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    Pittsburgh's Mansions
    Pittsburgh's Mansions
    Pittsburgh's Mansions
    Ebook139 pages28 minutes

    Pittsburgh's Mansions

    By Melanie Linn Gutowski

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    About this ebook

    A collection of images celebrating the extravagant and historic mansions of Pittsburgh, PA.


    In the 19th century, the positioning of Pittsburgh as a major manufacturing center and the subsequent rise of the area's steel industry created a wave of prosperity that prompted the beneficiaries of that wealth to construct extravagant residences. Wealthy enclaves sprang up in the city's East End, across the river in neighboring Allegheny City, and into the countryside. Pittsburgh's Mansions explores the stately homes of the area's prominent residents from the 1830s through the 1920s. Businessmen such as H.J. Heinz, Henry Clay Frick, and members of the Mellon family commissioned elaborate homes from the preeminent architects of their day. Firms such as Alden & Harlow, Janssen & Abbott, and Rutan & Russell left their marks on the city's landscape, often contributing iconic public buildings as well as expansive private homes. Though many of the residences have since been lost, Pittsburgh's Mansions offers a look back at the peak of the city's prominence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 19, 2013
    ISBN9781439642474
    Pittsburgh's Mansions
    Author

    Melanie Linn Gutowski

    Melanie Linn Gutowski is a writer, historian, and lifelong resident of the Pittsburgh area. She is the author of the 2013 book Pittsburgh's Mansions (Arcadia), and her other history writing has appeared in various local and national publications. She holds a bachelor's degree in history of art and architecture and a master's degree in professional writing. The Sen. John Heinz History Center is an educational institution that engages and inspires a large and diverse audience with links to the past, understanding in the present, and guidance for the future by preserving regional history and presenting the American experience with a western Pennsylvania connection. It is Pennsylvania's largest history museum and a proud affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.

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      Pittsburgh's Mansions - Melanie Linn Gutowski

      collection.

      INTRODUCTION

      A man’s home is his castle.

      —English aphorism

      It is said, though difficult to verify, that during Pittsburgh’s peak years—roughly 1830 to 1930—the city had more millionaires than New York City. Western Pennsylvania had long been a manufacturing center, first of glass, then iron, and then coal, oil, and steel. At that time, local industry was enabling the building of the world, which in turn enabled many men who profited from this fact to build their own world, largely cosseted away from the very evidence of their business success. Wealthy neighborhoods—at the time considered suburbs—began to emerge in the city’s East End and in neighboring Allegheny City. The sprawl of affluence continued into areas that today are considered the city’s suburbs and into the countryside. Immense homes with scores of rooms, sometimes nearly 100, soon lined the streets of the city and its surrounding region.

      The ready availability of inexpensive household help and low heating costs enabled owners to build larger and ever more extravagant mansions. At the same time, the popular idea of making one’s home a sanctuary led to an increasing effort to place more space between oneself and one’s neighbors, and especially between the family home and the threats—real or perceived—of pollution, poverty, and crime.

      George Gall, author of Homes and Country Estates of Pittsburgh Men, published in 1905, noted that Pittsburgh did not enjoy the fame for beauty that other cities, such as Cleveland, Buffalo, Boston, New York, and St. Paul, did at the time. Yet in order to demonstrate that Pittsburgh men have been successful in building up as beautiful a city as it is prosperous, one has only to show what has been accomplished in residence building here, Gall wrote. Pittsburgh’s best residence section is not confined to any one locality or street. This has been brought about by the beautiful and varied topography as seen in the many high elevations and numerous valleys, stretching out in all directions. Her representative people have taken advantage of these natural building localities and erected thereon their homes, in most cases away from the manufacturing districts, where they may obtain rest and quiet after spending many hours amid the noise and din of this great manufacturing and commercial center. As they have selected these naturally beautiful and quiet retreats, so have they in most cases tried to build, selecting mostly, as represented in later work, a style of architecture adapted to the site selected.

      While individual prosperity made these homes financially possible, it was a small army of architects that brought the whims and fantasies of the city’s industrialists to life. Alden & Harlow, Janssen & Abbott, MacClure & Spahr, and Rutan & Russell are just a few of the partnerships that were active in the area at this period. Individuals such as Louis Stevens, Frederick J. Osterling, Paul W. Irwin, George Orth, and Olaf M. Topp were in high demand among Pittsburgh’s millionaires, who no doubt traded architect recommendations over Scotch at their private clubs. Gall noted that many of the architects and landscape designers who created these homes had made their own homes in Pittsburgh, a further recommendation of the area’s architectural pedigree.

      It must be noted that the people represented in this book are overwhelmingly white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The few women represented herein are generally wealthy widows of these men. Pittsburgh society—indeed, upper-class society as a whole at the time—was not welcoming of Eastern and Southern European immigrants, to say nothing of African Americans, Roman Catholics, Jews, or women.

      Many of the homes within these pages no longer exist. While specific reasons vary from family to family, in general, the destruction followed a pattern. Often, the home’s original owner would decide to relocate, either to a country home or to another major metropolitan area, such as Boston, New York City, or Washington, DC. The home left behind in Pittsburgh

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