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Community Corner

Hulley House Owners Adapt 1920s Structures

Hundreds of these houses are found across Pittsburgh, many of them in Regent Square, and the owners take pride in where they live.

Alina Keebler’s Regent Square home is a welcoming place.

She’s lived there since 1978 and the rooms are bright and warm. Her friendly and talkative cat, U.B., hops around the house like it is an indoor playground. The house is small, but not too small, in a way that can only be described as cozy.

This is a Hulley House.

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Designer E.B. Hulley’s homes definitely aren’t extravagant but they are plentiful. He built hundreds of similar houses throughout the late 1910s and 1920s in and around Pittsburgh, many in the eastern neighborhoods.

“The style I would call it is a craftsman-style house,” said Keebler, an architectural designer. “In the early 20th century, there was a push back to nature. They wanted to have simpler things.”

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The houses are simpler than the Victorian-era homes that preceded Hulley’s designs. extensively researched the Hulley Houses during graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. She found that the houses were affordable for the emerging middle class. Policemen, stenographers and mechanical engineers were some of the original Hulley House owners.

Keebler said Hulley bought the lots for around $1,100 and sold the finished houses for approximately $9,000.

“They were just for the average person,” Keebler said.

Arch Pelley of Regent Square also is a Hulley House owner.

“I think it’s interesting how people have adapted these houses overtime,” said Pelley.

Pelley sealed off his porch, allowing him to expand the living room and add on a powder room. A previous owner removed the refrigerator room on the back of the house, but many of the houses still have one.

Originally, the rooms were designed so that ice and milk could be delivered early in the morning without needing to leave the house unlocked. Keebler turned it into a mudroom.

“The fact that so many of them have survived and been adapted I think speaks well to the fact that they can be adapted,” said Pelley.

Even with all of the remodeling, original pieces remain in many Hulley Houses. Pelley’s house still has many original features including the trim around the windows, some of the light fixtures and wood floors. The bathroom still has the original tile, floor and furnace grate, but Pelley is planning on gutting the bathroom (due to cracking in the tile) but will keep the grate as he has throughout the rest of the house.

Pelley points out that one of the original features of his house is the bump in the floor on the second level above the fireplace. It runs from the hallway under the wall and into the middle room.

“It’s a very noticeable bump and in some houses, it’s really severe,” he said, pointing out how he had to design and cut the base of the shelves in the middle room around the bump.

Keebler, who lives in the house with her husband, said that now that her children have moved out, the house feels a tad too big. Even so, she seems to love the home and it’s rich history.

One day, as she was finishing up her research paper for school, a woman knocked on her door. The woman said her parents were the original owners of the house and she had lived here as a little girl.

Keebler welcomed her in and listened to stories about what the house used to be like.

“The sidewalks in the back were not concrete. They were wood and she said she remembers her dad almost every summer going out and painting the wood to protect it,” Keebler said.

Everyone seems to have their own favorite aspect of their house. Keebler loves her fireplace, while Pelley thinks they were put in the wrong place and prefers the large amount of daylight he gets through his many windows.

“I can’t say that people love any specific feature,” Keebler said. “Some houses have stained glass windows, mine doesn’t. I think people like that they’re manageable. It’s not an overwhelming task to live in a house like this. “

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