Father Pitt

Tag: Terraces

  • Double Houses on Shady Drive, Mount Lebanon

    700 Block of Shady Drive East

    A long stretch of Shady Drive is lined on the southwest side with two rows of double houses, identical except that one row is built of sand-colored brick and the other of sooty dark red brick. Individually the buildings are attractive examples of the typical small Pittsburgh terrace with Mission-style details; as a whole row, they add up to something more impressive. Light snow was falling when we took these pictures a few days ago.

    738 and 736
    700 block
    700 block in dark brick
    774 and 772
    742 and 740

    Some of the houses have had their front yards scooped out to make driveways, and a few have added garages in the basement.

    746 and 744

    We may take it as admitted that the overhangs that decorate the upstairs windows have no practical use at all, since in half the buildings they hang over the bedroom windows and in the other half those are left naked, with an overhang over the small windows that probably look out from the bathrooms. The decorative crests similarly alternate.

    700

    The alternating placement of the overhangs and the crests of the buildings actually creates a more regular rhythm in the row, taking into account the spaces between the buildings.

    Sand-colored row
    Dark red row
    Sand-colored row
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • Terrace by Janssen & Abbott on McKee Place, Oakland

    368–378 McKee Place

    This striking design was by Janssen & Abbott, and it shows Benno Janssen developing that economy of line old Pa Pitt associates with his best work, in which there are exactly the right number of details to create the effect he wants and no more. The row was built in about 1913.1 The resemblance to another row on King Avenue in Highland Park is so strong that old Pa Pitt attributes that row to Janssen & Abbott as well.

    Terrace on King Avenue, Highland Park
    The terrace on King Avenue, Highland Park. In some secondary sources, this one is misattributed to Frederick Scheibler, but Scheibler’s biographer Martin Aurand found no evidence linking him to this terrace.
    Row of houses by Janssen & Abbott

    These houses are not quite as well kept as the ones in Highland Park. They have been turned into duplexes and seem to have fallen under separate ownership, resulting in—among other alterations—the tiniest aluminum awnings old Pa Pitt has ever seen up there on the attic dormers of two of the houses.

    Two of the houses

    Nevertheless, the design still overwhelms the miscellaneous alterations and makes this one of the most interesting terraces in Oakland.

    Brick gatepost with number 378 and a half
    Two end houses
    Terrace
    Perspective view down the row
    Terrace on McKee Place
    Perspective view from the other direction
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • The Rainbow Terrace on Dawson Street, Oakland

    Colorfully painted rowhouses

    Within their low-budget limits, these little houses are of an attractive design, and they are very well kept up. The odd-shaped lot also means that they are staggered in a visually interesting way. But, still, they would be just seven among thousands of Pittsburgh rowhouses if they had not been painted in this striking way that lights up the whole block.

    Rainbow houses
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Addendum: The architect was probably Frederick Sauer, who seems to have done all the architectural work for John Dimling, the developer who owned this row. See also the Harry, George, Matilda, Laura, Hilda, and Herbert apartments.

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  • Terrace on King Avenue in Highland Park

    1147–1155 King Avenue

    The late Franklin Toker believed that these houses were probably designed by Frederick Scheibler. He was following the original scholars of Frederick Scheibler, Shear and Schmertz, who brought poor old Scheibler out of obscurity in his old age in time to see himself hailed as a prophet of modern architecture.

    Father Pitt hates to contradict Dr. Toker, whose encyclopedic knowledge of Pittsburgh architecture was probably unmatched; but Toker has been wrong before. Martin Aurand, whose biography of Scheibler will probably remain the definitive one for generations to come, lists these houses under the “misattributions.”

    Old Pa Pitt himself is of the Aurand opinion, and in fact Father Pitt has probable grounds for attributing these houses—without, however, claiming complete certainty—to Benno Janssen. His reason is that there is a very similar terrace in Oakland (368–376 McKee Place) that is almost certainly by Janssen & Abbott. It would be odd if one of these terraces were by Janssen & Abbott and the other by Scheibler.

    1147–1155 King Avenue
    1153 and 1155 King Avenue
    1149 King Avenue

    These houses are yet another clever answer to the question of how to design a terrace of relatively inexpensive houses so that they are architecturally attractive and distinctive—so that, in other words, they make potential tenants think they’re getting something special. Compare them, for example, to the row just next door to the left, which was built on a lower budget to a much more ordinary design.

    1123–1145 King Avenue
    Terrace on King Avenue

    Which design makes you feel special?

    1147–1155 King Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Pair of Double Houses in Beechview

    1813–1819 Crosby Avenue

    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.

    Double house
    Double house
    Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • Meado’cots, Homewood

    Meado’cots

    Designed by our remarkable early modernist Frederick Scheibler, “Meado’cots” is an unusual set of terrace houses built in 1914—another Scheibler answer to the question of how to make cheap rows of houses architecturally attractive. It sat abandoned and boarded up for quite a while, but now it is inhabited and stable. The metal roofs on the central section and the cheap standard doors are not to old Pa Pitt’s taste, but they were within the budget of the new owner, and they keep the buildings standing and in good shape, with the potential for restoration with original materials later.

    Composite of the central section

    This composite of the central section from above parked-car level is made possible by a kind neighbor from across the street. He saw us struggling to hold the camera up at arm’s length and called down from a third-floor window to offer the use of his stairs for a better angle. Thank you, Homewood neighbor, for confirming Father Pitt’s impression that Homewood is a place where the neighborly virtues are strong.

    Meado’cots, end house
    Corner window

    Note the corner windows. They would become a badge of modernism in the 1940s, but here they are in 1912!

    Meado’cots
    Meado’cots
    Meado’cots

  • Moderne Terrace in West Park

    610–614 Woodward Avenue

    We have seen many answers to the question of how to make a cheap row of small houses attractive. This streamlined terrace is certainly one of the more interesting answers. It would have been even more striking with the original windows and doors and without the aluminum awnings.

    Geometric patterns in the bricks
    Porch and doors
    Moderne terrace
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.