Remembering Author Annie Dillard — and Her Childhood Home in Pittsburgh
The spacious colonial-stye home in Point Breeze was the setting for the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s memoir, and inspired much of her work.
PHOTOS BY FLYOVER PROPERTIES
Several years ago, the childhood home of Pittsburgh-born novelist Annie Dillard hit the local housing market.
Over the years, the Point Breeze house has consistently been filled with love and laughter, for Dillard’s family and those that have become a part of the home’s story in the years since.
The house was a main character in Dillard’s memoir; her words give the walls a soul and sense of personality. It has that charm and warmth that old Pittsburgh homes are known for — it’s clearly a house that’s always had a story to tell.
On Sept. 15, Annie Dillard died at the age of 81. The Pulitzer prize-winning author penned more than a dozen books, and even more essays and poems over her life; many of her stories were inspired by her childhood in Pittsburgh and the journey those hills and valleys propelled her onto once she reached adulthood.
As a bookish child growing up in Pittsburgh myself, who eventually found a career in writing as well, Dillard’s work has always inspired and shaped me — as so much of this region has. One of my favorite quotes is from that memoir, “An American Childhood:
“We children lived and breathed our history — our Pittsburgh history, so crucial to the country’s story and so typical of it as well — without knowing or believing any of it. For how can anyone know or believe stories she dreamed in her sleep, information for which and to which she feels herself to be in no way responsible?
A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside her skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life — the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives — as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.”
I’ve always loved the way Dillard frames her Pittsburgh childhood as both perfectly ordinary and quite extraordinary all at once. That was my experience, and the experience we hope for our children, as well.
In memory of Dillard, Hot Property invites readers to take another look at this iconic piece of Pittsburgh history by visiting here. Please note that the home is not currently for sale; we ask that you respect the current owners and their privacy.
