Architects James E. Allison and David C. Allison, brothers who were born in Pennsylvania, also designed a number of buildings in the state of California.
The comprehensive "Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide," published in 1994, lists and briefly describes 17 buildings designed by the brothers between 1923 and 1937. This is a substantial number for a single firm and includes a diverse body of work: two commercial buildings, two post offices, two club houses, two secondary schools, four churches and five campus buildings at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
"Landmarks of Los Angeles," also published in 1994, is based on the inventory of the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission. Eight buildings by the firm of Allison & Allison from 1924 to 1934 are listed and described, including a synagogue, a library and a renovated department store omitted from the other guide book. The architects are included among "Leading Los Angeles Architects and Firms." According to the listing, James E. Allison was born in 1870 and died in 1955, while David C. Allison was born in 1881 and died in 1962. However, no information is given about the history of the firm formed in Pittsburgh.
James E. Allison, Pittsburgh 1893-1904
Census records and city directories suggest that James Allison was the first member of his family to arrive in Pittsburgh. In 1893, the 23-year-old first appeared on the city directory as a resident of Allegheny, a separate city on the north side of the Allegheny River, now Pittsburgh's North Side. His profession was "architect" and his services were listed in the classified pages.
Records show two years later, his father, George, a carpenter; his wife Sarah; and their six younger children -- including the younger of their three sons, David Clark Allison -- arrived in Allegheny.
James Allison's career advanced and, in 1898, he exhibited in Pittsburgh's first major architectural exhibition. He also married that year. In 1899, he was listed among the "Leading Architects in Seven States" in the first issue of the "Interstate Architect & Builder."
His entry in the second architectural exhibition in 1900 was the Casino in the Westmoreland County community of Vandergrift, a company town planned in 1896 by Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. The National Register of Historic Places calls the Casino, now in the Vandergrift National Register Historic District, "the single most important building in the community" and "the centerpiece of the town, a Classical Revival town hall that incorporates a library, theater, and borough offices into a yellow brick temple form with a large classical portico overlooking the central lawn of the town."
James Allison's Weller and Crump houses, built in 1900 on Perrysville Avenue in Allegheny, also use Classical forms and detailing with notable exuberance. He practiced alone until 1904, designing buildings throughout western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.
Meanwhile, David Allison was preparing himself for a career as an architect. He spent two years traveling and studying in Europe, one year in Paris with Joseph-Eugène-Armand Duquesne, who later came to the United States to teach architecture at Harvard University. David Allison studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from 1902 to 1904. He then returned to Pittsburgh and joined his brother in the newly organized firm of Allison & Allison.
Allison & Allison, Pittsburgh 1905-1910
After David Allison joined his brother, the work of the firm became better known. Allison & Allison participated in all of the architectural exhibitions held during their five years in Pittsburgh -- 1905, 1907 and 1910. James Allison's photograph appeared among those of the city's leading architects in 1905 in "Palmer's Pictorial Pittsburgh and Prominent Pittsburghers Past and Present." The Pittsburgh architectural journal, "The Builder," extensively covered Allison & Allison buildings and designs in 1907 and 1909.
They designed houses -- several in their own neighborhood near Riverview Park -- as well as banks, churches, hospitals and infirmaries, clubhouses, secondary schools and college and university buildings. They entered architectural competitions. Their Classical Revival design for the prestigious Twentieth Century women's club was unsuccessful, while their Gothic entry in the 1908 competition for the new Oakland campus of Western University of Pennsylvania -- now the University of Pittsburgh -- won third prize in a field of 61 designs. They received $1,000, and their design was published nationally.
Despite the ambitious competition entries, most documented Allison & Allison buildings in southwestern Pennsylvania are unpretentious. Houses in Allegheny, Bellevue and Crafton are primarily "four-square" rectilinear houses with broad front porches organized internally around a central staircase, or Tudor, like the David Roney house, circa 1905, with half-timbering, steep roofs and diamond-paned windows.
A dormitory erected in 1908 at Clarion State Normal School, now Becht Hall at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, is a functional brick building given character by the multicurved gables and tile-roofed porches of the Spanish Mission style, popular in southern California and spreading eastward.
One of their last buildings in western Pennsylvania is Bethel Presbyterian Church in Bethel Park, built in 1910 for a congregation established in 1776. It is a buff brick structure, accented with Gothic buttress forms, Romanesque round arches and a tall Italianate tower with once-projecting eaves that have been clipped. The building's simple elegance is enhanced by original art glass windows created by Rudy Brothers of Pittsburgh.
After Pittsburgh
In 1910, James Allison, 40, and David Allison, 29, moved to Los Angeles. Five years later, their work was profiled in "American Architect and Engineer of California." The author of the article was Myron Hunt, an architect with a national reputation who had transferred his practice from Chicago, where he had been an early associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, to southern California in 1903 at the age of 35.
Hunt observed, "One brother has shown himself a notable leader in the executive field; and the other a leader in the artistic. Working together as a team, each thoroughly trained, and equally forceful, the natural leanings of the two minds have served to make what is a most rare combination -- a truly successful partnership in architecture."
In Los Angeles, James Allison was the firm's administrator and his brother its chief designer. David Allison exhibited architectural drawings at the Los Angeles Sketch Club and taught drafting classes, "as a brilliant draftsman himself, [he] has been a source of inspiration to not only the younger, but older men as well."
Brick had been their material of choice in Pittsburgh. Hunt noted the "painstaking, well-thought-out detail . . . evident in all of their brickwork" in Los Angeles. Indeed, he wrote, "Southern California is almost devoid of the usual building materials. There is no good building stone within hundreds of miles, and ... it was not supposed that there was even a good brick obtainable in Los Angeles. The Allison brothers loved brick, and have helped a great deal in the development of its local manufacture."
Three pages in Hunt's 36-page article are text; 33 pages are devoted to photographs, drawings and plans of Allison & Allison buildings.
Whatever their function, most of the firm's buildings reflect the stylistic "Eclecticism" prevalent among American architects prior to World War II. Walter C. Kidney, in his pioneering study, "The Architecture of Choice: Eclecticism in America 1888-1930," defines Eclecticism as "taking up forms of proven and mature beauty from the formal and the vernacular architectures of the past and adapting them, learnedly but with personal touches, to modern building programs."
Greco-Roman and Renaissance Classicism, the Romanesque, the Gothic, the Spanish Colonial architecture of California -- all provided the traditional forms the Allisons adapted for southern California churches, schools, post offices and other buildings. In the 1930s they also explored the ornamental modernism of Art Deco.
Today, their work, and that of other skilled Eclectic architects, is receiving new attention and respect.
Albert M. Tannler is Historical Collections Director, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, and a freelance writer for the Tribune-Review.
