Father Pitt

Tag: Tudor Architecture

  • Some Houses on Tennyson Avenue, Schenley Farms

    203 Tennyson Avenue

    More Schenley Farms houses in the snow (many with bonus icicles), beginning with this 1909 house, designed by Vrydaugh & Wolfe.

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    We have not yet found an architect for this lavish Tudor house, built in 1906.

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    210

    Another one whose architect we don’t know yet, also built in 1906.

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    A free interpretation of Colonial by Alden & Harlow, built in 1921.

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    Designed by Louis Stevens and built in 1911.

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    Designed by Benno Janssen and built in 1912.

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    Designed by Simpson & Schmeltz and built in 1909.

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    219

    Designed by Rutan & Russell and built in 1909.

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    Designed by C. E. Mueller and built in 1908.

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    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    Designed by Simpson & Isles and built in 1914.

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  • G. P. Rhodes House, Squirrel Hill

    G. P. Rhodes house

    G. P. Rhodes, who appears to have been a banker from the references we find to him in old newspapers, was the owner of this Tudor mansion on Wilkins Avenue. The roof has been replaced with asphalt shingles meant to look like tiles, but otherwise the details are very well preserved.

    Woodwork over the entrance
    Upstairs windows
    Stable

    This garage was probably built as a stable, where Mr. Rhodes’ horses lived better than may of their human neighbors.

    G. P. Rhodes house
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Fairy-Tale Apartment Building in Mount Lebanon

    189 Castle Shannon Boulevard, Mount Lebanon

    Somehow the line for the Mount Lebanon Historic District was drawn just to the left side of this building, leaving it unhistorical, though taking in a much more pedestrian postwar apartment building across the street. Fortunately, historic district or no historic district, most of the details have been preserved, although the original windows would have added a layer of artistry that their simpler modern replacements lack.

    Upstairs window

    The art glass in the stairwell has been preserved.

    Entrance
    Front door

    The front door is a work of art in itself. Enlarge the picture and admire the door pull.

    Entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Some Houses on Fair Oaks Street, Squirrel Hill

    5441 Fair Oaks Street

    Murdoch Farms is the plan in Squirrel Hill famous for millionaires’ mansions, but this is the middle-class corner of it. The houses here were also designed by some of our prominent architects, but on a more modest scale. We haven’t identified most of them yet, but we’ll point out the architects we know.

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    Since we have about two dozen more pictures to show you, we’ll put the rest behind this link to keep from weighing down the front page.

  • Walter R. Fleming House, Brookline

    Broker’s Home in South Hills. Walter R. Fleming now occupies his new home in Pioneer avenue, Nineteenth ward, the house being of brick veneer construction and is a type of a California home. It contains 13 rooms, all finished in hardwood. The dining and living rooms are beamed and panelled. Bookcases, tables, china closets, buffet and seats are all built in. The bedrooms are spacious, and there is a sleeping porch.
    Pittsburgh Gazette Times, March 30, 1913.
    2737 Pioneer Avenue

    Walter R. Fleming, a real-estate developer, built himself one of the finest houses in Brookline in 1913. It still stands today, and it’s still a handsome house in spite of multiple alterations, which form a sort of manual of things that can happen to a Pittsburgh house over the course of a century: porches can be filled in, windows can be replaced with different sizes; half-timbered stucco can be covered with aluminum or vinyl; chimneys can be shortened.

    Fleming house
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • English Terrace, Squirrel Hill

    English Terrace

    These two identical fantasy-Tudor apartment buildings at the corner of Morrowfield and Shady Avenues were built in 1929. Father Pitt does not know the architect, but they are very similar to apartment buildings built at the same time in Mount Lebanon and associated with Charles Geisler. Since Geisler worked on other buildings in Squirrel Hill, he is a likely candidate.

    5851 English Terrace
    Advertisement from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 18, 1929.
    Entrance to English Terrace
    English Terrace
    English Terrace

    We have the technology to take those utility cables out of the picture, but in this case not the patience.

    English Terrace
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • A Few Houses on Gladys Avenue, Beechview

    1114 Gladys Avenue

    Gladys Avenue was one of the richest streets in the middle-class neighborhood of Beechview. We’ve already seen a bungalow designed by the notable Pittsburgh architect W. Ward Williams. Here are a few more houses nearby, beginning with another designed by Williams, this one a generously sized Tudor—or English-style, as it would have been called in 1914, when it was built.

    1114 Gladys Avenue
    1132 Gladys Avenue

    They’re nearly obscured by shrubbery, but note the very interesting sloped porch supports of this house that echo the curving slope of the roof.

    1108 Gladys Avenue

    A generously extra-large foursquare. Have you noticed that these first three houses all have unusual diamond panes in the upper sashes of some of their windows? Those were also a feature of the bungalow designed by W. Ward Williams on the same street, making us wonder whether Williams was responsible for all these houses.

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    Father Pitt had a nice conversation with the owner of this house, who tells us that it was built in about 1919. If you peer into the shadows behind the flag in the picture above, you may notice an exceptionally fine art-glass window in the parlor.

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    1106
    Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • Bayard Manor, Oakland

    Bayard Manor entrance

    The Bayard Street face of Bayard Manor. Yes, that odd little half-timbered projection on the roof really is skewed in relation to this side of the building. That is because Craig Street and Bayard Street do not meet at exactly a right angle; the roof projection (it probably holds elevator mechanics) is oriented at right angles to every side of the building except the Bayard Street front.

    Bayard Manor
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    More pictures of the Bayard Street front of Bayard Manor, the main entrance, and the Craig Street side.

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  • Some Houses on Heberton Street, Highland Park

    1311 Heberton Street

    Some houses on Heberton Street in a variety of styles, from Shingle Style to Pennsylvania Farmhouse Revival.

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    1303
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    1217
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    1132
    Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Tudor Manse by Henry Gilchrist in Highland Park

    5916 Callowhill Street

    Henry Gilchrist designed many fashionable mansions for the rich and the upper middle classes. This 1904 Tudor house on Callowhill Street is typical of the “English style” of the time, but the details of the half-timbering are unusually rich. The house is very similar, but not identical, to one Gilchrist designed two years later in Schenley Farms. In this house, though, the small-paned Tudor windows have been preserved, and they add to the picturesque old-English effect.1

    5916 Callowhill Street
    HDR picture of 5916 Callowhill Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    This HDR picture of the house, made up of three different exposures, looks a bit artificial but brings out the details in the woodwork.

    1. Source for the attribution: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, August 31, 1904, p. 563. “Mr. E. E. Arensburg will erect a dwelling on Callowhill street, from plans prepared by Architect H. D. Gilchrist, Frick Building.” Confirmed by a 1923 plat map, where the house belongs to “M. Arnesburg” (note spelling). ↩︎
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