Schenley Farms Residential District

As part of developer Franklin Nicola’s plans for Oakland that I touched on in previous posts on the  William Pitt Union/Schenley Hotel and Pittsburgh Athletic Association, he desired a residential district that would fit his vision.

The area is chock-full of well-maintained early 20th century domestic structures that feature a variety of architectural styles, such as the above-pictured Tudor.

Nicola insisted that the homes laid out on wide streets named for British and American literary figures be well-crafted, including 13-inch thick  brick walls, and plenty of attention was paid to the slightest detail. Beautiful wooden floors and wainscoting, as well as a finished basement, were part of the houses designed by the cream of Pittsburgh architects.

Modern conveniences also were part of Nicola’s strategy to attract the middle-class buyers that were his targets. The plumbing was state of the art, and every structure had refrigerators with an entrance door connected to a porch (to keep the iceman from walking through the house), four telephones, lighting fixtures that used both gas and electricity, and a central vacuum cleaner system.

One of the best innovations was Nicola’s insistence that wires be buried and not hung overhead as is still the custom today. For those buying the houses, Nicola saw the buried wires as a way to save on insurance. But I’m sure all who have lived in the them through the years have appreciated that the visual beauty of the neighborhood wasn’t marred by those wires.

Bigelow Boulevard, once called Grant Boulevard, provides a City Beautiful-inspired buffer between the residential area and the civic and educational sections that make up the Schenley Farms Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For a glimpse into a more genteel past and to see gracious homes that would take the price of two or three McMansions to re-create and that have many times more charm, take a walk down these leafy streets.

A view of the Schenley Farms Historic District’s residential area as seen from the University of Pittsburgh’s  Cathedral of Learning.

Here’s a map of the residential area.