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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Front Door on South 20th Street
A front door with interesting woodwork and curious layers of history: note, for example, the three rows of asphalt shingles above it, which were doubtless somebody’s solution to a water-related problem.
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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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Carved Brackets on Carson Street
This doorway could use some fresh paint and a little wood repair, but it would certainly be worth preserving the Victorian carved ornaments.
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Second Empire Storefront on Carson Street
The cornice and dormers are fine specimens of Victorian woodwork.
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Carved Brackets
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Vintage Doorway, Vintage Camera
A beautifully proportioned entrance on North Avenue in the Mexican War Streets. If the picture looks like something from the 1930s, it isn’t. But the camera is. It’s an old Agfa Isolette, using Croatian film whose formula hasn’t changed since this camera was new.
