Hampton Hall is a grand Tudor apartment palace in Oakland designed by the Chicago architect H. G. Hodgkins.
A while ago one of the residents mentioned to old Pa Pitt that the long canopy that usually leads from the courtyard entrance to the street had come down for work, which—our correspondent pointed out—would make some of the previously hidden details accessible to a camera. Here, from about two and a half years ago, is how the canopy usually looks:
And here is the courtyard without the canopy:
Father Pitt ended up spending an hour or more taking pictures all over the building, and since he has so many pictures, he will split them into multiple articles to avoid wearying his visitors. Today we see the courtyard and the main entrance.
The First German Evangelical Lutheran Church was founded in 1837, and it was downtown, or on the edge of downtown, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, until the commercial development of downtown Pittsburgh had scattered the congregation and made the land too valuable to keep. We can see from this building that the congregation had money to spend when the church moved to the East End. The architects were the Cleveland firm of Corbusier, Lenski & Foster (not that Le Corbusier, we should point out), who were much in demand as church designers, though this is the only one of their designs old Pa Pitt has found in Pittsburgh so far. By the time this church opened in 1928, the congregation was bilingual, with services in German and in English; so the new church was called Trinity Church.
Not hidden under a bushel.
The parsonage was designed by the same architects and built at the same time as the church.
Peabody & Stearns were a Boston firm that kept a branch office in Pittsburgh to handle the many jobs they picked up in this city. They were responsible for rebuilding the Horne’s department store, and they designed the Liberty Market, later Motor Square Garden. But they also had a thriving business in Tudor mansions for the well-to-do in Pittsburgh’s East End. This one was built in 1902.
This picture from The Brickbuilder shows the house newly built. We can see that, except for filling in the side porch, very little has been done to change the house. Even the original diamond-paned upper sashes, or identical replacements, are still in the windows, and the windows in the sunroom that was made from the porch were matched to the rest of the windows in the house.
The gables were treated in a dark color scheme; the pastel blue of the current paint, along with the lacy wood trim, gives them a more feminine look than they would have had originally.
Linden Avenue in Point Breeze filled up fairly slowly from the 1880s on, and it has always been a desirable neighborhood, so it is a museum of good domestic architecture from many different eras. The wide variety of houses makes it a very pleasant street for an afternoon stroll. We have already seen the Frank Alden house and the Joseph Langfitt mansion; here are some more Linden Avenue houses from the 1880s to the 1930s.
In 1924, the Vatican made a separate exarchate, or mission diocese, for Ruthenian Catholics in the United States. Rome imagined it as based in New York, but there were few Ruthenians in New York. The largest concentration of them was in Pittsburgh, and the congregation of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Munhall (which you see in the background here) offered land and resources to the new bishop, Basil Takach (also spelled Wassil Takacs), which he accepted. So St. John the Baptist became a cathedral—thus making the extravagantly eccentric Titus de Bobula a cathedral architect retroactively, giving him one more thing to boast about when circumstances required him to boast.
More to the point, it meant that Munhall suddenly had a bishop, who had to be stored somewhere, and an entire diocesan administration. Adam Wickerham of Homestead, whose office was a short walk from here, was hired to design this eminently respectable-looking palace, which he did in a very Western style.1 The gables originally had Tudor half-timbering, which has been covered over with siding; but otherwise the building has not changed much from Wickerham’s original design.
The exarchate of Pittsburgh became an eparchy in 1963 and an archeparchy in 1969, so that the Byzantine Rite Archeparch (or Archbishop) of Pittsburgh outranks the Latin Rite Bishop of Pittsburgh.
There are many bishops in Pittsburgh from many different rites and denominations, but this may be the only purpose-built bishop’s palace in the area.
American Contractor, December 20, 1924, p. 48. “Munhall, Pa.—Res.: 2 sty. & bas. 42×65. Brk. & stone. 10th & Dickson sts., Munhall. Archt. A. G. Wickersham [sic], 135 E. 6th st., Homestead, Pa. Owner St. John’s Greek Catholic Congr., Rt. Rev. Wassil Takacs, Homestead. Drawing plans.” For date: “Many Visitors to Attend Greek Church Dedication,” Pittsburgh Press, July 4, 1926, p. 56, where a rendering is printed. ↩︎
Frank Alden of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow (later just Alden & Harlow, after the partners agreed to divide up the business) designed this house for himself; it was built in 1890, when most of Linden Avenue was vacant. As we might expect, he lavished attention on the details. It surprised old Pa Pitt to discover that there were no pictures of the house in Wikimedia Commons. That lacuna has now been filled.
The architects of this striking Tudor mansion on Judges’ Row (as this stretch of fine houses facing Riverview Park is still called in the neighborhood) were Allison & Allison, who also designed the Watson Memorial Presbyterian Church up the street. The Gazette for September 5, 1905, printed an illustration of the house with this description:
One of the most attractive houses started in Allegheny this summer is the residence of David Roney in Perrysville Avenue, which was designed by Architects Allison & Allison. The house is a good model of the English style of architecture, having the first story of gray brick and the second of plaster with half timber construction. A large brick porch adds considerably to the outward appearance. The residence will cost about $20,000.
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.
This garage was probably built as a stable, where Mr. Rhodes’ horses lived better than may of their human neighbors.
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.
The art glass in the stairwell has been preserved.
The front door is a work of art in itself. Enlarge the picture and admire the door pull.
