Author Archives: karamagi
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Committee Awards Nine Historic Landmark Plaques
The Historic Plaque Designation Committee of our organization awarded nine plaques — seven individual buildings and two districts — to places worthy of recognition for their architecture, history, and planning, at its June 12 meeting.
The districts are a contrast of significant architecture and significant planning. In what we are referring to as the “Boundary-Beaver Streets” Historic District, in Sewickley, significant residential architecture is most evident. The district encompasses both sides of Beaver Street to Nevin Avenue on the west, Centennial Avenue on the north, and Boundary Street on the east.
The boundary coincides with the Sewickley Historic District #2, which our organization worked with the Borough of Sewickley and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s State Historic Preservation Office, to identify and designate in 1985, containing 19 parcels.
This group of 19 houses in eclectic styles reflects the residential taste of a wealthy turn-of-the-century suburb. The works of prominent Pittsburgh architects Alden & Harlow, MacClure & Spahr, and Neal & Rowland are notably represented.
Drawings and Archives, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.
In contrast to the lavish residential architecture of Sewickley, we turn to the modest multi-unit residences contained in Shalercrest, now a cooperative housing development, located in the southeastern corner on Shaler Township along Mt. Vernon Drive.
Its 251 units in 59 buildings were developed as Defense Worker Housing by the Federal Works Agency in conjunction with the Allegheny County Housing Authority from 1941 to 1944. It also includes an administrative building, community building, and a former grocery (now apartments), along with recreational fields in the hollow at the center of the development.
The design and planning are the work of architect Clarence S. Stein, the renowned proponent of “Garden City” development. Locally, he may be best known for his planning of Chatham Village with Henry Wright. But here in Shaler Township, and his now gone ‘Ohio View Acres,’ his skill at siting a democratic community on a strict budget and time constraint is evident.
In addition to the two districts, the Committee awarded seven new individual building plaques, which are listed below in order of construction date:
“Farmhouse” at Christ Church at Grove Farm, originally William and Davidson Duff house. 249 Duff Road, Ohio Township. c.1835. William Duff, builder, additions.
William W. Grier house. 220 8th Street, Oakmont. 1875. William W. Grier, builder.
Porter & Donaldson Millinery and Straw Goods building. 820 Liberty Avenue, in Downtown. 1881. James J. Porter, builder.
House. 5906 Callowhill Street, Highland Park. 1893. Frederick C. Sauer, architect.
First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh. 604 Morewood Avenue, Shadyside. 1902-04. Joseph L. Neal of Neal & Rowland, architects.
Liberty School, now Pittsburgh Liberty K-5. 601 Filbert Street, Shadyside. 1911, 1936-37 addition. Edward J. Weber, designer with MacClure & Spahr, architects. M. M. Steen, board architect for addition.
Imani Christian Academy, originally East Hills Elementary School. 2150 East Hills Drive, East Hills. 1969-72. Tasso Katselas, architect.
Our organization has awarded 634 Historic Landmark Plaques since 1968. A Historic Landmark plaque identifies the site as a significant part of our local heritage. It will not protect a building from alteration or demolition. Buildings, structures, districts, and landscapes may be approved for a Historic Landmark plaque if all of the following conditions are met:
- they are remarkable pieces of architecture, engineering, construction, landscape design, or planning, or impart a rich sense of history;
- alterations, additions, or deterioration have not substantially lessened their value in the above respects;
- they are at least 50 years old and are located within Allegheny County or surrounding counties (see above).
- they are not located in historic districts bearing a plaque (unless of exceptional individual significance).
For more information about this program, contact Frank Stroker: frank@phlf.org or 412-471-5808 ext. 525.
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Scholarship Recipients Celebrate at Historic Mansions on Fifth
Landmarks Scholarship award recipients together with their parents and members of the Scholarship Committee posed for a photo at the historic Mansions on Fifth Hotel in Shadyside.
Our organization was delighted to host our Landmarks Scholarship Awards reception at the historic Mansions on Fifth Hotel in Shadyside on June 17.
In this, our 27th year of this scholarship program, our organization awarded three scholarships and five Honorable Mention-awards to college-bound students in Allegheny County who care deeply about the history and distinctive built environment of our city and region.
