Talk:Frederick C. Sauer

Frederick Sauer mentioned in the book Landmark Architecture of Allegheny County (1967)
On pages 160, 161, 210, and 254 in the book Landmark Architecture of Allegheny County by James D. Van Trump and Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr. (1967, Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, ) it says the following:

"Aspinwall Borough Sauer Buildings Center Avenue Housing Fred C. Sauer 1900–1940 Stone, brick and terra cotta various stories very good

This fantastic group of buildings constructed by a local architect in the later years of his life is possibly unique in Pittsburgh. Our age, which has so often been labeled (page 161) as one of conformity, has a marked predilection for manifestations of the unusual, the "original" and the fantastic. The architect has often to consider the wishes of his client, and it is rare that, as an architect, he can afford to build only as he wishes. In this case the designer and builder Fred C. Sauer (1860–1942), after a lifetime of conforming to the wishes of his public, constructed a group of buildings for his own amusement.

Sauer bought his hillside tract of land in 1898 and built himself a house on it not long thereafter. This house does not partake of the fantastic quality of the other––and later––structures on the property. Beside the mansion, there are two more houses and an apartment house called "Heidelberg" (that was remodeled about 1928–30 from his former chicken house). The procession of spaces between these structures seems to be almost medieval and accidental, but the houses themselves defy any close stylistic analysis. It is evident also that Sauer used both building material and carved details rescued from demolished structures.

Even as "dream" structures there is about them something a little pedestrian, awkward, and fumbling. There is something here of the old-time amusement park, more than a seasoning of the frantic romanticism of the 1920 real estate subdivision, a touch of the cinema landscape of Rudolph Valentino. In the end the hillside is Sauer's own private Disneyland with profits at six percent. But having said that, there is a charm and an interest about the place that is irreducible. It is a minor, but still valid document of humanity's primal love of fantasy and legend."

Page 210:

"Millvale Borough St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church 24 Maryland Avenue Fred C. Sauer 1900 Edwardian Classical Brick 1 story very good

Architecturally this church––not a very good example of Sauer's pedestrian talents––scarcely merits inclusion in this book, but it does possess considerable interest because of the murals by Maximilian Vanka that decorate its interior.

The church was built by a Croatian-speaking Catholic parish in 1900 on the site of the Salt mansion. In 1921 the structure was destroyed by fire and rebuilt, again after the design of Fred Sauer, in 1922. In April 1937 Vanka, who had been a professor of fine arts in the University of Zagreb in Yugoslavia, began to paint the murals, or rather frescoes, since they were painted in tempera on wet plaster. The paintings are intended to memorialize the contributions of Croatian immigrants to American industry and there are also mordantly satirical passages attacking the capitalists that caused some stir in the socially conscious climate of the 1930's.

The frescoes, at once exotic and powerful, modern in style and yet influenced by medieval Yugoslav paintings, "make" the interior which seems to have a vitality of its own quite independent of the architecture. For this reason alone this church is a "must" for preservation."

Page 254:

"Turtle Creek Borough St. Colman's Roman Catholic Church 128 Shaw Avenue Fred C. Sauer 1901–1903 Gothic Brick and stone 1 story good

This church extends the Revived Gothic image of the nineteenth century parish church into the twentieth century, very solidly if not very felicitously. For the most part the work of Fred Sauers was rather pedestrian, and this structure is less so than much of the rest. The chief merit of this type of church is to provide an interesting focal point in the otherwise dull landscape of an industrial suburb.

St. Colman's School nearby is an intriguing example of the medievalistic parish building of the 1920's. Designed by Link, Weber and Bowers, it was completed in 1929. Its patterned brick work is notable."

Leepaxton (talk) 18:34, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Frederick Sauer mentioned in the book Pittsburgh: A New Portrait (2009)
On pages 435 and 436 in the book Pittsburgh: A New Portrait by Franklin Toker (2009, University of Pittsburgh Press) it says the following:

"There is nothing historic to Aspinwall, unlike so much of Sharpsburg. The brick-paved streets are laid out in an unexciting grid between the riverbank Freeport Road and the Allegheny Valley Expressway.  But one architectural complex breaks out of the mold.  Halfway up the steep hill of Center Avenue, immediately above the expressway overpass, stand the Frederick Sauer houses, from 615 to 627 Center, which must constitute the most eccentric residential neighborhood in western Pennsylvania.  Sauer was one of the many German-born or German-origin architects who dominated the middle ranks of Pittsburgh designers early in that century.  He was a native of Heidelberg, and these hillside houses not far from the Allegheny River may be Sauer's after-image of the famous ruined castle in his hometown.

Sauer got his architectural education in Stuttgart, then came to Pittsburgh around 1880 and built a dozen Catholic churches. In 1904, he began to construct rental properties on this plot of land in Aspinwall, acting as his own designer, mason, bricklayer, and carpenter. Sauer designed the first house, at 625 Center, in fairly conventional fashion out of ordinary Kittanning brick (page 436) (the regional brick center of Kittanning lies thirty-six miles to the northeast) on a four-square Colonial Revival footprint. He continued to build through the 1920s and 1930s, with each new structure more fantastic than the last.

Sauer's usual materials were irregularly coursed stone and yellow brick, to which he added hundreds of strange inserts: lopsided keystones, turkeys and eagles, lions and Roman gods, roundels of Benjamin Franklin. All contribute to the whimsical nature of this miniaturized village. The buildings are a little more stolid than the supreme American fantasy structure, which is Simon Rodia's Watts Tower, from the 1920s, in Los Angeles, but only because they had to serve a practical purpose. They are somewhat dilapidated today, even though some portions have been restored. Each apartment unit grows in an easy organic manner out of it designated materials and out of its hillside niche. The whole group culminates in a fantastic mailbox that seems to have been made by hobbits from J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings."

Leepaxton (talk) 02:21, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

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