The Vilsack Row in Morningside, designed by Frederick Scheibler, is famous as one of the early experiments with modernism in residential design. Here we have another approach to more or less the same problem: how to make compact and affordable housing that is nevertheless architecturally interesting and therefore attractive to potential residents. These houses were built in 1914 at almost exactly the same time as the Vilsack Row and diagonally across the street from it, but they could hardly be more different.
The architect here was A. B. Snyder, not one of our most famous architects, but one who could be relied upon to produce an attractive design. In this row for Mrs. Josephine A. Garber, Snyder has taken an approach exactly opposite to Scheibler’s: he has created a Tudor fantasy that makes the row feel like an English village. That fantasy cost money, and these were larger and more expensive houses than the ones in the Vilsack Row. But they were still reasonably cheap. They were another successful answer to the same question.
Today we are going to take a stroll up one block of Devonshire Street; and although it will be a short stroll, it will be a long article, because almost every single house on this block is an extraordinary mansion by some distinguished architect. Old Pa Pitt regrets that he does not know which architect for most of them, but he is feeling lazy today and has decided not to spend the rest of the day researching the histories of these houses. Instead, he will simply publish these pictures, which are worth seeing both for the houses themselves and for the poetic effect of the late-autumn landscapes, and will update the article later as more information dribbles in.
Today we have the privilege of peeking into one of those fine Tudor houses in Schenley Farms, through the courtesy of the gracious owners. The architects of this one, built in 1907, were the twin Beezer Brothers, who gave us a number of fine houses and a few distinguished public buildings before moving out west to prosper even more. In Pittsburgh architectural history, they’re mentioned most often as the employers of John T. Comès when he designed the church of St. John the Baptist (now the Church Brew Works) in Lawrenceville, which shows that they had an eye for rare talent. This house shows that the brothers also had a keen eye for detail and meticulous craftsmanship.
The entry is a good introduction to the house, with its dark woodwork and art glass everywhere. Tudor Revival architecture uses dark wood extensively; in the best Tudor Revival houses, it creates a sense of shelter from the inhospitable elements outside.
If you look closely toward the top of the staircase, you may notice one of the unusual additions to this house: a stair lift that is probably ninety years old or more.
The staircase leads up to a landing with a huge window in the best Tudor Revival style. Light pours in through the window, but the much-divided glass keeps the strong sense of being inside and comfortably protected.
The escutcheons in glass suggest a family tradition of immemorial antiquity, which must be a comforting feeling if you are a former shop clerk who has just made his pile in sewer pipes or corsets.
The dining room is illuminated by windows that permit a view of the world outside (and the back yard next door), but filter it through artistic glass.
The entry is separated from the rooms behind by more glass.
The front entrance is surrounded by glass, which lights up the entry without making it oppressively bright.
The front porch is covered by a roof whose exposed timbers give it a Tudor atmosphere while once again adding to the sense of shelter.
The windows of the front entrance, like several of the other windows in the house, permit a view of the outside world through artistically arranged glass. In effect they Tudorize the great world beyond the house, making it seem more inviting and less threatening. It is almost a disappointment to walk out and find no beruffed nobles on horseback or elegant court ladies waving handkerchiefs.
What houses like this gave their residents was a sense of permanence in a world that might otherwise seem to be running away from them. Living here, you were part of the best traditions of the old world, while enjoying all the comforts modern technology could provide you. The design created spaces that were distinct and sheltering, each adapted perfectly to its purpose, but harmonized into a whole that conveys a consistent impression of comfort and prosperity. The joy of a Tudor house by the Beezer Brothers, or any of the dozens of similarly accomplished architects who were working in Pittsburgh at the same time, is not the joy of seeing old forms burst apart and wonderful new shapes burbling out of the artist’s imagination. They are not free verse by Whitman; they are sonnets by Shakespeare or Spenser or Wordsworth or Millay, in which each artist uses the traditional form, but the pleasure is in how the form brings out the distinct personality of the artist.
This school began in 1923 as Sheraden High School, then was renamed Langley. It is now an elementary and junior high school. The architects were MacClure & Spahr, whose instinct for late English Gothic made it a memorable Tudor palace.
It seems to old Pa Pitt that the whole history of the West End is epitomized in this building.
