Sauer Buildings Historic District facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Sauer Buildings Historic District
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Sauer's "Heidelberg" apartment house
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 Location in Pennsylvania
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| Location | 607–717 Center Avenue Aspinwall, Pennsylvania |
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| Area | 30 acres (120,000 m2), 9 buildings |
| Built | 1898–1942 |
| Architectural style | Fantastic, Medieval Revival, Colonial Revival |
| NRHP reference No. | 85002296 |
| Added to NRHP | September 11, 1985 |
Sauer Buildings Historic District, located between 607–717 Center Avenue in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, 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 on September 11, 1985.
History
In 1898, Frederick Sauer bought a hillside tract of land in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, 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 footprint." Sauer was an architect by trade, and he designed about a dozen Catholic churches in the Pittsburgh area, most of which were fashioned in some variation of Romanesque Revival 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. 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". 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.
Gallery
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Sauer Buildings Historic District located between 607–717 Center Avenue in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania
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Sauer's fantastical mailbox circa 1930
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Apartment building at 607 Center Avenue circa 1930
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Another apartment building circa 1930
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Apartment building with a turret circa 1930
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Sauer House, built in 1898, at 625 Center Avenue
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Stone face keystone on the arched doorway of a building circa 1930
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House at 615 Center Avenue circa 1930
