Looking in other people’s houses can be fun. And in southwestern Pennsylvania, it doesn’t matter if you live in a city neighborhood like Friendship or in rural Washington County, you can find wonderful houses not far away that reveal much about the history, the culture and the people in this comfy corner of the state. In HOUSES AROUND HERE, we take you to ordinary houses as well as to extraordinary dwellings. We travel up to Chatham Village on Mount Washington, check out some cool old castles in Aspinwall, and find out about the history of Swift Homes that were so successful in the 1950s. We look at some old company towns, including Marianna, PA. Near Prosperity, we stop in at Moon Lorn, an odd sort of country cottage built by the artist Malcolm Parcell, and we visit Henry Clay Frick’s mansion called Clayton to see what we can see. In and around Pittsburgh, the variety of houses, their old charms and their modern quirks, help make this area an interesting, affordable and familiar place to call home.