A particularly splendid mid-Victorian building from 1881, as we can see by the beehive date stone in the middle of the façade.
The architect would probably have told you that the style was Renaissance, but mid-Victorian architects were much freer in their interpretation of historical styles than the next generation would be.
Carson Street on the South Side is reputed to be one of the best-preserved Victorian streetscapes in America. Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield may not come quite up to that standard, but it is probably second in Pittsburgh. The commercial district was built up in the 1880s and 1890s. Like Carson Street, it preserves many Victorian commercial buildings, along with a peppering of later styles. These pictures are all of the northeast side, because the sun was behind the southwest side.
A good example of the most basic form of Pittsburgh Rundbogenstil, the German hybrid of classical and Romanesque architecture that old Pa Pitt mentions every chance he gets because he likes to say “Rundbogenstil.” In the 1800s, before it became the most Italian of our Italian neighborhoods, Bloomfield was mostly German.
A Second Empire building from the 1880s.
This building dates from the 1890s. It probably had a date and inscription in that crest at the top of the façade, but later owners obliterated the evidence.
We saw this 1924 building before at dusk; here it is in bright sunlight. The bright light gives us a chance to appreciate the decorative details with a long lens.
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.
Carson Street on the South Side is reputed to be one of the best-preserved Victorian commercial streets in North America. Mere snow cannot deter old Pa Pitt from his duty of documenting the city around him, so here is a generous album of Carson Street buildings, most of Victorian vintage, with falling snow for added picturesque effect.
Carson Street on the South Side is known as one of the best-preserved Victorian streetscapes in North America. Father Pitt loves to photograph those Victorian buildings, with their lavish yet careful attention to detail; but in a spirit of contrarian perversity, old Pa Pitt also likes to point out the post-Victorian additions to the streetscape. This building was probably put up shortly before 1910 in a very modern style for its time. The front is unusually well preserved, with big display windows wrapping around properly inset entrances.
A few of the commercial buildings on Fifth Avenue, the mainest of the main streets in Coraopolis. We begin with a curious building that reveals its secret as we move along the street: it is a Second Empire building from the late 1800s with a later commercial front added.
An interesting roofline and a bit of Art Nouveau terra-cotta decoration enliven this little storefront.
John Stewart Wassum, who designed the old Coraopolis Municipal Building, also designed this business block a couple of streets away. It has had its windows replaced, but the storefronts are well preserved. Mr. Wassum’s father was a contractor in Coraopolis, which was doubtless good for the son’s architecture business.
The borough of West Liberty included more than half of what is now Beechview and all of Brookline. West Liberty Avenue, as you might guess from its name, ran right down the middle of it. Today city planning maps make West Liberty Avenue the border between Beechview and Brookline, but it forms a distinct business corridor of its own.
The five-way intersection of West Liberty Avenue with Capital Avenue, Haddon Way, and Curranhill Avenue looked for a while as though it might become the core of a substantial neighborhood business district. Instead, West Liberty Avenue was taken over by the automobile business, becoming the second great automobile row in Pittsburgh (after Baum Boulevard). But these buildings remain as a little clot of neighborhood businesses among the car dealers.
In the picture above, the building at left with Slick’s Bar in it, which dates from about 1916, was designed by Charles Geisler, who at the time lived only a block up the hill from the construction site.1 The red bricks at the top (with an initial E bolted into them) probably indicate where there was once a green-tiled overhang, one of Geisler’s favorite ornaments.
A little farther up Capital Avenue we find this building, now home to a cupcake shop. The simple ornament picked out in blond brick is typical of the era around and after the First World War.
On the other side of West Liberty Avenue, this building from about 1928 was designed by the architects Smart & Scheuneman.2 For many years it has been home to a sewing-machine shop of the sort where they will not bat an eye if you bring them a hundred-year-old machine to work on.
This frame building, probably dating to the early 1900s, has been neglected for a long time—long enough that it still has its wood siding and trim.
Source: Construction Record, February 26, 1916, p. 4. “Architect Charles R. Geisler, 1933 Warnock street, awarded to Harry Bupp, 1093 Wingate avenue, the contract for erecting a two-story brick veneered hollow tile store and apartment building on Capital avenue for Henry Anmann, 103 Capital Avenue. Cost $6,500.” As built, No. 101 has three floors instead of two. On the “1923” layer at Pittsburgh Historic Maps. “E. Amman” [sic] appears as owner of no. 101. Warnock Street, where Mr. Geisler lived, is now Woodward. ↩︎
Source: “Bids Taken for New 19th Ward Building,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 9, 1927. “Bids have been taken for a store and apartment building at West Liberty avenue and Currant [sic] street, Nineteenth Ward, for Mrs. R. M. Ousler. Smart & Scheuneman are the architects.” “R. M. Oursler” is shown as owner of this and the older building next door on a plat map. ↩︎
Arlington Avenue is the business spine of the Arlington neighborhood, although not much business is left. Still, things are picking up, and there are more businesses now than there were a couple of years ago. The buildings on the street share certain similarities in style, but the thing a visitor will notice first is that very few of them are rectangles. Most of them are parallelograms or trapezoids. In these pictures, when you see buildings where the walls do not seem to meet at right angles, that is not because of distorted perspective from a wide-angle or telephoto lens. It is because the walls do not meet at right angles, as we see in this building, with an acute angle on the corner. Note also the cheaper red brick on the side wall, with the expensive Kittanning brick used only on the front.
Arlington Avenue is also a gourmet feast for lovers of utility cables.
The building above is the only one of the storefronts for which old Pa Pitt has an architect’s name: Edward Goldbach, who lived just down the hill from the building. It is quite possible that we will eventually find Mr. Goldbach’s name attached to several other buildings on the street: many of them share similar design principles and a similar taste for yellow Kittanning brick.
The little frame store at left is yet another skewed parallelogram.
These buildings are all skewed.
This Second Empire building was actually rectangular, but the modern storefront addition filled out the lot and made an acute angle.
These cellular masts probably make a large contribution to the economy of the Arlington Avenue business district. And here is our most artistic arrangement of utility cables yet.
This Second Empire building, on the other hand, took full advantage of the whole lot, leaving it with an obtuse angle at the corner.
These buildings are skewed in different ways, just to make sure the streetscape is never boring.
Old maps seem to show that this house was built in the 1880s. The storefront is probably a later addition put on when Brownsville Road became the main shopping street of Mount Oliver. It has been very neatly refurbished for its current tenant, a gourmet cheese shop called “The Cheese Queen.” But before its windows were replaced a few years ago, the upper floors had the kind of three-over-one windows that were popular in the 1920s, just when the commercial strip on Brownsville Road was rapidly developing. Those two observations probably date the time this typical 1800s Pittsburgh frame house was converted to a store with apartment above.