Is Pittsburgh's wrong-sized window replacement unique? (Bloomfield: houses, neighborhoods, move)

[eschaton]

I know I've touched on this before, but in my travels, it does seem like Pittsburgh is fairly unique in terms of the amount of damage people did to the architectural integrity of buildings in the mid 20th century.

Certain things are common nationwide. Frame houses, for example, often get ruined, as not only do people remove the wood to take down the siding, but often take off all ornamental wood trim in the process. Other cities (like Baltimore) are notorious for putting bad facades on houses as well, like fake stone.

It seems to me, though that Pittsburgh is unique because of how many buildings have been marred by poor window replacements. We run the gamut. I have seen the whole minor shortening of windows to deal with drop ceilings other places. But I've never seen anywhere where the mid century horizontal-sliding windows were poorly fitted into so many 19th century houses. It's a rare frame house in Bloomfield which hasn't been marred by this, but it's even worse in brick-heavy neighborhoods where the replacement window not only looks out of place, but actually ruins the front of the house as well. In some cases I've seen houses where perfectly good stone lintels are ripped out, or where they are strangely left in with the wrong-colored infill brick surrounding them.

It just always leaves me scratching my head. I mean, I understand a lot of people don't give a crap what the outside of their house looks like, but even in the dirt-poor working-class white neighborhoods I've been to in Philly and Baltimore I haven't seen the same thing.

[Goodjules]

Now Victorians are cool, but when I was growing up the trend was to modernize them. There are lots of bad renos in SF to Victorians and the stucco houses built in the 20s-50s and all other types of homes for that matter. Pittsburgh is not unique in that respect. I think you'd see a lot more badly renovated Victorians in SF, but the redevelopment of the Fillmore district (now called the Western Addition) in the 60s wiped out miles of them.

[Q-tip motha]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I know I've touched on this before, but in my travels, it does seem like Pittsburgh is fairly unique in terms of the amount of damage people did to the architectural integrity of buildings in the mid 20th century.

Certain things are common nationwide. Frame houses, for example, often get ruined, as not only do people remove the wood to take down the siding, but often take off all ornamental wood trim in the process. Other cities (like Baltimore) are notorious for putting bad facades on houses as well, like fake stone.

It seems to me, though that Pittsburgh is unique because of how many buildings have been marred by poor window replacements. We run the gamut. I have seen the whole minor shortening of windows to deal with drop ceilings other places. But I've never seen anywhere where the mid century horizontal-sliding windows were poorly fitted into so many 19th century houses. It's a rare frame house in Bloomfield which hasn't been marred by this, but it's even worse in brick-heavy neighborhoods where the replacement window not only looks out of place, but actually ruins the front of the house as well. In some cases I've seen houses where perfectly good stone lintels are ripped out, or where they are strangely left in with the wrong-colored infill brick surrounding them.

It just always leaves me scratching my head. I mean, I understand a lot of people don't give a crap what the outside of their house looks like, but even in the dirt-poor working-class white neighborhoods I've been to in Philly and Baltimore I haven't seen the same thing.

I'm with you. Never will understand why or how that got started. Seems like it would be so much more of a hassle than replacing the existing features. When its a brick home you can really see the decline of the quality of work done when the place was built, and when the new brick was added.


You know what's awesome?

When they decide to put a horizontal window into a space in a brick house that is occupied by a vertical window of the EXACT SAME SIZE.

Even better when they're doing this they decide to fill the area below the window with stacked bricks and no mortar. Then you, the current homeowner come along and discover it when renovating that room. Good thing that I know a little bit about masonry.