Father Pitt

Tag: Tudor Architecture

  • The Tudor Style in Schenley Farms

    Tudor house in Schenley Farms

    The Tudor style was very popular for large houses in Pittsburgh in the early twentieth century, and in Schenley Farms, that exceptional enclave of exceptionally fine houses in the Oakland medical-intellectual district, it is the single most popular style. The hallmark of the style is half-timbering: exposed wooden beams with stucco (or some such material) between them. Here is a random selection of Tudor houses; we’ll see more of them shortly, since, with the leaves gone for the winter, now is the time to get pictures of the houses behind the trees.

    Another Tudor house, this one with light brick
    This one has quite a bit of half-timbering
    Tudor house on a hill
    Postwar Tudor

    This last house is an interesting example of the survival of the style into the middle twentieth century: it is later than most of its neighbors, and probably dates from the 1930s at the earliest, but it adapts the Tudor style to a lower budget and more modest size.

  • St. Luke’s English Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lafayette Hilltop

    St. Luke’s Evangelical English Lutheran Church

    This fine building, put up in 1912, is well preserved but unused, and we hope it can be kept in good shape. It sits in the Perry Hilltop part of Lafayette Hilltop—“Perry South” on city planning maps. It was designed by Chancey or Chauncey W. Hodgdon (we have found the name spelled both ways), in an interesting combination of styles—round arches for the smaller windows, broad Gothic arches for the large windows, and a Tudor Gothic arcade in the front; except that the arches are more rounded than usual Tudor arches. Perhaps an architectural historian can nail down the style precisely, or perhaps it is simply unique to Hodgdon.

    Arcade
    Front
    Date stone

    The Allegheny City Society has a substantial article about this church in the spring 2017 issue of the society newsletter (PDF).

    With a utility pole

  • Allegheny City Electric Station

    Allegheny City Electric Station

    In 1889 the whole idea of a power station was new. What should it look like? Obviously it should be elegantly proportioned, because we don’t want to give the neighbors any more reason than they already have to object to the death rays we’ll be generating in there. Thus this fine example of Victorian industrial architecture, which old Pa Pitt believes was Allegheny’s first power station, and which still stands with not too many alterations just off Brighton Road on what is now for some reason called Riversea Road, though it has previously been Braddock Street and then Brocket Street.

    Date Stone

    Once there was an elegantly arched entrance, which has been replaced by a wider commercial garage door. The date is still prominent in the keystone of the arch.

    A few years later, a new building was added in quite a different style:

    Irwin Avenue substation

    This one still belongs to Duquesne Light and is still called the Irwin Avenue Substation, in spite of the fact that Irwin Avenue has been Brighton Road for many years now. The style is impossible to pin down: the tall rounded arches and flared buttresses make us think of a Norman castle, and the pointed Tudor arch in the middle makes us think of a Norman castle that had passed into the hands of an Elizabethan landowner who placed more value on being able to drive a showy carriage through his gate than being able to defend his castle.

  • Grace Lutheran Church, Brookline

    Grace Lutheran Church

    Since 1959 this has been Pittsburgh Baptist Church, our first Southern Baptist congregation. But it was built in 1908 as a Missouri Synod Lutheran church, Grace Lutheran. It is perhaps Brookline’s most striking church, built in a unique variant of the Arts-and-Crafts Tudor Gothic style that was popular then. The massing of the forms is particularly pleasing.

    Pittsburgh Baptist Church
    Grace Lutheran, originally

    Addendum: The architect was John A. Long, as we discover in the Construction Record, September 16, 1911: “Martsolf Brothers, House building, have secured contract for the erection of a two-story cement stucco church and parsonage, on Pioneer avenue, Brookline, for the Grace Evangelical Lutheran Congregation. Architect John A. Long, Machesney building, prepared the plans.”

