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.
Ingham & Boyd were the architects of this very respectable French cottage overlooking Wilkins Avenue from a little service road.1 It was built for W. A. Steinmeyer, vice-president of the Allemannia Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh. The placement of the entrance at the left instead of in the center is uncharacteristic of the architects, and we can only assume that some desirable interior arrangement made it worth departing from their usual rule of exact symmetry.
These two long rows of houses where Beeler Street meets Wilkins Avenue make a striking impression now, but they must have been more striking when they were built in the early 1900s. For several years they sat out in the farmlands of Squirrel Hill, forming a strange urban island (along with two rows of three houses across Beeler Street) in the midst of the otherwise rural East End. We caught them on a dim and rainy evening.
Note how the rhythm of the houses is made more interestingly varied by alternating the peaked and rounded fronts but running the oriels in a series of three.
