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2. Half and Half
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
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2 fl Half and Half SCHEIBLER DID NOT IMMEDIATELY take up the progressive banner. Like many a young architect , his first independent efforts as a designer were constrained by his training and the need to find commissions. From the start he demonstrated fluency with a neoclassical vocabulary and a competent understanding of a number of other architectural styles. Some of his early buildings were wholly conventional ; but he also displayed a restlessness that was expressed in experimentation and some mildly unconventional work. As Scheibler himself put it, "I went through a half and half period."1 While he established himself in his profession, Scheibler began to create a personal vocabulary and lay the groundwork for his future direction as a designer.2 Scheibler was his own first client, but Antonia Oehmler provided the occasion. Their impending marriage in I897 inspired Scheibler to design a small cottage for their life together. Scheibler drew up two alternative designs for a frame house, one with a simple gable roof, and one with a partially gambreled roof and twin cross-gables (fig. s). The latter more complex design, a Colonial Revival-Shingle Style hybrid, was built. The house's massing and plan demonstrated the young architect's interest in the manipulation of form and the interplay of axes, while an aureole window provided a single decorative accent . Scheibler rendered the cottage as a suburban 18 Man and Architect idyll; but neither the marriage nor the cottage endured , and a gas station now occupies the site. The first professional commission, the only documented project completed by the partnership of Raisig and Scheibler, came early in I90I. The client, Edward A. Kitzmiller, was a Swissvale grocer and a likely acquaintance of Scheibler's. The drawings are in Scheibler's hand. The Kitzmiller house (fig. I I) is a free mixture of Queen Anne and Colonial Revival elements with cross-gabled massing and modest classical detailing. The lower story is brick laid in Flemish bond; the upper story was originally shingled. As with the Scheibler cottage, there is a single striking decorative device: here it is art-glass windows that meet at a corner of the second story. Though it later became a common feature of modernistic design, the use of glazing to turn a corner was highly unusual for the time. Scheibler's independent career-sans Raisig-began in earnest in the summer of I90I when Robert L. Matthews, a hotel operator in Pittsburgh's then sister city of Allegheny, just across the Allegheny River, and Joseph W. Steel, a Westmoreland County coal operator, each commissioned residences from the young architect. 1 Scheibler proved that he was up to the task of designing a formal and rather opulent house by producing for Matthews his most comprehensive exercise in academic design. Matthews must have been satisfied, since he gave Scheibler another commission for a commercial building, but the Matthews house was never realized. The Steel house commission followed soon after, and Scheibler simply adopted the unused Matthews house plans for the new site in Greensburg. The Steel house was built but was destroyed by fire in 1989. The Steel house (fig. 12) can be loosely categorized with the contemporary neoclassical work of Longfellow, Alden and Harlow and of McKim, Mead and White.4 A cubelike mass under a hip roof was extended outward with large porches and a porte cochere. Tile roofing and brick and stone quoins served as a textural overlay. Overt classical detail was largely confined to wood porches and eaves on the Fig. I 2 . Steel house, ca. 1901. Fig. 1 1. Kitzmiller house, I 90 I, front elevation. Half and Half I 9 [35.173.254.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:39 GMT) r.>.... ~~""'- · t~~:-..~;;l~~t.:;..t~.. Fig. 13· Matthews house, 1901, first floor plan. 20 Half and Half Fig. 14. Steel house, ca. 1901, dining room. exterior, but was rampant in the richly detailed interior that included extensive built-in furnishings, wood carving, decorative painting, and stained glass. A conventional central-hall plan (fig. 13) was disrupted only by an oval dining room (fig. 14), which was nudged off-axis and subsequently formed a gently curved protrusion on the left side of the house. Three major characteristics of the Steel house prefigure Scheibler's later progressive work. The triangular massing scheme reappeared in a different guise in some later house projects. The careful interior detailing foreshadowed the interiors of all of Scheibler's later work. And the oval dining...