Pittsburgh History & Landmarks FoundationLandmarks Leads Courthouse Restoration Program - Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation

Landmarks Leads Courthouse Restoration Program

November 11, 2001 10:35 am

11/15/01

For many years, we have been involved in restoration activities at the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and completed in 1888. We published Majesty of the Law, a full length book on the buildings, designed the Courtyard Park, acquired chairs for it, and helped create major explanatory panels for an architectural tourism program. We also completed work with Dr. Frank Liu on the restoration of the furnishings in the Law Library in the City-County Building.

In our current work, we have:

Commissioned architects Landmark Design Associates and painting conservator Frank Welsh to conduct paint analyses of the public hallways so that they can be painted in the original colors
Proposed a reconfiguration of the Gold Room as a County Council meeting room

Designed and ordered custom bulletin boards to be used for all impermanent signs to eliminate the practice of placing them on the walls.

Commissioned a bench modeled on the original benches that were in the buildings to be placed in the hallways where now assorted, dilapidated chairs are used.

Asked Landmark Design Associates to create a signage system that is based on the historic graphics of the Courthouse and on earlier plans of Peter Muller- Munk Associates that will bring all offices into a handsome graphic conformity.

Obtained a significant grant from the Drue Heinz Trust to establish a museum of the history of the Jail, recently adapted as the Court of Common Pleas building.

We are now working closely with Ed Urban, the Deputy Warden, whose archival collection will be placed on display in new cases we have commissioned IKM Architects to design.