This year’s awards, makes it 94 scholarships and 74 Honorable Mentions that our organization has awarded to high school graduates in Allegheny County since the program’s inception in 1999. This program has helped to introduce young people to the work and mission of our organization and has created a network of support and a sense of family among the recipients.
The scholarship award of $6,000 is payable over four years, while the Honorable Mention award is a one-time gift of $250, payable to the recipient’s college or university for tuition and book expenses.
The 2025 Scholarship winners are:
- Ryann Johnson of Pittsburgh CAPA, will attend Morgan State University
- Ala Kalani of North Allegheny, will attend the University of Pittsburgh
- Nora Kudis of Thomas Jefferson, will attend Saint Vincent College
Our Honorable Mention recipients are:
- Brodie Bard of Pittsburgh Sci-Tech, will attend Susquehanna University
- Aviv Davidson of Pittsburgh Allderdice, will attend American University
- Chloe Hanna of Quaker Valley, will attend Fordham University
- Riley Sheposh of McKeesport, will attend Duquesne University
- Sarah Voigt of Shady Side Academy, will attend Brown University
We were delighted to interact with our scholarship and honorable mention winners, together with past scholarship recipients, Scholarship Committee members, staff and members of our organization’s Board of Trustees.
David Brashear, who chairs the Scholarship Committee, and initiated the Landmarks Scholarship Program with funding through a PHLF Named Fund, presided over the event and congratulated award recipients along with their parents on the submission of essays that reflect their love of our city and region, and its built environment.
The Landmarks Scholarship program is supported by foundations, businesses, and many PHLF members have generously contributed to it over the years.
Located in a stretch of Shadyside that was once famously known as Millionaire’s Row, what is now Mansions on Fifth Hotel, was built in 1906 as the home of Willis McCook, a Pittsburgh lawyer and industrialist who was Henry Clay Frick’s attorney. The mansion, and a sister house was designed by the Pittsburgh architectural firm Carpenter and Crocker. It was completed in 1906.
It would go on to serve as a private residence and a boarding house for college students for many years before it was saved from demolition and adapted for a new use as a boutique hotel with the help of our organization. Today, the house boasts of a 22-room boutique hotel and is protected by a preservation easement controlled by our organization.
Scroll through the photo gallery below to see more photos from our reception.
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Landmarks Awards Three Scholarships and Five Honorable Mentions in 2025
Our organization has awarded three scholarships and five Honorable Mention-awards to college-bound students in Allegheny County who care deeply about the history and distinctive built environment of our city and region.
This year’s awards, makes it 94 scholarships and 74 Honorable Mentions that we have awarded to high school graduates in Allegheny County since the program’s inception in 1999. This program has helped to introduce young people to the work and mission of our organization and has created a network of support and sense of family among the recipients.
The scholarship award of $6,000 is payable over four years, while the Honorable Mention award is a one-time gift of $250, payable to the recipient’s college or university for tuition and book expenses.
The 2025 Scholarship winners are:
- Ryann Johnson of Pittsburgh CAPA, will attend Morgan State University
- Ala Kalani of North Allegheny, will attend the University of Pittsburgh
- Nora Kudis of Thomas Jefferson, will attend Saint Vincent College
Our Honorable Mention recipients are:
- Brodie Bard of Pittsburgh Sci-Tech, will attend Susquehanna University
- Aviv Davidson of Pittsburgh Allderdice, will attend American University
- Chloe Hanna of Quaker Valley, will attend Fordham University
- Riley Sheposh of McKeesport, will attend Duquesne University
- Sarah Voigt of Shady Side Academy, will attend Brown University
The awards will be presented during a private reception on Tuesday, June 17, where we look forward to meeting our award winners together with their families.
David Brashear, who chairs the Scholarship Committee, initiated the Landmarks Scholarship Program with funding through a PHLF Named Fund. Since then, the program has been supported by foundations, businesses, and many PHLF members have generously contributed to it over the years.
We welcome contributions in support of the Landmarks Scholarship Program. Please click here to contribute; be sure to designate your gift to “Scholarship.”
