Ika Stotler gives a detailed description of the interior in a 1954 paper presented to the Wilkinsburg Historical Society.
There were eighteen rooms on three floors and servants quarters on a fourth floor under the eaves. . . . The front entrance hall with its inlaid marble floor and circular staircase is a thing of beauty. The balustrade is of carved oak, open in design. One is rather astonished by the lack of taste that dictated a eye-sore brown oil painted imitation of that balustrade on the inner wall, which should have been left bare. Two niches for statuary adorn this wall. The Gothic of the hallway combines with Moorish-twist-columns that support the ceiling of the stairwell.
In the lower hall a handsome and very oddly carved hatrack with mirror is at the left of the front entrance door. Instead of pegs or knobs carved deer and moose heads held the headgear of guests. The upper hall is cheerful and well lighted; the lower is paved with white marble inlayed by small brown marble squares at intervals. The rear hall door opening into a back vestibule has a handsome etched glass of floral design and the front door also has a handsomely etched light in the form of a flower basket.
To the right of the front hall is the parlor or “drawing-room” with handsome bay-window and wooden inside shutters which slid out of sight on tracks. A white marble mantelpiece bears heavily sculptured leaf-design. The chandelier is in the form of a Charlemagne primitive crown of heavy brass, with points. Not attractive really, but there is pleasingly detailed small decor of majolica and cloisonne on the individual gas lights, and the light globes are of handsomely etched Greek or Roman charioteer scenes, green on ground glass for the drawing-room, and similar design in brown in the dining-room across the hall. The drawing-room or front parlor measures 20 x 26 feet and those occupying it of recent years say it requires an 18 x 24 foot rug.
Back of the front-parlor and communicating with it, is the “back-parlor” or sitting room; oddly enough there is no folding door. And oddly, also, the flooring in this handsome mansion was of ordinary pine—not the parquetry one would expect. However, that was a day of the wall-to-wall carpet and probably the Singers had very handsome aubussons or deep-piled Brussels floor coverings. Across the front hall at left of main entrance was the dining-room, a well lighted spacious place with front windows giving on the porch and a side bay. A massive built-in sideboard carved in quatrefoils and rising to a rounded point toward the ceiling, reminds of ecclesiastic choir-stalls. Gothic doors are at either side of it. The one at the left leads to a breakfast room, the one at the right hides and gives access to the Family Treasure Vault, an intriguing piece of engineering from a day that preceded the bank safe deposit vault. Immediately behind this Gothic door and of equal height is a second of three inch thick steel with a simple knob in the middle that controls two catches. There is no “combination” in this lock—merely a simple keyhole. Opening this steel door one finds, sunk into the flooring, a heavy flat topped iron strong box a little over three feet long and two feet deep. It has a hasp and was kept padlocked.
In these days of smart burglars and expert safe-cracking the Singer precautions seem childishly simple indeed but those were other days and no doubt the Singer Vault and Strong-box were not only unusual but adequate. In this dining-room is a handsome brown and yellow marble mantelpiece of soft, warm glowing color.
In all the rooms the high ceilings are heavily ornamented with centers and borders of grape and acanthus designs in plaster which, after all these years, show not a crack.
To the rear of the breakfast room was the kitchen, a large room done in black and yellow block tiles from floor to ceiling. It had a built-in sink and force-pump and boasted an enormous stove set in a recess. There were also several pantries and storage-places at the rear of the first floor. The back hall had its separate entrance from the rear porch and a rear staircase led upstairs from this hall.
The upper rooms parallel the arrangement of the downstairs: a master-bedroom over the drawing-room and communicating with this two other rooms, which thus constitute a wing. Exquisite lavender stained glass inlays in the quatre-foil carvings recessing the bay-windows can be seen in several of the larger, more pretentious rooms.
Wilkinsburg Public Library Digital Archives:
Iika M. Stotler, research and writing, “The Singer Place in Wilkinsburg” Paper read before the Wilkinsburg Historical Society in 1954.