Category Archive: Architecture & Architects
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Historic Vandergrift looks to future
By Marjorie Wertz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 19, 2006In 1901, six years after the establishment of Vandergrift, Westmoreland County, Steel Workers Magazine called the town a “working man’s paradise.”
Designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect of New York’s Central Park and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Vandergrift was a planned community founded by George G. McMurtry, president of the Apollo Iron and Steel Co., Apollo. It was named after Captain J.J. Vandergrift, a director of the steel mill.
“McMurtry was one of the first industrialists who gave respect to the working man,” said Ken Blose, a member of the Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historical Society. “He believed that educated, churchgoing men who owned their own homes in their own community would make the best workers. These were radical thoughts at that time.”
McMurtry needed to expand his galvanized steel mill, so he bought a 650-acre farm site several miles downstream on the Kiskiminetas River. Olmstead designed the town so that the streets followed the natural slope of the hills and the curve of the river. The mill was constructed; streets were graded; utilities were installed; trees were planted; and street lights were erected.
“There were 14 main streets in the original design and only one place where two streets crossed,” Blose said. “There are no real corners. Every corner is a sweeping curve.”
Once the town was laid out, lots were sold only to men who worked in the mill. McMurtry established a bank so mill workers could buy homes at rates they could afford.
“For a man working in a mill in 1895, the opportunity to purchase his own home was practically nil,” Blose said.
McMurtry continued his philanthropic actions through the purchase of pipe organs for all the town’s churches. He also donated land for schools and the fire department and bought the fire department’s first equipment. Blose said McMurtry also sold land for $1 to the town for a cemetery.
“And what land that was undeveloped, he allowed the townspeople to use for recreational purposes,” Blose said.
At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Vandergrift won two gold medals for best town design, and, in 1907, the Vandergrift steel mill was the largest rolling mill in the world, producing high-quality silicon steel.
“The steel for the centerpiece of the 1964 New York World’s Fair; the Unisphere, the largest metal sculpture in the world, was finished and polished in Vandergrift. Some of the steel for the St. Louis Arch was produced in Vandergrift, and the hinges for the gates and other parts of the Panama Canal were produced in the Vandergrift Foundry,” Blose said.
McMurtry also was the primary contributor to the construction of the town’s municipal building, which housed the jail, administration offices and a 500-seat theater. That building, the Casino Theatre, is undergoing renovations by a group of volunteers, Casino Theatre Restoration and Management.
“The theatre was being used by the borough for storage,” said Mary Lee Kessler, treasurer of the organization. “The theatre seats, stage curtain and all the decorative items within the theatre had been removed. There were rumors that the theatre was going to be torn down. We couldn’t let that happen.”
Built in 1900 in the Greek revival style, the theatre was a popular venue on the vaudeville circuit. President William H. Taft, boxing champ Bob Fitzsimmons, composer Hoagy Carmichael, Tex Ritter and the Three Stooges visited the Casino.
The Casino was remodeled in 1927 as the area’s largest movie theater, and in the ’50s, it was converted to show wide-screen movies. It closed in 1981.
“The east wing of the building still houses the library, and the west wing has the offices of the borough secretary, the jail and police station,” Kessler said. “The theatre was in great disrepair, but the borough was very open to a responsible group attempting to revive it, so they leased it to us for $1 a year with the understanding that we would apply for grants to renovate it.”
Kessler has been successful in obtaining grants for renovation projects. The organization was able to locate 475 seats for $5,000 and install electrical wiring, lighting and sound. A group of volunteers, affectionately called the Tuesday Night Work Crew, arrive at the theatre Tuesday evenings and “do what needs to be done,” Kessler said.
“We replaced the four wooden ionic columns in the front of the theatre, excavated in the basement, and now there’s a very pretty ladies lounge there. We also reopened the mezzanine level and renovated the front lawn,” she said.
The discovery of two old movie window cards netted the organization about $37,000, which was used to repair the theatre’s roof. A group of Eagle Scouts was cleaning out a portion of the theatre’s upper floor when it located an old desk with an ink blotter. Under the blotter, the group found a perfectly preserved window card for the 1927 science fiction movie “Metropolis,” directed by Fritz Lang.