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The Clement: Adaptive Use in Tarentum
How a $200,000 Loan from Landmarks Community Capital Helped Finance the Transformation of a former historic church building into a multi-use events space.
Phillip Rhodes stands outside The Clement, his office and event space in the former St. Clement’s Catholic Church in Tarentum, PA.
It was some time in December 2015, when Phillip Rhodes was scouring the internet for a storage-space he could use that he came across a rather unusual listing on Craigslist— an auction for a more than 100-year-old former church and its adjoining school buildings in Tarentum.
A native of Freeport, Rhodes hadn’t been in the market for one, but by evening’s end, he had successfully purchased the campus of buildings that had once housed the former St. Clement’s Catholic Church and its school buildings for $50,000.
The former St. Clement church was founded in 1903 as a parish mainly for the immigrant Slovakian community that had settled in the area. The church was active until 1992 when St. Clement was merged with Sacred Heart-St. Peter parish to form the new Holy Martyrs parish.
A former bike messenger, Rhodes says he was fascinated and intrigued by the campus of the former church buildings because as a part of his job, he had had an opportunity to peek inside many of Pittsburgh’s historic buildings.
That was the beginning of his vision and the reuse of these historic former church buildings as a multi-use events space. His first tenant during the long and arduous renovation process was the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, which chose his venue for its Head Start program.
A couple of years into the renovation, Rhodes approached Landmarks Community Capital for an initial loan of $150,000, which enabled him to create an outdoor recess space for the students. An additional, $50,000 loan later enabled him to complete renovations on the sanctuary building, which is now used for events ranging from parties and weddings to “champing” or church camping events.
Now named The Clement, the venue has also since taken on additional tenants including a yoga studio, construction company, and a therapist’s office.
Rhodes credits his love for historic preservation as the inspiration for The Clement and the restoration has been arduous as it has been meticulous. It has seen Rhodes seal the asbestos tile floor in the sanctuary, preserve the colorful checkerboard pattern, and the floors now gleam and reflect the stained glass from the front door.
He recalls that when he removed the wallpaper in the sanctuary, Rhodes uncovered walls painted to resemble marble with colorful borders. Instead of painting over the walls entirely, he hired a local artist to create a mural of trees and flowers that harmonizes with the layers of paint that came before.
Throughout this project, Rhodes has been grateful for the Tarentum community’s support. Some of his earliest memories are from Tarentum, and he feels like he’s been welcomed back into the neighborhood.
He beams when he talks about his neighbors who have helped with renovation work and supplied him with meals. Like Rhodes, they’re happy to see new life in the neighborhood.
“This used to be all dark, no heat, no power or anything, and now you see a group of 20 children lining up,” he says.
Rhodes has done more than restore a building, he’s helping to revitalize a neighborhood as well.
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Grants for Historic Religious Properties
The Historic Religious Properties Grant program of our organization has awarded a total of $100,000 in matching grants to 12 congregations in Allegheny County as part of our 2025 funding cycle.
The monies, which will leverage more than $383,028 raised by the congregations, will be used to fund restoration, renovation, and maintenance projects on the historic structures utilized by religious organizations. The work ranges from masonry restoration to roof repairs, and renovation of wooden doors, and stained-glass windows, among other needs.
Click here to see our 2025 grant recipients.
Our organization is the only nonprofit organization in Allegheny County offering a continuing program of financial and technical assistance to historic religious property owners. We have awarded more than 302 such grants totaling nearly $2 million, and provided more than 70 technical assistance consultations, since the program’s inception in 1997.
Our effort is made possible through individual donations, private foundations, and our Donor Advised Funds.
For more information about this program, contact David Farkas: david@phlf.org or 412-471-5808 ext. 516.
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Internship Spotlight: Reflecting on the History of the Fifth-Forbes Preservation Battle
PHLF Archivist Anna Samuels (left) and Zoe Trexel (right), a library intern from Kenyon College, spent the summer 20024 processing our organization’s collection of files of the Fifth-Forbes preservation battle.
Over the summer, our organization welcomed Zoe Trexel, an anthropology major at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, to work alongside our Archivist Anna Samuels in the James D. Van Trump Library & Archives.
