1890 it is shown as belonging to A. Dempster, and it still belonged to A. Dempster in 1910, with its original outlines. In 1923 it has its current shape, and the owner is shown as G. West.
At some time around World War I, then, when several of the houses on Stanton Avenue were being converted to apartments, someone bought the Dempster mansion and decided to expand it into an apartment building. But the Second Empire style was embarrassingly passé. The new wings were done in an up-to-the-minute Spanish Mission style, and the original house was coated with stucco and modified as much as practical to go with the new style. Nothing, however, could disguise the outline of a Second Empire mansion. Thus today we have a clash of styles that is probably more interesting, visually speaking, that a new apartment house in pure Mission style would have been.
One of these two apartment buildings was almost certainly designed by architect Charles Geisler for the developer Oscar Larson, and old Pa Pitt is inclined to think that both of them are Geisler’s work. Charles Geisler lived nearby in Beechview, and Dormont and Mount Lebanon are peppered with buildings he designed. These fit his style—patterned brickwork and bracketed overhangs being two of his favorite tricks.
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. These were the first pictures Father Pitt took to test the 50-megapixel phone camera, so they’re a little unsophisticated. But they’re big.
Sunset Hills is a Mount Lebanon plan developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the houses are more modest than the ones in Mission Hills or Beverly Heights. Many of them, however, are fine designs by their architects, and in particular several are among the best examples of the Spanish Mission style in Pittsburgh.
Does your garden shed match the architecture of your house? And does it have two floors?
This house is almost a traditional Pennsylvania farmhouse, but with Mission arched porch and stucco.
Who knew? It turns out that Tudor can be Spanish Mission and vice-versa, as long as you add the right decorative touches, and of course the right names. This row of five apartment buildings on Hobart Street, Squirrel Hill, alternates Tudor and Spanish Mission, as you could guess even without seeing them just by the names of the buildings: Cambridge, Granada, Windsor, Armada, and Wemberley. Yet they are all more or less the same building. Only the decorative details change. Tudor buildings have peaked rooflines; Spanish Mission buildings have curvy rooflines and little tiled awnings. Knowing how to make the same building Tudor or Spanish Mission is a great time-saver for an architect.
