Tag: Spanish Mission Architecture

  • Second Empire, Meet Spanish Mission

    5721 Stanton Avenue

    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.

    Original house

    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:

    Baywood

    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.

    Central tower
    Entrance
    5721 Stanton Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
  • Two Apartment Building on Potomac Avenue, Dormont

    1697 Potomac Avenue
    1697 Potomac Avenue

    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.

    The Statesman
    Entrance to the Statesman
    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.

  • Spanish Mission Style in Sunset Hills

    28 Jonquil Place

    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.

    28 Jonquil Place
    Front door
    Side of the house
    Outbuilding

    Does your garden shed match the architecture of your house? And does it have two floors?

    200 Broadmoor Avenue
    Front porch
    25 Jonquil Place

    This house is almost a traditional Pennsylvania farmhouse, but with Mission arched porch and stucco.

    25 Jonquil Place
    Canon PowerShot A540.
  • Tudor or Spanish Mission? In Squirrel Hill, You Can Have Both

    Row of apartment buildings

    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.

    Here are the buildings, left to right:

    Cambridge
    Cambridge
    Granada
    Granada
    Windsor
    Windsor
    Armada
    Armada
    Wemberley
    Wemberley
  • Trinity A. M. E. Church, Hill

    Trinity A. M. E. Church

    A modest church from 1925 in an unusual Spanish Mission style. That style was very popular for houses and apartments in the 1920s, but in Pittsburgh it is seldom found in churches.

    The well-preserved, though somewhat bedraggled, Italianate house next door is also worth noting.

    Trinity AME Church and Italianate house

    Addendum: The architects of the church were Sharove & Friedman, who were more used to synagogues than churches—they worked with Henry Hornbostel on the Congregation B’nai Israel synagogue. Without the tower, this would look very much like a modest synagogue. Source: The American Contractor, September 8, 1923: “Church: $20,000. 1 sty. & bas. 30×70. Wylie av. & Francis st. Archt. Sharove & Friedman, Berger bldg. Owner The Trinity African Meth. Episcopal Congr., Rev. G. F. Williams, 2704 Wylie av. Brk. walls. Drawing plans.”

  • Ruth Apartments, Dormont

    Apartment building in Dormont

    A small apartment building along the Red Line in Dormont, with some of the Spanish Mission details that were very popular in Dormont a century ago. It was also popular to give small apartment buildings women’s names; across the street are two very similar buildings named Thea and Esther.

    Ruth
  • Old Garage, Oakland

    Front of the old garage

    A garage from the early days of the automobile; on a 1923 map it is simply marked “Garage.” The fundamental simplicity of the Spanish Mission style made it popular for garages, and this front on Melwood Avenue looks almost like a cartoon drawing of a Spanish mission. We have already seen the ghost sign on the south side of it revealed by the demolition of the old Chevrolet dealer next door:

    Ghost sign

    On the other side of the building is another ghost sign, probably later, advertising the Overman Cushion Tire Co.—a name that is still, or again, in use today by an Ohio restorer of antique tires.

    Ghost sign for Overman Cushion Tire Co.
  • Hampshire Safety Island, Beechview

    The angle is not exaggerated in this photograph: Pittsburgh streetcars really do have to climb absurd grades like this. This is one of the small number of remaining streetcar safety islands in the city. Behind it is a tiny Central American restaurant with a reputation for excellent food; it inhabits a little building in the Spanish Mission style, which seems appropriate.

  • Spanish Mission Style in Dormont

    A modest commercial building on Potomac Avenue, this is a good example of the Spanish Mission style in commercial buildings and apartment houses. The style—a kind of Eastern fantasy of the Southwest—is certainly not unknown elsewhere in the Pittsburgh area, but for some reason it was especially popular in Dormont, where numerous Mission-style buildings still stand. Doubtless the original roof overhang above the name was tile, and very probably green tile. Below, the building at Potomac and Glenmore Avenues retains its original green roof tiles.

  • Apartments and Storefronts, Dormont

    This interesting residential-commercial structure on Potomac Avenue seems to combine two styles. The apartment building is a kind of very late Italianate, but the way the projecting storefronts form a sort of courtyard seems very much in the Mission style, as do the sloped roofs, which old Pa Pitt suspects were originally tile rather than asphalt shingles.