Zoe helped to review and reprocess the Fifth & Forbes Collection which highlights the preservation battle surrounding our organization’s opposition to former Mayor Tom Murphy’s plan for Downtown Pittsburgh, which would have seen the demolition of 64 buildings in Downtown.
In this essay, Zoe reflects about the ways in which her background in anthropology informed her understanding of Pittsburgh’s preservation history.
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By Zoe Trexel
After visiting a few of my college friends’ hometowns, we started describing ourselves as “place-memory people.” This invented phrase encapsulates how deeply we as individuals value our hometowns, typical local haunts, and the landmarks of our childhoods.
Growing up in Pittsburgh was certainly a formative experience. It is impossible to explore the city without understanding how the contours of the landscape, and the skeleton left behind by its industrial history, partition an already small city into even smaller neighborhoods with their own character. I treasure all the quirky neighborhoods, eccentric traditions and the distinctive “yinzer” vocabulary. I have learned to love it even more as I have been able to share it with other people. Pittsburgh is particularly remarkable because of the contradictions ingrained within its culture, the most evident being the importance of its past and the simultaneous trend towards some vague idea of “modernization.”
This summer, I was given the opportunity to explore this juxtaposition in the archives of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. Each day, I delved into documents that connected my love of my hometown to my anthropological interest in the desire to preserve the past societies and structures for posterity. The particular collection I dealt with centered around the Fifth and Forbes controversy, in which former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy proposed a plan that would have destroyed a significant number of historical buildings and removed many local small businesses in favor of a vast mall contracted through a Chicago developer.
At first, sorting through the documents seemed like a somewhat daunting task. Without a full understanding of all the different factions and individuals with a stake in the fight against Murphy’s plan, it was unclear exactly how the documents fit together. However, as I read through the archival material, the story started to piece itself together.
The deal intended to take advantage of Pittsburgh’s push towards progress to the detriment of its own citizens and integrity. As I explored further, it became clear to me that the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation played a pivotal role in this narrative and I was fortunate enough to work in the very office that pushed back against Murphy’s plan. After completing the project, I reorganized the collection’s archival system in a more logical manner. The main characters of this battle, from large task forces and powerful politicians to private citizens with an interest in the survival of this city, were put at the forefront of the new organizational system.
As an anthropology major at Kenyon College, I feel that historic preservation battles such as Fifth and Forbes can be better understood through an anthropological lens. Place is important to humans because it marks the way we interact with our worlds and to others. In the same sense that archaeologists attempt to understand the lives of past societies by studying their spaces, we are able to use the same methodology to gain a broader understanding of the intricacies of our everyday lives and what it means to inherit structures past generations have created. The push to maintain as many historical façades as possible and preserve local businesses highlights a reverence for Pittsburgh’s past and a concurrent yet seemingly contradictory dedication to its future.
I believe this not to be a glorification of the industrial city that came before, but a realization of the need to maintain the physical structures of the past in order to understand how we have arrived at the present moment. The spaces we inhabit not only inform us about our way of life but dictate it, thus permeating human memory and allowing us to cherish others and the lives we’ve lived in these spaces.
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Layers of History: Adaptive Reuse With Financing Through Landmarks Community Capital
The café space at Fulton Common features original yellow brick along the interior perimeter of the building, and a white oak floor with wood sourced from the Allegheny Forest.
Brian and Irwin Mendelssohn, the brothers behind Botero Development, are no strangers to working with historic buildings. The duo owns a variety of redeveloped properties including Row House Cinema, a single-screen movie theater in what was once a narrow house, and the Lawrenceville Market House, a shared-retail space in a former Mellon Bank building across the street. When they set their sights on Manchester, it made sense that they’d choose a historic property.
A co-working and kitchen incubator space, Fulton Commons, was originally built as the St. Joseph’s Elementary School in 1947 and later housed St. Vincent de Paul offices, and Botero has paid homage to the yellow-brick building’s history by highlighting and supplementing its architectural and design features.
Pictured here: Brian and Irwin Mendelssohn, proprietors of Botero Development.
The brothers are drawn to historic buildings not only because of their interesting architecture, but also because of the challenge they present. When working with a new building, there’s a template in place, but with a historic building there are constraints that force you to add your own layers of history and beauty, Irwin Mendelssohn, explained recently.
