A few nice pennsylvania real estate images I found:
Yoder-Walker House, New Castle 3
Image by Universal Pops
At present, I’m mostly inactive on Flickr for an indefinite period of time. However, I will continue posting photos. I am always appreciative of views and comments; thank you for taking time to look.
The Yoder-Walker House in New Castle, Craig County, Virginia, has an enviable view, situated on a hill with the town of New Castle spread out below and an expansive view of Craig Creek Valley. It’s a fascinating Queen Anne, built about 1890 by William Larose Yoder (1830-1900), formerly of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, who apparently came to New Castle during the 1890s to participate in the exploitation of the county's mineral reserves. He was also involved in real estate development and speculation. Later it was the residence of Ed Lee Walker, a general merchant and druggist in New Castle in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
With the numerous trees (and taken in bad light), this was a challenging house—unfortunately many details are not visible. The house is a 2-story brick structure (and according to the National Register of Historic Places [NRHP] nomination form, provided by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources [VDHR], double-pile brick, 7 course American bond with black penciling). The foundation is stone but faced with rock. It has a complex hipped roof with brick chimneys and numerous gabled dormers—the dormers sides are decorated with pressed metal sheathing in a floral pattern. The windows are 1/1 sash with segmental arched lintels, stone sills and shutters which are louvered and paneled. At the rear is a 2-story side porch with square balusters, and the upper level shows off the millwork with arched wooden spandrels and spindles. There are bay windows facing the porch and bay windows adjoining the 2-story rear porch. The porch entrance is pedimented decorated with a linear pattern inside a triangle; it’s flanked by two Doric-inspired columns on each side. The porch is a wraparound, the roof supported by a series of columns. The entry has two doors. Above the porch is a small balcony (screened in) with molded and chamfered posts and more pressed metal, this time with a diamond-pattern (a quilted look).
The nomination form also provides some information on interior details. Apparently there are also many stained-glass windows with a variety of shaped, but I didn’t see any. It is part of the New Castle Historic District (the 1993 boundary increase) National Register ID #93000497.
Further information is in the NRHP nomination form located at www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Craig/268-0016_Ne...
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Highland Building
Image by sportsedit15224
Like the dowtown Frick Building www.flickr.com/photos/29023375@N04/5829476559/, the Highland Building is another Pittsburgh skyscraper architect Daniel Burnham designed for Henry Clay Frick in 1909.
From about 1850 to 1950, the East Liberty neighborhood was the third-largest business district in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, so it's no surprise that Frick, whose returns from real estate deals nearly matched the pile he made from his coke empire and with Carnegie Steel, would want to be where the action was.
In his book “Pittsburgh, A New Portrait,” University of Pittsburgh professor Franklin Toker writes that Burnham copied features from buildings by his bête noire, Louis Sullivan, who has been called the father of modern American architecture.
Sullivan didn’t hide his distaste for the Beaux-Arts “White City” Burnham helped realize for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Sullivan, who coined the term “form follows function,” wrote in his autobiography that Burnham set the course of American architecture back “for half a century from its date, if not longer.”
In designing the Highland Building, Toker writes that Burnham took the terra cotta ornament design from Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott Department Store in Chicago, and Sullivan's Guaranty Building in Buffalo inspired the cornice.
This East Liberty landmark, which has stood empty for decades, has been the target of several redevelopment plans – all of which failed.
But recent efforts to turn it into a hotel are getting closer to fruition as state funding for a parking garage, which the potential developers say they need to make the plan viable, has been approved.
While definitive plans for the hotel conversion still haven’t been put forward, the future of the Highland Building is brighter than it has been in nearly 40 years.
