What style of house is this? (McKees Rocks: neighborhood, floor, place)

[gallacus]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

By the way, I would call the styling of that porch "Eastlake", and it could well be original to the house. From the link above:

Unfortunately I don't think the porch stuff is original to the house as I found the below picture on the Allegheny County Real Estate website, presumably from the '80s. But, it does tell me that the previous owner put some thought into their renovations.

[SammyKhalifa]

At least they didn't wall in the porch and make it a room . . .

[WILWRadio]

Originally Posted by SammyKhalifa

At least they didn't wall in the porch and make it a room . . .

One of the previous owners did that to my current home. I agree, a front porch would have been better.

[gallacus]

Originally Posted by WILWRadio

One of the previous owners did that to my current home. I agree, a front porch would have been better.

Yeah, I don't really understand why that is so common. No one hangs out in their walled-in porch in the winter, and in the summer it's much nicer to be out in the summer breeze!

[WILWRadio]

Probably a more economical way to add interior space if you can't build on or add a second floor room. Pouring even a small foundation without a cellar for a couple hundred square foot room will still be pretty costly.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by gallacus

Oh, and I'm also curious as to how so many houses ended up being identical. Does this suggest that it was a mail-order house, or did local builders do this as well?

So what happened is that sometimes mail-order places would ship entire kits, but you could also get just plans, and you could get plans plus just some harder to find materials (like trim and such).

Local builders in Pittsburgh sometimes used the full kits, but often they just used the plans or the plans plus partial kits, and then would use local materials for some or all of the build, and sometimes they would have local craftsman duplicate trim or do their own thing. That's one of the reasons we have so many brick versions of what otherwise look like kit homes--that would often be a builder using a mail-order-type plan but substituting local brick for what would otherwise have been shipped framing and siding.

Anyway, the result is in Pittsburgh neighborhoods you could have actually identical houses, but you could also have very similar houses that differed in a range of details.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by gallacus

Unfortunately I don't think the porch stuff is original to the house as I found the below picture on the Allegheny County Real Estate website, presumably from the '80s. But, it does tell me that the previous owner put some thought into their renovations.

That is indeed unfortunate, but I agree they did a nice job and to my eye it is period appropriate.

So you could really go any direction you want. Personally, I like the Eastlake approach and it lends itself to some fun paint schemes, so I would consider building off that:

Some pictures from up in Buffalo:

Eastlake

[jay5835]

Question: is the house a foursquare inside?

Also, anyone who likes these multi-color Victorian paint jobs ought to see the part of W. Philadelphia near Penn. It's downright cacophonous in places.

[gallacus]

Originally Posted by jay5835

Question: is the house a foursquare inside?

Also, anyone who likes these multi-color Victorian paint jobs ought to see the part of W. Philadelphia near Penn. It's downright cacophonous in places.

jay5835,

It is not a foursquare inside. It's almost like half of a foursquare where the stairs follow the left side of the house instead of being in the middle.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by gallacus

It is not a foursquare inside. It's almost like half of a foursquare where the stairs follow the left side of the house instead of being in the middle.

Foursquares don't necessarily have stairs in the middle--in smaller Foursquares, one of the four rooms on the first floor can become the entry hall and the stairs can be on the outside wall (or start outside then take a turn into the middle).

The central question would be whether it had the four main rooms over four main rooms layout on the first two floors.