“One of the volunteers contacted a fellow from Greensburg who was extremely excited because memorabilia from that move is very collectible,” Kessler said. “That window card was auctioned off by Sotheby’s, and we netted $24,000.”
A second window card for the movie that had a small bend in one corner was auctioned several years later and sold for about $13,000.
The Casino Theatre officially reopened its doors in August 1995. Three years ago, Mickey Rooney performed there, and in April, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson gave one of his last performances before dying Aug. 23.
“Every year we do a magic show for children at the end of October, and during the first weekend of December, we self-produce ‘Hometown Christmas.’ This year, it will be a musical revue,” Kessler said.
On Nov. 25, 14 bands will put on a benefit concert at the Casino to help the organization pay the heating bill.
“This is a fun place to be. The people who volunteer here are very enthusiastic,” Kessler added.
The Vandergrift Improvement Program — VIP — is another nonprofit organization comprising local residents, businesses, municipal and state government officials working to protect, preserve and restore the community through the National Trust for Historical Preservations’ Main Street approach.
“We had 15 vacant storefronts out of 100 stores in our town. We didn’t want the town to rot away,” said Wayne Teeple, vice president of the 100-member VIP.
The premise of the town’s Main Street approach is to encourage economic revitalization through a four-pronged system — design, economic restructuring, promotion and organization — to address all of the commercial district’s needs.
The town, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is in the first year of the Main Street program.
“We had to raise $94,000 to obtain funding for a Department of Community and Economic Development Main Street grant,” Teeple said. “Within a three-month period, the residents and Vandergrift government pledged that amount over a five-year period.”
The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, a nonprofit historic preservation group, was hired to manage the Main Street program, said Eugene Matta, director of the foundation’s real estate and special-development programs.
Shaun Yurcaba, of History and Landmarks, is Vandergrift’s Main Street coordinator. She is helping VIP coordinate its efforts.
“The four committees working in design, economic restructuring, promotion and organization fulfill the requirements of the Main Street program,” Yurcaba said.
The design committee is developing guidelines for the protection of historical buildings during changes or renovations. Those on the economic restructuring committee are determining how many businesses are downtown and what types of businesses are in place in order to gauge what improvements are needed.
“The organization committee works on establishing relationships with other community organizations such as the Casino Theatre renovation group and the historical society,” Yurcaba added.
Trying to bring people into town is the work of the promotion committee, which sponsors events such as a summer car cruise and a 2007 pet calendar contest, in which people cast ballots for their favorite pet photos at Vandergrift businesses.
“Once we go into year two of the Main Street project, we become eligible for an $80,000 grant — $30,000 of it will be available to downtown building owners in the form of grants,” Teeple said. “They can apply for a $5,000 matching grant for renovating the facades of their buildings. We already have five building owners interested in this.”
Other groups are working toward Vandergrift’s revitalization, as well.
“Sustainable Pittsburgh is working with us so that Vandergrift becomes a green sustainable development,” Matta said. “And the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative through the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Engineering is also working on quite a project in Vandergrift.”
Sustainable Pittsburgh served as the “matchmaker” between the initiative and Vandergrift, said Eric Beckman, co-director of the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative.
“The goal of MSI is to create the next generation of technology that is cost-effective and sustainable,” Beckman said. “We brought in a team of undergraduate engineering students into Vandergrift and asked them if they could bring energy conservation to the Casino Theatre. The question became ‘How do you lower energy bills without destroying the historic value of the community?’ ”
The shallow, yet swift-flowing Kiski River, which surrounds Vandergrift on three sides, might be able answer, Beckman said. The group submitted a proposal to the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance for a sustainable creative energy grant.
“We went in on this proposal with Sustainable Pittsburgh. Whatever we come up with in Vandergrift, we could use in other parts of the state,” Beckman said. “Eventually, we want to create something that will generate electricity and try it out in Vandergrift. The town will be our test bed.”
All the partnerships have helped VIP pick up steam on revitalization projects.
“Other towns are calling us for information. Everyone has a passion for this, and it’s something that’s really taking off,” Teeple said.
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- Carino’s, which closed several years ago, was housed in one of Vandergrift’s signature buildings. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- John Pomfret repainted a turn-of-the-century tin ceiling in his store, Pomfret’s Paint and Variety. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- The Casino Theatre was remodeled in 1927 and again in the ’50s before closing in 1981. It reopened in August 1995 after undergoing extensive work. The building houses a library, municipal offices and a police station. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- Mary Lee Kessler is treasurer of Casino Theatre Restoration and Management, a group of volunteers renovating the theater. — Steven Dietz/For the Tribune-Review
Marjorie Wertz can be reached at .
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Destruction of Mellon Bank Lobby
Courtesy of KDKA
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Pittsburgh Bridges Public Service Announcement
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Students take on architecture
By Bob Stiles
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, October 28, 2005Shannon Page likes ugly buildings.
“I love to make them look pretty,” she said.Page and about 150 other Southwestern Pennsylvania students will get the chance — at least on paper and in a model — to improve the looks of one building, the former Bugzy’s Bagel shop in Greensburg.
The students are participating in the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation’s 10th annual Architectural Design Challenge, which is being held in Westmoreland County for the first time.
“I like to put things together and make things better than they use to be,” Page, a Belle Vernon Area High School sophomore, said of why she takes part in the competition. “And I like to make them more appealing to the senses.”
On Tuesday and Wednesday, middle and high school students from about a dozen school districts, most in Westmoreland County, examined the exterior of the former bagel shop on West Pittsburgh Street. They also toured nearby structures, including the Palace Theatre.
The competition requires the students to come up with a use for the building — one that they anticipate would please and attract the public. They then must redesign the building, depict that revamped structure in a model and present their ideas to a panel of judges.
Judging will be held in February for both the middle and high school students at the Greensburg Garden and Civic Center.
Among the criteria used in the evaluation are the project’s feasibility and the creativity of the students. Other factors are the accuracy of the model and the effectiveness of the oral presentation.
In the competition, the students must keep in mind how their new design would fit in with surrounding structures — the reason for touring the nearby buildings, officials said.
Foundation officials said they brought the competition from Allegheny County, where it previously was held, to Greensburg because of the strong interest shown in the past by Westmoreland County schools.
“These kids are incredible,” said Louise Sturgess, the foundation’s executive director. “What they’re able to do is amazing.”
To attract customers, Page and her six schoolmates are considering turning Bugzy’s into a restaurant with structural features from the 1930s and ’40s.
“And to attract more people, we want to put shops around it,” Page said.
Antique stores, which are proposed for a parking lot that adjoins Bugzy’s, are especially being considered by her group, Page said.
The team that Page was on last year finished third in the competition, with a museum it proposed for Point State Park in Pittsburgh.
“We were close, but we’ve never actually won. Hopefully, this is our year,” Page said.
Sara Yates, 17, a Yough senior who hopes one day to be involved in government, said she isn’t as interested in architecture as she is on the effects of construction on a community and its government.
The competition — her fourth — also is a blast, she said.
“I just think it’s fun,” Yates said. “I like building the model and presenting it. I like public speaking.”
The Franklin Regional team that Andrew Skoff, 14, was on last year finished second in the competition. The freshman is participating in the challenge — his third — because he is interested in architectural engineering.
“I like the planning, the thought process that goes into it,” Skoff said.
His team was considering turning the Greensburg building into a bookstore with a cafe and outside garden.
The students learned about zoning and other building-related regulations from representatives of the Westmoreland County Historical Society, the Westmoreland Cultural Trust, the Greensburg Planning Department and the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture. The officials also shared their views on what Greensburg and its surrounding communities are like.
Linda Kubas, Palace Theatre manager, said the tour of Greensburg’s downtown was to help the students to design a building that conforms to the other structures in the community.
“It’s to blend into the use and the character of downtown Greensburg,” she said of the students’ building.
Greensburg planner Barbara Ciampini told the high school students that Bugzy’s closed several years ago, and the structure previously was used as a bar.
“It was a vibrant corner,” Ciampini said. “It would be great to see that once again.”
Bob Stiles can be reached at bstiles@tribweb.com or (724) 836-6622.
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Legacy of architect Henry Hornbostel lives on
By Kurt Shaw
TRIBUNE-REVIEW ART CRITIC
Sunday, August 21, 2005Even a scant overview of the history of Pittsburgh architecture would not be complete without the mention of Henry Hornbostel, whose designs range from Downtown landmarks such as the Grant Building and the City-County Building to homes heading east from Squirrel Hill to Monroeville.
Hornbostel’s stamp on Pittsburgh’s urban sprawl is so ubiquitous that even contemporary architects like Michael Dennis, principal of Michael Dennis & Associates of Boston and professor of architecture at MIT, couldn’t ignore Hornbostel’s influence when he set about designing the newer half of Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in 1987.
Recently completed, the new half looks much like the old half, which was designed by Hornbostel in 1904 and was the winning entry in the Carnegie Technical Schools Competition, right down to the cream-colored brick exterior.
“He was trying to compliment rather than rival Hornbostel, I’m sure,” says Walter C. Kidney, author of the architect’s first and only monograph, “Henry Hornbostel: An Architect’s Master Touch” ($49.95, published by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in cooperation with Roberts Rinehart Publishers).
An architectural historian with the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Kidney says that Hornbostel “was much more original than most.”
“I’d say Hornbostel and Ernest Flagg were the two big original thinkers of the American Renaissance,” Kidney says. “They were sort of in it, but not all the way in it. They did what they felt like doing.”
Perhaps of all his designs, the original Carnegie Tech campus proves this the most.
On the outside, the classically styled exteriors made of cream-colored brick and white terra-cotta trim are every bit the perfect example of the American Renaissance period. But inside, visitors will find that the architect took some unusual liberties — such as dramatic vaulted ceilings, curved staircases clad in Guastavino tile, industrial-looking archways made of concrete and steel, as well as railings made of steel pipe.
Though the use of these materials undoubtedly references the purpose of the institution as a training ground for industry, still, to this day, the combination of these materials into a stunning Beaux-Arts-inspired style has a commanding yet graceful presence.
“He was sort of playing around with the technical theme, yet using a lot of elegance, too,” Kidney says.
The College of Fine Arts building, completed in 1916, is even more over-the-top with exterior niches carved with specific architectural orders and motifs in mind. Inside, more art historical references abound. Specifically, the floors in the vestibule and on the first floor have inlaid marble tile that features the footprints of some the world’s greatest buildings, such as Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s, Chartres Cathedral, the Parthenon and the Temple of Horus at Edfu.
A magnificently painted ceiling depicts those buildings and more as well as portraits of many of the most influential architects, artists, composers, writers throughout history.
Just as over the top was the architect himself.
A flamboyant figure, Hornbostel was born in 1867, the same year as the equally flamboyant Frank Lloyd Wright. Like Wright, he was a snappy dresser, oftentimes spotted wearing red string ties (rumored to have been fashioned from ladies’ silk garters) below a proud chin that sported a dramatic Vandyke beard.
His affinity with Wright stops there, however. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Hornbostel was classically trained at Columbia University in New York City and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Though he had designed a number of buildings, even bridges, before winning the 1904 Carnegie Technical Schools Competition, it was his subsequent move to Pittsburgh that would begin the most ambitious part of his career.
As the founder of the Carnegie Tech Department of Architecture and as architect for numerous prominent buildings around town such as the Temple Rodef Shalom (1904), the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall (1907), Webster Hall hotel (1926) and the City-County Building (1915-1917, with Edward B. Lee), Hornbostel played an important role in shaping Pittsburgh’s architectural image in the first decades of the 20th century.
In addition to his role as the head of Carnegie Tech’s Department of Architecture, he also had a private practice in Pittsburgh, taught at Columbia University in New York and was at various times a partner in the New York firms of Howell, Stokes & Hornbostel; Wood, Palmer & Hornbostel; Palmer & Hornbostel; and Palmer, Hornbostel & Jones.
Although the bulk of his practice centered in and around Pittsburgh — where the 110 works he designed there represent roughly about half of his total output — Hornbostel executed projects throughout the country. They include several bridges in New York City, government buildings in Albany, N.Y., Hartford, Conn., and Oakland, Calif., as well as the campus plans of the University of California at Berkeley, Emory University in Atlanta, and Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
However, even with such ambitious projects coming to fruition, especially in the area of designing buildings for academic institutions, the architect’s greatest, most ambitious, campus plan was never realized.
Designed for the Western University of Pennsylvania in 1908, the same year the school changed its name to the University of Pittsburgh, The Acropolis Plan, according to “Pittsburgh: An urban portrait” by Franklin Toker, called for the construction of a series of buildings across the 43 acres of hillside, facing southeast toward Forbes and Fifth avenues.
The award-winning design chosen from a national competition that garnered 61 entries was dubbed the Acropolis Plan after the Pittsburgh Leader newspaper compared it to the Athenian Acropolis when it was still intact.
Proposed as an ongoing evolutionary plan of buildings designed in the Classical style, which allowed for the university to grow and add buildings as it would see fit, it included plans for a 1,000 ft. subterranean escalator that would run right up its center to reach the climaxing temple that topped it.
A wildly ambitious idea, but as Toker, a University of Pittsburgh professor of the history of art and architecture, contends, “Hornbostel had already proved his mettle with the Carnegie technical school, plus he had come in second with the competition for University of California at Berkeley, so he knew what people wanted in a campus.”
The cornerstone for the first building to be built — the School of Mines — was laid in October 1908, and four more built between then and 1920. But ironically, the project was halted with the discovery of previously cleared and covered over coal mines, some of which were still smoldering with fire.
By 1920, under the direction of Chancellor John Bowman, the university scrapped much of Hornbostel’s plans in favor of the Cathedral of Learning. Conceived to be to be the second tallest skyscraper in the world after the Woolworth Building, the then so called “Tower of Learning” would be designed, not by Hornbostel, but instead one of the foremost Gothic architects of the time — Philadelphian Charles Klauder.
“Plan A and Plan B have an enormous amount in common in terms of prestige,” Toker says. “They were both products of the huge over-arching vision and confidence that Pittsburgh had of itself 100 years ago.”
Today, of the buildings there that Hornbostel originally designed, only two remain. That and the question, as Toker so perfectly puts it: “Would Hornbostel’s Acropolis have been the world’s most gigantic white elephant or would it have made the University famous around the globe for this stunning outlay of buildings?”
Stunning is a word that can be applied to many of Hornbostels’s projects, not the least of which is the majestic Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland, which is loosely based on the Mausoleum Halicarnassus in Southwest Turkey, and the ornate Temple Rodef Shalom in Shadyside, which has the largest Guastavino tile dome in the world. The same can be said of the various private residences he designed, most of which still exist.
Originally designed for Morris Friedman, president of Reliance Mortgage Co., in 1925, the home is now that of Dr. Michael Nieland, a dermatopathologist who has owned it since 1976.
Even though he has lived there nearly 30 years, Nieland’s enthusiasm for the house hasn’t waned.
“The home is endlessly interesting from my point of view in terms of all of its various nooks and crannies,” he says.
An art and antique collector, Nieland says the possibilities of placing art and decorative objects within the various display spaces and built-in cabinetry are seemingly endless. That and special features like an indoor fountain on the first floor and a second-floor library make this house especially unique.
But even with all of that, what attracted Nieland to the home initially was the entranceway, which has a large iron door that opens into a vestibule made of carved limestone. Inside the vestibule, an arched inner door is filled with etched glass that has an ornate Art Nouveau pattern. Beyond that door is the entrance hall.
“The front entrance hall is long, so when you enter the house it’s not immediately apparent what the floor plan of the house is so there is a little bit of mystery when you come in,” Nieland says.
Nieland’s favorite aspect of the inside of the home is the layout of the various rooms, which gradually unfolds to the visitor as one moves through it, further adding to that sense of mystery.
Even on a small scale such as this, the mystery and drama that Hornbostel, who died in 1961, was able to create is why his legacy continues to live on and why he will no doubt continue to long be considered one of Pittsburgh’s most important and influential architects.
Kurt Shaw can be reached at kshaw@tribweb.com or .
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Replica of 1770s barn built at Oliver Miller Homestead
By Mary Niederberger,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, July 14, 2005Since 1973, when the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates took over the management and programming of the historic home site in South Park, the volunteer group has put on numerous displays and re-enactments of various aspects of pioneer life.
