Old Pa Pitt is not sure whether the woodwork on this South Side rowhouse is original or the work of a more recent craftsman. Either way, it is charmingly folksy, and the polychrome color scheme is well chosen to bring out the details.
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Charming Woodwork on the South Side
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Two Parlor Windows from the South Side
In a Victorian rowhouse, the parlor window—the ground-floor window facing the street—was an opportunity for the homeowners to display their taste and, even more important, their ability to pay skilled craftsmen to decorate their houses with woodwork and stained or leaded glass. Above, even the masonry is incised with decorative patterns.
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Victorian Storefront on Carson Street
This was the home of a prosperous shopkeeper in East Birmingham, one who had two full floors of living quarters above the shop, with the addition of a couple of comfortable attic rooms. The ground floor has been altered somewhat, but only in the incidentals; on the whole, the building is in a splendid state of preservation.
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Appreciating the Details of a Second Empire Building
The Second Empire style, with its dormered mansard roofs, was very popular in Pittsburgh—so much so that we walk by most examples without noticing them. Here’s a quite ordinary building in the back streets of the South Side, but it rewards a closer look at some of the details. Above, one of the lintels over the windows, which all have simple but effective carved decorations.
This roof has so far kept its original shingles, decoratively varied with four rows of a different shape across the middle.
One of the windows on the ground floor. Notice that its lintel decoration is different from the one above.
These star bolts are decorative, too—but they’re not mere decorations. Star bolts like these, which you see in old houses all over the city, are the decorative ends of long bolts that literally hold the building together. They are often installed to stabilize a wall that has begun to sag.
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Bracket
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Row of Windows, Carson Street
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Brackets
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Carved Brackets on Carson Street
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Finial
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Victorian Storefronts on Carson Street
A pair of storefronts in a commercial building between 15th and 16th Streets. The decorations are very well preserved—enlarge the picture to see how the ornaments in the carved cornice match the keystones in the flattened arches. Notice also the recessed entrances. Old Pa Pitt is still astonished that we have forgotten the reason for those. The reason is that, if the entrance were flush with the sidewalk, someone leaving the store could swing the door out into a passing pedestrian’s face. This happens more often than we realize in modern storefronts, or old ones that have been modernized, and apparently the reaction each time is “Who could have seen that coming?”—to which the answer is “Any Victorian architect.”
Note the distinctive beehive ornament in the middle of the building that serves as the date stone.
