Abstract
1939: so proclaims the extra-large date stone displayed front-and-center on the symmetrical façade of a house in the Blackridge Estates neighborhood in Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs. Two years earlier, brothers Franklin and C.A. West formed the West Realty Company and bought 200 acres straddling Wilkinsburg, Penn Hills, and Churchill. They laid out streets, platted lots, and advertised Blackridge as the “East End’s Exclusive New Development” and, shamefully, “Carefully restricted as to type of home and clientele.”1 Of the more than 600 homes they built, this one stands out, known to locals as, of course, “the 1939 House.” When it was built, the house went by other names too: the Good Housekeeping House, the All-Gas House, and the Williamsburg House.