There was a Presbyterian church on this spot more than 150 years ago, marked “Un. Presb. Ch.” on an 1872 map. It was just around the corner from another kind of Presbyterian church (which is now a garage); even today Wikipedia lists more than 45 kinds of Presbyterians in the United States, and that is after a number of mergers and consolidations. In 1890 this is marked “A. F. Pres. Ch.,” and again in about 1903; but on a 1905 map it is marked “United Presbyterian Church,” and that is as much as Father Pitt can do to sort out the history of the congregation.
At about the time of the First World War, the church had a little burst of prosperity and added this fashionable Tudor front.
Later, the congregation fizzled out, and the building was heavily altered and taken over by Ceramiche Tile. Now Ceramiche is moving to the western suburbs, and this building is up for sale.
The result is a building that—like much of the rest of the West End—is hard to sort out from both an architectural and a historical point of view. But the stone-and-half-timber front is an attractive ornament to Main Street, and we hope the building will find a sympathetic new owner.
Here is a slightly bedraggled house with an interesting history. Long before there was a Beechview, the Neelds owned considerable property on that hill—68⅔ acres in 1890, according to an old map. Neelds were here at least as early as 1862. They built a house here in the late 1800s, possibly as early as the 1870s. By 1915, the Neelds had sold off much of the property to the Beechwood Improvement Company (which had planned on calling the neighborhood Beechwood, but things happen), but they still kept the whole block bounded by Broadway, Neeld Avenue, Candace Street, and Shiras Avenue. In that year, C. W. Neeld commissioned William Snaman, a prolific architect of houses for the wealthy merchant classes, to remodel his house, and Snaman Tudorized it so effectively that we would hardly guess it had been older than 1915.
The orientation of that chimney on the left is a clue to the history of the house: it suggests that Snaman reoriented it, and the front was originally on the left side. We note that the address was given as “Candace avenue” in 1915, before Snaman got to work, whereas the front of the house now faces Neeld Avenue.
Neeld Avenue, by the way, is a good example of how confusing Beechview street names can be. It was Neeld Avenue in 1910. By 1923, it had become Narragansett Street. Today it is Neeld Avenue, though Father Pitt does not know exactly when the name reverted.
After the Second World War, the Neelds sold off most of the land in the block, retaining only enough for the house and garage. Ranch houses went up on Candace Street, and modernist apartment buildings went up on Broadway.
Earlier we looked at the buildings on the south side of Hobart Street in this block and discovered that Spanish Mission and Tudor were the same thing, barring a few tweaks of the ornamentation. The buildings on the north side of the same block are at about the same scale, but they are a more eclectic bunch. Sometimes the individual building is about as eclectic as it can be.
Above, for example, you see one in a style old Pa Pitt calls German Jacobethan Spanish Mission.
This one, on the other hand, is so thoroughly Spanish Mission that residents ought to be required to wear Franciscan tunics.
The one above is quite eclectic, but it harmonizes its influences seamlessly.
This modernized Tudor conveys its architectural message with textured and patterned brickwork as well as the usual half-timbering.
Who knew? It turns out that Tudor can be Spanish Mission and vice-versa, as long as you add the right decorative touches, and of course the right names. This row of five apartment buildings on Hobart Street, Squirrel Hill, alternates Tudor and Spanish Mission, as you could guess even without seeing them just by the names of the buildings: Cambridge, Granada, Windsor, Armada, and Wemberley. Yet they are all more or less the same building. Only the decorative details change. Tudor buildings have peaked rooflines; Spanish Mission buildings have curvy rooflines and little tiled awnings. Knowing how to make the same building Tudor or Spanish Mission is a great time-saver for an architect.
Shadyside is full of little townhouse communities that close themselves off from the rest of the world, either by facing an impossibly narrow dead-end private street, or, as here, by having no street at all and devoting the space between the rows to garden. There are a few other such plans here and there in the city, but only in Shadyside did they become a typical form of development. This one is meant to look as much like an English country village as a townhouse plan can look when you cram it into a narrow space one city block long. Old Pa Pitt was not able to determine the architects, and neither were other researchers he stumbled across. But Father Pitt is not the only one to point out how much this plan resembles a miniature Chatham Villlage.
