Sauer Buildings Historic District, located between 607 and 717 Center Avenue in

Aspinwall, Pennsylvania Aspinwall is a borough on the Allegheny River in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and is part of the Pittsburgh Metro Area. In 1900, 1,231 people lived in Aspinwall, and that number rose to 2,592 in 1910, and 3,170 by 1920. The popu ...

, consists of a group of buildings designed and built by Frederick C. Sauer from 1898 until his death in 1942. This historic district was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

on September 11, 1985.

History

In 1898,

Frederick Sauer Frederick C. Sauer (1860,''Landmark Architecture of Allegheny County'' by James D. Van Trump and Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr., page 161 (1967, Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ) Heidelberg, Grand Duchy of Baden � ...

bought a hillside tract of land in

, and built a home for himself and his family. This house was designed in "conventional fashion out of ordinary Kittanning brick on a four-square

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the archit ...

footprint."''Pittsburgh: A New Portrait'' by

Franklin Toker Franklin K. Toker (29 April 1944 – 19 April 2021) was a Canadian-American professor of the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of nine books on the history of art and architecture, ranging from the exc ...

, pages 435-436 (2009,

University of Pittsburgh Press The University of Pittsburgh Press is a scholarly publishing house and a major American university press, part of the University of Pittsburgh. The university and the press are located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The press ...

, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) Sauer was an

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

by trade, and he designed about a dozen

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

churches in the

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

area, most of which were fashioned in some variation of

Romanesque Revival Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...

style. After many years of designing buildings to suit the wants and needs of his public, Sauer constructed a group of buildings for his own amusement on his plot of land in Aspinwall.''Landmark Architecture of Allegheny County'' by James D. Van Trump and Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr., page 161 (1967,

Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (PHLF) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1964 to support the preservation of historic buildings and neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1966, PHLF established the Revolving Fund fo ...

, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ) He began to construct rental properties, acting as his own designer, mason, bricklayer, and carpenter. From 1928 through 1930, he converted his former chicken coop into a three-story apartment house called "Heidelberg".''Landmark Architecture: Pittsburgh and Allegheny County'' by Walter C. Kidney, page 334 (1985,

, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) After this eccentric building, he gradually transformed his wooded hillside into an architectural fantasy, and a complex of castlesque buildings and landscape features in Fantastic architectural style took shape and was progressively added to by Sauer until his death in 1942.

Reception

"It is the most bizarre collection of buildings in

Western Pennsylvania Western Pennsylvania is a region in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, covering the western third of the state. Pittsburgh is the region's principal city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic ...

," says

, professor of

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

. "This

fantastic The fantastic (french: le fantastique) is a subgenre of literary works characterized by the ambiguous presentation of seemingly supernatural forces. Bulgarian-French structuralist literary critic Tzvetan Todorov originated the concept, charac ...

group of buildings constructed by a local architect in the later years of his life is possibly unique in

." – James D. Van Trump and Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr. "Sauer really seems to have made one of those odd essays in personal expression in building that turn up now and then in some otherwise-staid part of the world." – Walter C. Kidney

References

Gallery

File:SauerBuildingsHistoricDistrict.jpg, Sauer Buildings Historic District located between 607 and 717 Center Avenue in

File:SauerAspinwallMailbox.jpg, Sauer's fantastical mailbox circa 1930 File:SauerApartmentAspinwall.jpg, Apartment building at 607 Center Avenue circa 1930 File:SauerBuildingAspinwall.jpg, Another apartment building circa 1930 File:SauerTurretAspinwall.jpg, Apartment building with a

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

circa 1930 File:FrederickSauerHouse.jpg, Sauer House, built in 1898, at 625 Center Avenue File:SauerBuildingsStoneFace.jpg, Stone face keystone on the arched doorway of a building circa 1930 File:SauerBuildingsHistDistrict.jpg, House at 615 Center Avenue circa 1930

External links

{{Registered Historic Places Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Historic districts in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania National Register of Historic Places in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania