Landmark Architecture of Allegheny County Pennsylvania:
A Recollection, Reflection, and Review

This article was written by James Wudarczyk. It first appeared on the website on May 1, 2006.

I was probably in my sophomore year of high school in 1967 when I first stumbled across Landmark Architecture of Allegheny County Pennsylvania by James D. Van Trump and Arthur Ziegler, Jr. Although I did not have any concept of the difference between Gothic and Greek Revival architecture, the book with its detailed photography and reference to the numerous landmarks that I frequently passed had an immediate and profound effect on me. In my own neighborhood of Lawrenceville, the authors documented structures that people frequently took for granted. Pointing out structures that were architecturally significant was nothing short of a radical eye-opener.

In the introduction to the book, Ziegler thought that earlier works by Charles Morse Stotz were shortsighted since they stopped at 1860. Ziegler felt that while Stotz’s work was exceptionally important, it was too selective and not broad enough in scope to encompass other equally important works of architecture.

Van Trump was eloquent in his prose when he wrote, “The past is part of the life of the land and we are interested only in preservation for life’s sake. The human heart desires, as well as the back of the hand, the past which is, the anchor of man’s dreams and his rememberings.”

The authors discuss the various styles of architecture and the factors that influenced their development. They also noted the architects, Benjamin Latrobe and John Chislett, both of whom exerted a tremendous influence on the classicism of their day. Of the Greek Revival, they wrote:

A herald of the Greek Revival appeared in Pittsburgh from 1813 to 1815 in the person of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), who was the first really professional architect to practice in America. Latrobe was an engineer as well, and the primary reason for his Pittsburgh sojourn was that of developing steam navigation on the rivers. While he was here he did make drawings dated 1814 for the Allegheny Arsenal in Lawrenceville. The severe Classicality of these designs, which were not strictly adhered to in construction, perhaps set the tone for much subsequent Classical work in the Pittsburgh area.

Pittsburgh particularly was a city where the new Greek manner flourished, and this stark and somber Classicism figured forth very appropriately the youthful prosperity and rising importance of the metropolis at the river gateway.

Of the Grecian orders, Pittsburgh, in consonance with its general masculinity of tone, preferred the Doric and the Ionic. John Chislett (1800-1869), the city’s first important architect, who had been born in England and trained in Bath, used both orders in the important public buildings that he designed after he opened his office in Pittsburgh in 1833. Ionic colonnades adorned the first Bank of Pittsburgh building (1836), Pittsburgh’s premier office building. Chislett’s masterpiece was undoubtedly the second Allegheny County Court House (1842) on Grant’s Hill. Its splendid portico of two rows of Doric columns eminently symbolized the spirit of the City. Of these monumental structures only the smallest—Burke’s Building—has survived, and it should be preserved. This is largely the known tally of Chislett’s Greek works.

With reference to the Gothic Revival, the authors wrote: “In the domestic field, the Gothic can also be seen in a modified Tudor form in Chislett’s design for the Butler Street gate house (1848) of Allegheny Cemetery and the amazing Gothic-Second Empire stone manor house of John F. Singer (1865-69) in Wilkinsburg-the latter being a highly ornamented, larger than life version of many now vanished suburban houses. Also in this category we may include the frame ‘steamboat Gothic’ cottages ornees of one of America’s first planned suburbs, Evergreen Hamlet (1851-52) on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.”

Since the writing of Landmark Architecture, some of the historic structures identified by the authors have vanished. Others remain in tact. When the book first appeared, the following Lawrenceville structures were identified as landmarks: the Allegheny Arsenal, Washington Crossing Bridge, Butler Street Gatehouse of Allegheny Cemetery, 7th United Presbyterian Street, St. Margaret Hospital, St. Mary’s Complex, and St. Francis Hospital. Five Greek Revival houses were also identified: 257 40th Street, 513 Carnegie St., 5300 McCandless Avenue, 186 Home St., and 4745 Modoc Alley.