Those “layers of history,” are easy to see in the features of the redeveloped historic building that is Fulton Commons. The building’s original features like its tin ceiling tiles uncovered during renovation; its yellow brick which runs around the perimeter of the space, and its 1940s-era classroom doors on select offices, offer it a distinctive historic aesthetic.
In addition to highlighting the building’s original features, the Mendelssohn brothers added a distinctive touch of their own to augment a sense of historic feeling to the building. This included wood floors made from white oak sourced from the Allegheny Forest and a touch of vintage décor. One set of arm chairs, for example, features repurposed fabric patches from Old Flame Mending, a Pittsburgh-based sewing service.
Fulton Commons, which opened in July 2020, in part, thanks to an $833,000 construction loan from Landmarks Community Capital— a non-profit lending subsidiary of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation— is open to its members 24-hours a day.
The building features a combination of offices, dedicated desks, and open-seating options in six spaces, which range from Art Deco Miami- to 1940s-era Schoolhouse-style. The kitchen incubator at Fulton Commons is the largest shared kitchen space in the city and offers dedicated prep stations and storage space.
Located at 1546 Fulton Street, Fulton Commons is a contributing resource to the Manchester City Designated Historic District. Its adaptive reuse was financed in part by Landmarks Community Capital, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), certified by the United States Department of the Treasury.
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An Update From Our Archives: Rehousing Project Completed
Our organization has completed a grant-funded records rehousing project that allowed us to review, reprocess, and rehouse the papers of three former PHLF staff members: founding Chairman Charles C. Arensberg and architectural historians James D. Van Trump and Walter C. Kidney.
Over the past year and a half, Archivist Anna Samuels and two interns from Duquesne University’s Public History graduate program reviewed materials and transferred all documents to acid-free folders and boxes, reorganized materials as necessary, and digitized fragile manuscripts. By rehousing the collections, we’ve ensured that these materials will be preserved for years to come.
Charles C. Arensberg was PHLF’s founding chairman and served on the board for 30 years. His collection offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the founding and early operations of the foundation. Highlights include Arensberg’s “Chairman’s Ramble” column that ran in our PHLF newsletter, assorted letters to the editor he authored, and materials related to his tenure on the National Trust of Historic Preservation’s Board of Advisors.
Walter C. Kidney served as PHLF’s architectural historian for nearly 20 years and his collection contains correspondence, research and manuscripts. During her internship, Katie Ploger discovered some hidden gems within the collection: “Shuffled in the correspondence and in later boxes of the collection were more personal things that belonged to [Kidney]. Letters to friends and family, mementos of childhood and travel, and other personal belongings could be found within the collection. One of the most eye catching and interesting of these documents is a letter from Walter to his parents in the 1950s on the ship “Argentina” on a voyage to Denmark. The letter is written on the backs of two ships menus featuring broiled halibut, fried pigeon in a cream sauce, and roast pork with red cabbage.”
James D. Van Trump was co-founder and PHLF’s first architectural historian. Intern Hannah LeComte reviewed correspondence, research materials, photographs, and handwritten manuscripts, noting themes of “urban development and ‘renewal’ in industrial and deindustrializing cities, historic preservation and the field’s connection to the environmental movement, and documentation of grassroots efforts to determine which sites deserve protection and preservation.” LeComte reflected on her work with the collection, writing, “Housing some of the foremost scholarship on the history of Pittsburgh architecture and development, the Van Trump Papers provide a unique way to study architectural history and historic preservation efforts in Pittsburgh and connect these efforts to broader trends in 20th Century United States history. The personal papers of James Van Trump integrate a human element to his extensive scholarship and provide insight into his motivations and desires as a researcher, advocate, teacher, and friend.”
The Charles C. Arensberg, Walter C. Kidney, and James D. Van Trump Collections are available for members and researchers to access in the James D. Van Trump Library in the PHLF offices. Contact archivist Anna Samuels (anna@phlf.org; 412-471-5808 ext. 542) to set up an appointment to visit the archives.
This project was supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission’s Historical Archives & Records Care Grant, a program funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
