120-122 Eighth Avenue, Homestead, PA 6-12-09 by Dan Holland

120-122 Eighth Avenue (Half Brothers Furniture Building)

The Half Brothers Furniture Building is among the first large scale developments along Homestead's Eighth Avenue corridor. Pre-dating 1913, the building occupies several of the original lots subdivided from one of Homestead's last large estates. The estate was owned by B.J. Stenger and was bounded by West Street, Eighth Avenue, Ninth Avenue, and stretched to the middle of what is now the 100 Block of Eighth Avenue.

The building is a four story brick, stone, and (as denoted in a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map) cast iron structure. Although not entirely unheard of for the period, cast iron would have been a fairly archaic material to use in this structure's building system.

The building appears to have been "modernized" in the late 1920s or 30s like many of the commercial buildings along Eighth Avenue. Black cararra glass graces the street-level store front. The original cornice appears to have been removed, but this fairly unadorned building possesses reserved and tasteful decorative elements that set it apart as an architect-designed structure amidst (what would have been at the time) a largely vernacular existing building fabric.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this building that sets it apart from more vernacular architecture of the period is the double-arch-within-an-arch window at the middle of the fourth floor. Although by no means a new architectural concept at the time of this building's construction, the motif had recently been popularized by Chicago architect, Louis Sullivan--especially in his Bayard/Condict Building of 1897-99.