1306 Penn Avenue Home, Wilkinsburg

Today's post comes to you thanks to someone who sent me a message about 1306 Penn Avenue. He wanted to confirm that this now-vacant house is a Scheibler house.

It is. It was built in 1909 for Dr. James M. McNall. At the time, it had a garage, which has since been demolished. This was during the period in which Scheibler's homes were modest, but still included sophisticated artistic details and stunning art glass. In his book The Progressive Architecture of Frederick G. Scheibler, Martin Aurand uses a photo of a window in this house to exemplify how Scheibler "embraced the seeming dichotomy of nature vis-à-vis technology, as he revealed by his art-glass irises and I-beam lintels."

from The Progressive Architecture of Frederick G. Scheibler by Martin Aurand

It appears that the most recent inhabitant has passed away, and the property is becoming a bit overgrown.

I'm grateful to the reader for sending me the following photos so we can check out the details. When I asked him if he could send me a picture, he offered me 13! Now you can enjoy them too and imagine the thrill of exploring it in person! They have a bit of a haunted quality as the house has been left alone for a while.

107 South Knight Avenue, Margate City, NJ

This 1927 home is a real departure from what I usually show you.

According to Martin Aurand's The Progressive Architecture Of Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr, Scheibler created two homes on the Jersey shore for Eva Harter. Yes, this Eva Harter, from the amazing Harter House in Pittsburgh.

Here is 107 South Knight Avenue in Margate City, NJ. I wasn't able to find much about this or the extent of its renovations. This four-bedroom beach house was last sold for $1,825,000.

I'll try to see what I can dig up on the other Harter beach house, 109 South Washington Avenue in Ventnor City, NJ:

Minnetonka Building, 5425-5431 Walnut Street

It's been a while, but I have two updates for you today.

The Scheibler house at 2619 Shady Avenue is listed for sale, so I updated its post with new photos of the inside of the house. You can see them here.

And, I recently grabbed some shots of the Minnetonka Building at 5425-5431 Walnut Street in Shadyside. This building is home to Shadyside Variety Store, Mazur Galleries, Cappy’s Cafe, and 8 one-bedroom apartments.

You should start here to see photos and a complete description by Martin Aurand, author of The Progressive Architecture of Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr. He writes that the building was designed for Edward C. Wefing, a real estate man with visionary expectations for Walnut Street. When the store and apartment building was erected in 1908, it was one of the most urbane commercial buildings in the entire city, and was by far the grandest structure on a street with only a few shops.

Photograph by Martin Aurand

Aurand writes, "The building’s three-story height, horizontality, and the arrangement of the apartments around two entries recall Scheibler’s Old Heidelberg apartment building; but here the roof is flat, the entries are accented rather than minimized, and there are no suburban amenities like porches and plantings.

White brick yields a hard planar surface on the building’s upper stories and sides. The nearly flush windows (now altered) feature Scheibler’s trademark exposed steel I-beam lintels.  A stucco panel at the center of the facade features half-timbering and narrow green art-glass windows.  Scars remain from a pair of metalwork light fixtures that originally broke the plane of the façade.  Bands of stucco and bowed windows round the corners of the building to unify the front and sides.  Such rounded corner treatments were popular urban devices in contemporary Vienna, and Scheibler may have referred to such buildings in developing his design."

Keep reading here.

Minnetonka Building, 1908

Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr.

Abigail thanks you for reading.