William Arthur Thomas designed this First-World-War-era duplex,1 which is typical of the better class of Pittsburgh duplexes: it offers two spacious apartments (plus attic and basement), each with more square footage than many city houses. Thomas was very fond of white Kittanning brick, to judge by the number of his buildings that made use of it.
This striking building, which dates from about 1906, was designed by W. A. (for William Arthur) Thomas, a prolific architect and developer who is almost forgotten today. It’s time for a Thomas revival, Father Pitt thinks, because wherever he went, Thomas left the city more beautiful and more interesting.
The most attention-getting part of this building is the tower of half-round balconies in the front, and here the design is amazingly eclectic. Corinthian capitals on the pilasters and abstract cubical capitals on the columns—and then, on the third floor, tapered Craftsman-style pillars. But we don’t see a disordered mess. It all fits together in one composition.
Now, it’s possible that the interesting mixture of styles was the product of later revisions. But we are inclined to attribute an experimental spirit to Mr. Thomas. At the other end of the block…
This building is so similar that we are certainly justified in attributing it to Thomas as well unless strong evidence to the contrary comes in. But it is not identical. Here the columns go all the way up, and they terminate in striking Art Nouveau interpretations of classical capitals.
Volutes and acanthus leaves are standard decorations for classical capitals, but the proportions and the arrangement are original.
A fourth floor of cheaper modern materials has been added, but the addition was deliberately arranged to be unobtrusive, or indeed almost invisible from the street. Most passers-by will never even notice it.
William Arthur Thomas, who was very active in the Hill District, was the architect of this building, which is famous in jazz lore as the location of the second Crawford Grill.
The Crawford Grill lingered on into our current century, the last and most famous of the Wylie Avenue jazz clubs. (Father Pitt took the picture above in 2000.) It was in some ways a victim of its own success: it moved to the Freighthouse Shops at Station Square just when shopping arcades in general were beginning to decline, and closed there after a few years.
Today the building has been stabilized (though the fine Queen Anne house next to it could not be saved), and there is some hope that it can be an asset to the community again. We may yet hear the wail of a saxophone coming through that front door.