  • Brookline Boulevard United Presbyterian Church

    Brookline Boulevard United Presbyterian Church

    The main part of this church building, which now belongs to the Tree of Life Open Bible Church, opened in 1924. The style is a kind of utilitarian Perpendicular, with attractive stone textures and buttresses and a couple of broad pointed Tudor arches characteristic of the English Perpendicular style; but the side windows are plain rectangles.

    This and later additions largely conceal an older chapel built in 1913, which became the rear of the new church. The Christian Education wing along the Brookline Boulevard side was built in 1953 in a more elaborate (and earlier) Gothic style that harmonizes well with the main building. Clearly the church was feeling rich in the early 1950s, when many other churches were abandoning Gothic altogether and building modernist warehouses.

    The Presbyterians sold this church to the Tree of Life congregation in 2016, but rented space in it for two more years until giving up in 2018.

    Front
    Lower side
    From across intersection
    Brookline Boulevard side

  • Presbyterian Church of Mount Washington

    Presbyterian Church of Mount Washington

    Now the Vintage Church. This church on Bailey Avenue is a fine example of what happens when streamlined Art Deco meets Tudor Gothic.

    Peak
    Entrance
    Vintage Church

    Addendum: The church was built in 1927 or shortly after; the architect was George M. Rowland. Source: The Charette, July, 1927: 310. “Architect: Geo. M. Rowland, Bakewell Building. Title: Mt. Washington U. P. Church and Parsonage. Location: Bailey Avenue. List of Bidders: Golden & Crick; Lash & Bailey; Edw. Wehr; Ross K. Sefton; Rose & Fisher; J. F. Haldeman; A. & S. Wilson Company. Bids close June 22. Brick and stone trimming; wood construction interior; steel stairs. Plumbing, Heating and Electric reserved, also equipment, leaded glass, hardware and landscape.”

  • The Liberty Elementary School, Shadyside

    A school built in 1911 in the fashionable Tudor Gothic style. The elegant lettering of the inscription is worthy of imitation.

  • The Tudor Style in Schenley Farms

    Tudor house

    Schenley Farms is that quiet little enclave of grand houses in the Oakland university district. It is a museum of styles that were popular in the early twentieth century, and one of the most popular for grand houses was the Tudor style. Half-timbering (ostentatious beams with stucco between them), steep-pitched roofs, bays, and oriels (overhanging bays) are frequent marks of the style. Here’s a little gallery of Tudor houses from a short walk in the neighborhood.

    Another Tudor house

  • Apartment Building on Negley Avenue, Shadyside

    Apartment building on Negley Avenue

    A small apartment building in a vernacular Tudor style; its battlemented bay sets it apart from other apartment buildings in the neighborhood.

    Apartment building

    Addendum: This building, to judge by old maps, appears to have been a large-scale expansion of a single-family house, which was swallowed up in the new construction. Thanks to a commenter, we tentatively identify the apartment building as a design by Henry M. Kropff, built in 1912.

  • Beechwood School, Beechview

    In an out-of-the-way corner of Beechview is this particularly fine school by Press Dowler. The original part of the school was built in 1908 in the borough of West Liberty, because the line between the boroughs of Beechview and West Liberty ran right across the street grid of the developed section of Beechview. “Beechwood” was the name of the original community that became the borough of Beechview, and the company that developed the land on both sides of the border was the Beechwood Improvement Co. In 1909 the two boroughs were both annexed by Pittsburgh, and by 1922 the school was bursting at the seams. Press C. Dowler was hired to design an expansion that more than tripled the size of the school, and he came through with a magnificently ornamented building in the Tudor Gothic style that was all the rage for schools in the 1920s. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural merit.

    The name and date inscribed over one of the entrances.

    The south section is the original 1908 school, but Mr. Dowler completely rebuilt the façade to match his plan for the expanded school, so that today the whole building appears to have been put up at once.

    Mr. Dowler did not stint on terra-cotta decoration.

    The lamp of learning.

    These urns flank the entrances; old Pa Pitt suspects they were designed by the architect himself.

    As a bonus for his loyal readers, old Pa Pitt includes a typically Pittsburghish cacophony of utility cables.