The descriptions are brief and are directed at those versed in architectural terminology. For example, the authors describe the Washington Crossing Bridge:

Washington Crossing Bridge
40th Street over the Allegheny River
Janssen & Cocken;
Charles S. Davis, associate engineer 1923-1924
Classical
Steel and concrete ---------- very good
This steel-arched bridge represents, along with the through-truss Sixteenth Street Bridge (q.v.), that combination of architecture and engineering as rather separate activities (a marriage de convenance between art and science in which both parties, however, retain distinct and marked identities), which attended during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the development of modern technology. In this case the steel arches, as in the case of the truss frames at Sixteenth Street, are firmly held, one might almost say clamped in the embrace of architecture of the old dispensation. Today the two have coalesced as could already be seen in the 6th, 7th, and 9th Street bridges (q.v.) in the late 1920’s. The effect here is, however, still Classical-and it is appropriate that Washington should be commemorated in this place by a Roman bridge-or that which at least is Roman in intent. As for Washington, there is nothing that here eminently recalls him; between the modern industrial desolation of the one bank and the busy highwaymanship of the other, there is little that remembers him specifically, only the flat course of the river and the low, recessive hills recall that remote time when he beheld them.

As for some of the domestic houses in the area, the descriptions are equally brief. Identifying the house at 257 40th Street, the authors simply identify it as Vernacular Greek Revival circa 1830-50. “This house of the Arsenal type is a three bay structure with a flattened hipped roof. There is a side light and transom central doorway.” Van Trump and Ziegler’s description of the Vernacular Greek Revival house at 513 Carnegie Street (c. 1840-50) was also short: “A house of the Arsenal type, it is five bays wide, with multi-paned windows that have ornamental stone lintels featuring blocks at the ends. There is a simple Classical cornice.”

Van Trump and Ziegler also identified the neighborhood as a preservation area. After a brief summary of the historic changes that occurred since 1814, the two authors noted: “It is, however, for its character as a solid Victorian neighborhood of the period between 1860-1900 that we wish to designate Lawrenceville as a preservation district. Every effort should be made to retain its essential character as an evidence of the past life of the city. Although some unfortunate remodeling has occurred, many of the houses in the area have been well maintained and kept in repair so it should not be too difficult to keep these streets at their present level of maintenance provided the character of the neighborhood does not change too radically.”

Although portions of Lawrenceville have retained elements of the charm, which initially fascinated Van Trump and Ziegler, one must note that many radical changes over the years has altered the neighborhood. In essence, the character of the neighborhood has been changed and a number of institutions have vanished. Additionally, a number of homes have been altered, others razed, and new structures built. In short, the Victorian character of which Ziegler and Van Trump wrote to some degree has been diminished.

It was Van Trump who emerged as the guru of architectural historians. In 1983 the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation paid tribute to him by publishing a large number of his articles and essays in a single volume titled Life and Architecture in Pittsburgh. To mark the publication, the renowned Walter Kidney contributed a biographical sketch of James Van Trump. Kidney traced Van Trump’s educational background, starting at Carnegie Tech in 1926, where he studied painting, decoration, and singing. In 1927, Van Trump transferred to the University of Pittsburgh where he had a dual major in fine arts and English literature. Five years later, Van Trump earned his M.A. Kidney noted that much of Van Trump’s education in Pittsburgh history and architecture came as a result of self-study, mostly in the Pennsylvania and Fine Arts rooms at the Carnegie Library in Oakland.

With the publication of “Pittsburgh’s Church of the Ascension” in 1956 in The Charette, the journal of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, Van Trump suddenly emerged as a powerful voice in the field. Of Van Trump’s piece on the Oakland church, Kidney wrote, “His first Charette article was basically the work of a scholar, primarily presenting facts though already with a slight injection of himself and his own attitudes into the text. As he continued to write in the next few years, he retained scholarly objectivity about facts but eschewed the sort of scholarly caution that has given the world so much worthy but dull prose. Jamie writes floridly, impressionistically. Expressing his feelings is a natural characteristic, and addressing the public has allowed him to express his enthusiasm, his nostalgia, his upper-middle class youth, his Anglo-Catholicism of more recent years. In this way, such a large audience is all to the good; yet Jamie wonders, too, if he really likes being such a public figure: whether the quiet communication with his journals was not, at least, a little less harrowing to his retiring nature.”

In 1979 while doing a little informal reading about dramatist Bartley Campbell, the librarian at the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania asked that I share my research with them for their archives. This “reading” project turned into my first manuscript relating to Pittsburgh history. The search for Bartley Campbell took me to libraries, his monument in Saint Mary’s Cemetery, and eventually to the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. When a puzzled staff member at the Foundation admitted that she never heard of Campbell, she directed me to James Van Trump and provided me with his apartment phone number.

Van Trump was extremely friendly, talkative, and expressed a keen interest in the topic. Since he did not have any material on the subject, he asked for a copy of my paper. He acknowledged the manuscript with a congratulatory note for “resurrecting a minor literary figure.” This was my only major encounter with James Van Trump.

Then in the Summer of 1986, the PHLF News carried my first review: