Category Archive: Architecture & Architects
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Last bell at Schenley: Historic high school closes
By Bill Zlatos
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, June 11, 2008Students left Schenley High School on Tuesday more with a sense of resignation and eagerness for the summer than sadness for their school’s storied past.“You may not see any depression today, but I think in September it’ll hit us,” said activities director Joe Ehman.
As the last bell sounded at 11:10 a.m. Tuesday, freshmen, sophomores and juniors hugged each other, snapped photos in the hallway and said good-bye. Seniors had their last day of class Friday. In tribute, they scattered 92 roses — one for each year of the school’s existence — on its front steps.
“It hasn’t really hit me yet,” said Tariq Stephens, 16, a sophomore from Beltzhoover. “But I know at the end of the day it’s going to be crazy, because it’ll be the last time I see the inside of this building.”
The 1,127 Schenley students still do not know whether the Oakland school will close. The city school board will vote June 25 on a recommendation by city schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt to shut it down.Roosevelt has said the district cannot afford the $76.2 million cost of fixing the building’s mechanical systems and removing its asbestos.
Whether it closes or is renovated, Schenley students who will be in grades 10-12 in the fall are being assigned to Reizenstein School in East Liberty.
There was little evidence yesterday to indicate that Schenley was closing for good. One sign on the floor said, “Schenley we’ll miss you.”
“For a school that’s closing, it’s very quiet,” said Assistant Principal Nina Sacco. “It’s very peaceful.”
Sacco owes her very life to Schenley. Her grandparents met as Schenley students in the school auditorium.
Although classes have ended for students, teachers will be in school through the end of the week.
Kelly McKrell, an English and drama teacher, mulled her feelings in a room full of props such as a giant jukebox and an oversized pharaoh’s head, relics of the school musicals she has directed.
“It’s going to be difficult for me on Friday,” said McKrell, a Schenley graduate. “That’s the last day I walk out of this building and never come back. I don’t know how I’m going to walk out.”
Ehman has the unenviable task of returning to alumni all the memorabilia they gave the school over the years. “It’s just a big mess,” he said.
A couple from Kansas, graduates from the 1950s, came by recently to retrieve the wife’s megaphone and cheerleading uniform.
Schenley Principal Sophia Facaros, patrolling the halls, reminded a student to remove his earphones. She was so intent on making sure that students behaved properly that she did not have time to feel much of anything.
“There isn’t one ounce of emotion in me right now, because the job is too big to allow anything else to come into it,” she said.
Luke Trout, 17, a junior from Morningside, decided he was not leaving the school without a souvenir. He removed a framed picture of a rocket from the cafeteria wall “just to have something to remember Schenley.”
“What are they going to do,” he asked, “suspend me?”
As the clock wound down, security guard Marsha Comer hugged students good-bye.
“I can’t cry,” she said. “I love them. They’ll be okay.”
When the final bell rang, some students whooped their approval.
Then they trudged down the steps past the wilted roses.
Bill Zlatos can be reached at bzlatos@tribweb.com or 412-320-7828.
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New Pittsburgh Website Features 25 Downtown Landmarks
Click below to explore an interactive website that plays off Landmarks’ most popular downtown walking tour for students. There’s plenty of information, animation, fun facts, and material for adults too.
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Bethel AME marks 200th birthday
By Craig Smith
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, June 2, 2008Katie Everette Johnson’s pastor asked her to accompany him to a meeting with then-Pittsburgh Mayor David L. Lawrence because she took meticulous notes.It was a difficult assignment, recalled Johnson, now 85, of Schenley Heights.To make way for the Civic Arena, Lawrence said, the city would have to tear down the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Hill District, where Johnson had attended services for 14 years.
“Why our church?” she said, recalling the emotions of that meeting.
The Rev. John D. Bright, pastor, pleaded in vain to save the historic church, Johnson said. The building was razed in 1956.Bethel AME Church, which served as a station for the Underground Railroad, will celebrate its 200th birthday next week.
The birthday means a lot to the congregation, said the Rev. Nathaniel Colvin, pastor. Many remember the pain of losing their church to the wrecking ball, he said. Bethel AME will sponsor a week’s worth of events beginning Sunday.
“When you talk about losing a building, a church building, it’s like losing a family home,” Colvin said.
Bethel was the first African Methodist Episcopal Church west of the Allegheny Mountains and is the oldest black congregation in the city. Its roots were planted in 1808 in a house on Front Street, Downtown.
Chartered in 1818, the church would be located in a number of buildings over the next two centuries. Bethel started the area’s first school for black children in 1831 and was host for the state’s first civil rights convention in 1841.
“The African-American church, particularly a church like Bethel AME is like the glue that holds the soul of the community together: offering hope and the sobering truth of the challenges of putting life together in a world like ours today,” said Sarah L McMillen, assistant professor of sociology at Duquesne University.
The church served as one of the main stations of the Underground Railroad, a secret network that helped fugitive slaves reach sanctuary in free states or Canada years before slavery was abolished in the United States.
“We are very proud to know the African Methodist Episcopal Church has been in the community this long. It has endured the days of slavery and other hardships,” said the Rev. Robert Vaughn Webster, bishop of Bethel AME’s 3rd District, which includes Ohio, West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania.
Many families stuck with the church, one of the oldest in the district, through its moves. Bethel’s oldest member is 107 years old.
“The fact that this congregation has continued services for 200 years in several church buildings in several locations indicates the continuity of the African-American culture in Pittsburgh, its deep roots and its continuing new generations,” said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Craig Smith can be reached at csmith@tribweb.com or 412-380-5646.
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Modern Venture: Home designed by famous architect on history group’s East End tour
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Like the elegant orchids in her kitchen windows, Betty Abrams’ love of beauty bloomed in a nurturing environment. Her mother designed the family’s English Tudor home on Beacon Street in Squirrel Hill and loved fashion; her father’s furniture sales on the streets of Braddock attracted buyers to his business, Ohringer Home Furniture Co.
Mrs. Abrams still recalls what features she liked best about the homes of her childhood friends and has read architectural magazines all her life.
So, it’s not surprising that she interviewed five architects before choosing Robert Venturi, winner of the 1991 Pritzker Architecture Prize, to design her Woodland Road home, which will be featured on Tuesday’s tour sponsored by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, the city’s largest preservation group.
Set on an acre of wooded land with a view of a 100-year-old stone bridge and three Japanese maples, the home, which features an entire wall of southern exposure windows, invites the outdoors inside.
Mrs. Abrams asked Venturi if he had ever visited the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., a sleek, light-filled space that is the work of I. M. Pei.
“That’s what I want,” she told him. “And that’s what I got,” she said during an interview last week. “I made Venturi listen to me.”
No walls separate the home’s kitchen, living room, bars and dining room, which are all visible as soon as you enter the first floor. The home’s most dramatic feature is a floor-to-ceiling window that is shaped like a ship’s wheel and cut into eight pieces.
Her late husband, Irving, was floored by the window’s design when he saw it on the blueprints.
“It’ll be OK. You’ll get used to it,” Mrs. Abrams told him.
A determined woman, Mrs. Abrams knew what she wanted — a 10-by-15-foot walk-in closet in the master bedroom, a lap pool just off the master bath, a heated two-car garage, maid’s quarters, and a living room and kitchen large enough to entertain.
The Abrams bought the land in January 1979.
“We broke ground in September of 1980 and moved in in April of 1982,” Mrs. Abrams recalled, adding that she began working as a financial adviser so she could afford to buy art for the couple’s new home.
The focal point of the living room is a Roy Lichtenstein print of a domestic scene; lowering the artwork by about a foot made a huge difference in how it looked and harmonized with the architecture, she added.
Noel Jeffrey finished the home’s interior design, selecting three shades of blue that are all visible as you stand in the living room. A light blue ceiling and darker shades of that color set off the balcony of an overhead loft that contains a library. Three clerestory windows light up the ceiling, intensifying the illusion of a blue sky overhead.
Three modern red chairs in the living room face a three-section sofa that once sat in the Pittsburgh Room of the Duquesne Club. After buying it at auction, she had the sofa reupholstered with understated multicolored fabric she found in Las Vegas.
The black and white marble dining room table has four chairs painted in a periwinkle automobile paint. Soothing celery green walls set off a neatly arranged, mirrored bar.
Long before granite counter tops became fashionable, Mrs. Abrams chose black and white granite for the kitchen and for two long bars where she serves appetizers and cocktails.
An accomplished cook who taught cooking and ran a catering business years ago, Mrs. Abrams insisted the kitchen be wider than Venturi had planned. She also rejected the idea of a grand staircase. When the Carnegie Museum of Art exhibited Venturi’s designs in 2002, the architect conceded that she had been right as he savored a bowl of her mushroom barley soup while seated in her dining room.
In her will, Mrs. Abrams has bequeathed the property to PHLF. Some day — when the house is at least 50 years old — it may be listed on the National Register of Historic Places due to its distinctive features and the significance of Venturi’s contributions to post-modern architecture.
In the meantime, its caretaker is enjoying it immensely. She particularly loves the rectangular skylight in the master bath.
“When I take a bath, I can look up and see the moon,” she said.
Marylynne Pitz may be reached at 412-263-1648 or mpitz@post-gazette.com.First published on May 31, 2008 at 12:00 am -
Shadyside tour benefits History and Landmarks scholarship fund
By Bob Karlovits
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, May 25, 2008Ten years ago, David Brashear began a scholarship program that he hoped would foster an appreciation for Pittsburgh among younger generations.This year, Brashear and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation are sponsoring a tour that will showcase sites to “help show the understanding of what makes Pittsburgh so great,” he says.The tour is part of the Landmarks Scholarship Celebration June 3 at Andrew W. Mellon Hall at Chatham University, Shadyside.
The event will feature the awarding of scholarships and comments from Brashear; Esther L. Barazzone, president of Chatham; and Arthur P. Ziegler, president of the History and Landmarks group.
But the focal point of the celebration will be a self-guided tour of three sites in the Woodland Road area at the heart of Chatham’s campus. With wine, hors d’oeuvres and docents at each site, the tour will stop at:• A Tudor Revival home with 11 fireplaces, stained-glass windows and dramatic woodwork. It was built by attorney Alexander M. Neeper in 1903 and is owned by Louis and Kathy Testoni.
• A home designed by Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi, an advocate of Postmodern style. It was built in 1979-82 by Betty Abrams and her late husband, Irving, as their “retirement pad,” she says.
• The renovated Mellon Board Room, which has replaced the swimming pool in the former mansion of Andrew Mellon, now owned by Chatham University. It was part of a $1.8 million renewal project.
The three sites are viewed as part of what makes Pittsburgh distinct.
“It is a city that is compact, yet it has a lot going on,” says Brashear, a Pittsburgh native who is president of Edgewood Investors near New York City. Each year, the scholarship fund he founded awards grants to students who compete by writing essays that display their appreciation for the Pittsburgh area.
There have been 25 scholarships awarded since 1999. They are for $1,000 for each of the winner’s four undergraduate years of college.
The celebration and tour, sponsored by the David and Janet Brashear Foundation, the Bank of New York Mellon and PNC, is, in some ways, an effort to call attention to the existence of the scholarships, Brashear says Louise Sturgess, executive director of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, says the tour shows off some of the city’s hidden gems.
“We go from the very grand of the Mellon Hall, to a little less grand to the very modern,” Sturgess says of the three sites.
The two homes vary greatly, but both are striking. Abrams confesses that she’s a “frustrated architect” and says she and her late husband wanted to build a dynamic modern home on the site they found in the Woodland Road area.
“If we couldn’t have gotten this spot, we wouldn’t have built this house,” she says about the home, which she hired Venturi to design after interviewing a handful of architects.
The house is at the base of a hillside that surrounds it on three sides and once was the location of a pool and creek. Abrams says she and her late husband raised the spot of construction 10 feet to be above the water, but the water disappeared after construction. A stone bridge remains, but it spans nothing.
Because of its “retirement pad” nature, the home only has two bedrooms, but it has an indoor lap pool and a large family room next to a kitchen-bar area. It is an example of the flexible-space school of design that Venturi and Abrams conceived before the notion became popular.
“I love to entertain, but I am also the cook,” Abrams says. “So I wanted to be part of the party.”
The home stands out in its use of color, from sky blue in the family room ceiling to the teal-inflected shades of the exterior. It is illuminated with skylights and massive side windows that allow natural light even on gray days.
The Tudor home owned by the Testonis is from 80 years earlier and has a different kind of appeal. Its entranceway, for instance, leads to a grand staircase in the center, sitting rooms all around and a kitchen with gourmet appliances.
“We sometimes sit on the floor in that entranceway with a glass of wine and just look at the woodwork,” Kathy Testoni says.
The upstairs features four large bedrooms off a large area at the top of the steps. The property, just across the street from the Abrams’ home, also features a carriage house that has been turned into a garage with an apartment above it.
The owners are adding a 6-foot-by-10-foot room off the kitchen that Testoni says will “allow her to look out at the garden without sitting at the island.”
She jokes about being so concerned with maintaining the “integrity of the home” that it took them nine years to decide to have the work done.
Sturgess talks about how the tour came together when Abrams and Testoni, both trustees with the History and Landmarks Foundation, volunteered their homes. The use of Mellon Hall became a logical extension, Sturgess says, because of its location in the mansion of the fabled banker.
The newly renovated hall also provides a gathering spot for the event, Sturgess says, and shows off architecture in a different way. In March 2006, architect Ken Doyno began work on designing a meeting hall where there had been a swimming pool, which was rendered unnecessary because of the university’s new recreation building.
Doyno, from Rothschild Doyno Architects in the Strip District, says the effort became a classic example of “project creep,” with one job leading to another. He explains that it eventually was realized the room could be illuminated with tall windows below tiny light wells from the past.
Framework for those windows and nearby doorways was designed by Japanese woodworker Tadao Orimoto and made of mahogany, Danyo says. He adds that wood could be used only after it was certified to be taken from a forest area deemed environmentally unthreatened.
“The whole project had a very green nature,” he says, pointing out that work on the meeting room was done without affecting the trees on the carriage entrance above it.
The project also created possibilities for masonry work on the exterior and the need for new paths leading through a nearby garden area.
Brashear believes the tour is an event that fits well with the scholarship-fund effort.
“It is a way to shine the spotlight on these great homes and on the scholarship fund,” he says.
Bob Karlovits can be reached at bkarlovits@tribweb.com or 412-320-7852.
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Art appreciation
By Alice T. Carter
TRIBUNE-REVIEW THEATER CRITIC
Tuesday, May 6, 2008Diane Novosel has plans to shed light on a local art treasure in ways both literal and metaphoric.As the chairwoman of The Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka, Novosel is producing “Gift to America,” a play that celebrates the murals that adorn the walls and ceilings of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale.“I recognize (the murals) as the art treasure that it is, and really feel duty-bound to step up to the plate and do something,” says Novosel, a resident of Leechburg.
Beginning Wednesday, four actors will perform a 60-minute staged reading of David Demarest’s “Gift to America,” which was first staged at the church in 1981. The readings will be accompanied by interludes of recorded Croatian and church-related music.
In addition to raising money to properly preserve and light the murals, Novosel hopes the performances increase local awareness and appreciation for the paintings. A question-and-answer period and an opportunity to examine the murals will follow the performance.Vanka’s murals have been part of Novosel’s life since her youth, when her family lived in Lawrenceville and she attended both church and school as a parishioner at St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church.
“They always fascinated me — probably terrorized me — as a grade-school student,” says Novosel, who found her appreciation for the works growing as she grew older.
Painted in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Vanka’s murals depict Croatian peasants who left their homeland and farms to seek a better life in factories and mills in the United States. The native Croatian’s dark, dramatic and sometimes horrific scenes convey his beliefs, which were pro-labor and anti-war.
“(The murals) are certainly unique in Pittsburgh, and we feel they are of national significance,” says Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. “They express the concerns of working people of the times, and we would hope they could be preserved and restored and raise the national awareness of them.”
Geoffrey Hitch, an adjunct professor who teaches business acting at the Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, will direct “Gift to America,” as he did when it was performed in 1981.
Mike Sambol of Shaler, former choir director at St. Nicholas, will appear as Father Zagar, the pastor at St. Nicholas who originally commissioned the murals.
David Crawford of Squirrel Hill will play Maxo Vanka, and the unnamed Female Voices will be represented by Katherine Carlson of Highland Park and Crystal Manich, a former Mt. Lebanon resident who now is a New York-based actress.
Hitch emphasizes that it’s a production that focuses its attention more on the murals than the characters and actors.
“We’re not even lighting the actors. We’re lighting the murals,” he says. “This is not character acting. The acting is more the sense of being a guide to the murals. We hope the awareness of the actors is secondary to (awareness of) the murals. The main characters are the murals.”
Alice T. Carter can be reached at acarter@tribweb.comor 412-320-7808.
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‘Heritage Grant’ Aimed at Preserving Cal U Campus
BILL LIEPINIS
CalTimes
May 1, 2008For many at California University of Pennsylvania, it may seem like the changes of every semester include a new construction project on campus. Whether it’s been the demolition of Binns Hall, Longanecker or Duda Hall, the construction of Carter Hall, Booker Towers and the new Duda Hall, or the renovations of Steele Hall, Vulcan Hall and now Herron Hall, changes have become a part of life for many students, faculty and staff. Even though the campus landscape has drastically changed over the last 10 years, a new grant now backs a project in the works that will help preserve the university’s heritage in the years to come.
The $200,000 grant from the Los Angeles based J. Paul Getty Foundation was awarded to the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation last summer, which will be distributed to preservation projects on the campuses of Seton Hill, Washington & Jefferson and IUP, along with Cal U.
Project Manager and PHLF Landmarks Director of Real Estate and Special Development Projects, Eugene Matta, has been working on project plans for months, and is excited to see the work continue. With a team including an architect, a construction expert, an architectural historian and a landscape designer, Matta explains that the team’s plans are much more than just aesthetic recommendations. “Although their work is historic in nature, they also make recommendations for the future development and maintenance of the campus buildings and landscapes that are consistent with the original concepts but adapted to today’s reality.”
Matta adds that the team will also consider issues that are holding the global spotlight. “Relevant issues of today such as sustainability, health of our ecosystems and the environment in general affect us all, but mostly the young people preparing themselves for tomorrow’s challenges.”
Work on the project started last October, as team members focused on historical research for all four college campuses. The team has already completed some work on California University’s campus, and will continue their visits over the summer and into the fall semester.
As the ‘conservation team’ continues their work on plans to maintain local history on the ever-changing Cal U campus, Eugene Matta hopes that campus-community members will speak out on their opinions and ideas.
The ‘conservation team’ includes historic architect Ellis Schmidlapp, Construction and Rehabilitation expert Tom Keffer and Horticulturist and Landscape Designer Ron Block. If you have any questions, suggestions or would even like to lend some help while team is working on campus, you can contact Project Manager Eugene Matta at 412-471-5808, or email him at eugene@phlf.org
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Rescue plan for Downtown’s Market Square is expanding
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, April 28, 2008The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is tackling another building rescue project in Market Square, with the aim to further a transformation already under way in the historic Downtown public square.The South Side preservationist organization announced today it will take on restoration of the Thompson Building, a three-story structure adjacent to a trio of vacant buildings where it is spending about $2.5 million to convert into a mixed use complex known as Market at Fifth.Acquisition of the building will enable the foundation to expand its complex into that structure.
Plans for 439 Market St., 441 Market St., and 130 Fifth Ave. include a ground-level restaurant or retail store, seven upper-floor apartments and a rooftop garden.
In addition, the foundation also announced it was given an “easement in perpetuity that will protect the architectural quality of the Buhl Building, another structure on Fifth Avenue near Market Square.As reported, eight new shops have moved in — or will in the coming months — further rejuvenating the 224-year-old square.
Businesses there have credited an increased police presence to fight crime, reduce panhandling and efforts to clean up the city’s streets.
More recently, new programs have been introduced, such as the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Paris to Pittsburgh program that is providing matching grants to help restaurants and other merchants renovate their buildings and expand their operations onto sidewalks — similar to venues popular with tourists in the French capital.
Ron DaParma can be reached atrdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.