On an otherwise commercialized section of Centre Avenue, this little U-shaped terrace of rowhouses is almost invisible. As in Dover Gables, the fronts are arranged around a vehicle-free garden court.
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Centre Villa Court, Friendship
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Courtyard Garden of Dover Gables, Shadyside
The thick and high evergreens leave just enough gap to make the entrance to an enchanted world. So it seems from the street, and the garden beyond the mystic gate does not disappoint us.
Dover Gables is still a bit of a mystery to old Pa Pitt; no one seems to have pinned down the architect. The combination of simple Tudor-style rows of houses with lush landscaping crams the greatest load of picturesqueness possible into a tiny patch of land.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. We have more pictures of Dover Gables from three years ago.
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Meado’cots, Brushton
We last saw Meado’cots, the unique terrace designed by Frederick Scheibler and built in 1914, about a year and a half ago. Here it is again, with no other excuse than that we happened to be in the neighborhood when the sun was shining on the front.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Rowhouses by Frederick Scheibler, Homewood
These houses were built in 1910, and nothing like their brisk modernity had been seen in Pittsburgh. Frederick Scheibler was our most adventurous modernist in those days, and these would have been approved by the Bauhaus ten or twenty years later.
The two houses on the upper end of the upper row have been kept in near-original condition, though they are in less than perfect shape.
In the rest of the row, different ownerships have sent the houses careening off in various directions.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. Like many architects of terraces like these, Scheibler repeated this design in multiple locations. Apparently both Scheibler and his clients considered the design a success. We’ll be seeing more of these little houses.
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Double Houses on Shady Drive, Mount Lebanon
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.
Some of the houses have had their front yards scooped out to make driveways, and a few have added garages in the basement.
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.
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.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Not Frederick Scheibler
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?
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:
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.
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.
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.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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Rafferty Rows, Squirrel Hill
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.
Olympus E-20N.
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Terrace of Three Houses on Friendship Park, Bloomfield
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.
Olympus E-20N.
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Terrace by Janssen & Abbott on McKee Place, Oakland
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.
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. 
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.
Nevertheless, the design still overwhelms the miscellaneous alterations and makes this one of the most interesting terraces in Oakland.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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The Rainbow Terrace on Dawson Street, Oakland
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.
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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