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, you'll see ordinary houses (like the sturdy Hulley Houses that seem to be on every street in the East End) as well as to extraordinary dwellings (like some of the buildings created by the unusual Pittsburgh architect Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr.)

You'll 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.

You'll 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 you'll 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.

See! Lots of Extra Houses:

•  We fly around the homes and hangers of Hanny Beaver Airpark in Beaver county.
•  We wander around and look into houses in Lawrenceville, Allegheny West, Observatory Hill, and we check out the Ten Commandments in Elliott.
•  We visit Evergreen Hamlet, perhaps the first suburb in America!
•  We walk through Kentuck Knob, a Frank Lloyd Wright house open for tours in Fayette County.