68 N Harrison Avenue

The 1906 home of Samuel and Angela Onuska stands on the southeast corner of North Harrison and Teece Avenues. It occupies Lot 69 in the “Roseburg Revised Plan of Lots,” a tract of 13 acres between North Fremont and North Bryant Avenues, acquired by J. I. McClurg in 1905 and subdivided into 94 building lots. When first laid out, North Harrison was known as Seville or Clark Avenue and Teece was known as Bayne Avenue. North Bryant originally was known as Ellsworth Avenue. The Onuska house is typical of the substantial single-family homes envisioned by the Roseburg Land Company, which promoted its property to attract “the leading business and professional men of Pittsburgh” (Pittsburgh Gazette Times, February 15, 1911). The Onuska house possesses the same distinguishing features of the Foursquare form as the other Foursquare houses on the 2019 tour, including two-story height with four fairly equal-sized rooms on each floor, a square shape, pyramidal roof, hipped dormers, two-story side window bay, and full-width front porch. The front porch with its supporting concrete columns is original. Rather than brick veneer over frame construction which was common at the time, the house features structural brick/masonry construction with three brick wythes on most walls consisting of two common layers and an outer yellow glazed brick layer, with a half-inch gap between the layers. The interior walls were wood lath covered with traditional horse hair plaster varying in 24thickness from ½” to ¾”. The Onuskas faced an enormous rehabilitation challenge. Failure of the roof had allowed water and snow to accumulate on interior floors, walls, and wood structural members. The box gutters were rusted, rotted, and decayed for 50 percent of their length, allowing additional water to run along the brick walls and cause damage. Approximately half of the concrete window/door sills and lintels were cracked and required replacement. Many of the joist members were either rotted or cracked, the footers for structural columns had sagged, and the stairs and landings were water damaged. Nearly all of the plumbing supply and drain lines had been removed from the house prior to purchase, and presumably, sold for scrap. Many of the radiators were cracked due to freeze-thaw cycles from the home being left vacant with water still in the heat exchanger channels. All of the stained glass had been removed from the house either through salvage or theft. The initial task was to evict a family of raccoons who were living on the third floor and had the run of the house. They left on their own when Sam and Angela installed motion sensor lights which encouraged the raccoons to find a quieter and darker home. The next task was to make the building weather tight, requiring replacement of the roof and repairs to the gutters and eaves. All three chimneys were significantly damaged and were disassembled by hand without the use of tools. Some of the cracked radiators were scrapped, several were salvaged for similar homes that needed replacements, and a couple were used on the set of “Last Flag Flying” when the show was filming in Pittsburgh; one pair were retained for use as decorative pieces. All plumbing and wiring were replaced. To create more headroom in the basement, Sam and Angela excavated over one-foot of clay by hand and carried it out in buckets. The Onuskas were able to salvage four pocket doors and plan to re-use them at the entrance to the living room and from the master to the main bath. They demolished and secured the original tile work at the entry and salvaged many decorative windows and the original main staircase wood paneling which will be saved and re-used. Many slabs of marble and stone found in the yard and basement will be re-used for steps, kitchen surfaces, and in certain tile/stone floors. Previous owners had closed off all of the fireplaces, so Sam and Angela opened several of them and plan to use them as gas-burning. They will maintain most of the house’s interior layout while making minor modifications to wall locations.