Now its members are excited about expanding their work to include more details about 18th-century farm life with the addition of a newly built wood barn, a replica of the original, which was built in the 1770s and razed by Allegheny County after it bought the Miller farm in 1927.
“We have great plans for some of the uses we can make of the barn. We are already deciding upon what sorts of displays and artifacts we can put there,” said Paula Bowman, publicity director for the associates.
A public barn-raising was held on a cold, snowy day in December when Amish Timber Framers, of Doylestown, Ohio, raised the frame with a crane. Construction was finished recently and the barn has been turned over to the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates to manage and program.
The first floor of the barn will be a large, open, unheated space, as in the original structure.
The associates group plans to move the trading post, a gift shop, from the log house on the property to the first floor of the barn.
The group also plans to move the original Miller family whiskey still from the log house to the barn. Along with the still, the group plans to set up a teaching display about the Whiskey Rebellion that would explain the conflict’s significance to the region and nation, Bowman said.
Plans call for the barn to hold a library/bookstore area and a place to sell items that are made at the homestead, such as metal items made at the forge and dolls that are made as part of craft demonstrations.
The basement of the barn will be heated and will serve as a meeting place for the associates group, which has about 40 members. Bowman said the group had met in recent years in the log house, but oftentimes, some members had to sit outside because there was not enough room.
Removing the still and trading post will free up more space in the log house, which will allow the volunteers to furnish and decorate it in a more authentic way.
“We want to turn the log house into a home that is representative of the period,” said Mary Olesky, president of the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates.
The group has items stored in the basement, including a rope bed and a child’s cradle, which it would like to display.
Bruder Construction Co., a North Side restoration company, built the barn using the construction mode of its era: mortise and tenon joints with wooden pegs.
The project was overseen by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and was financed with a $500,000 grant from the state Department of Community and Economic Development which was procured more than four years ago by former state Sen. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, who is now in Congress.
Most of the funds were used to build the barn, but some were left over to make improvements and restorations to the stone house.
The homestead is open to the public and staffed by the volunteers from 1:30-4:30 p.m. every Sunday from April through December.
Olesky said the group hoped to get some of the new displays and activities operating during the current season, but that it was likely that some would have to wait until the off-season, when volunteers will have more time to devote to them.
“This is going to be a work in progress for a while,” Olesky said. “We have so much we want to share with the public, but it’s going to take awhile to get it the way we want it.”
(Mary Niederberger can be reached at mniederberger@post-gazette.com or 412-851-1866.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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For Fifth and Forbes, a place to start small and think big
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, June 28, 2005Preservation Pittsburgh wants to convert the first floor of the former Regal Shoe Co. building at Fifth and Market into a transit cafe, with office space above. It’s the work of Alden & Harlow, one of the city’s most prominent architectural firms in the early 20th century.
In a cartoon in the current New Yorker, a big man sitting at a big desk in a big city hands a folder to a smaller, weary man sitting across from him. The folder is labeled “Plan Z.”
“Of course,” the big man says, “if this one flops we’re done.”
Somebody ought to warn the little guy: Beware of a big man with a big plan.
Three years and three months from the day Mayor Tom Murphy announced Plan C, his revised Fifth and Forbes renewal project, we’ve got zip. In fact we’ve got a lot less zip than we had when the massive, demolition-oriented Plan A was hatched in October 1999. Back then, there were one or two empty storefronts; now there are many more as property and business owners wait for the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, which owns several properties in the district, to make a move.
When Carl Dranoff, the most recent potential developer, pulled out a few weeks ago, there was no rush to announce Plan D. Come January, the mayor and his men will move on. The empty storefronts will be hanging around for some time.
There’s still a frightening amount of alphabet left in Fifth and Forbes, but with a new administration next year, there are new opportunities for fresh ideas.
Here’s one: Preservation Pittsburgh wants to put a “transit cafe” in a great old building at the corner of Fifth and Market. It doesn’t look like much now, but in its day it was quite the place, an elegant little shoe showroom designed by Alden & Harlow for the Regal Shoe Co., one of a chain of Boston-based stores.
Of human scale and quaint antecedent, Regal Shoe was one of two buildings inspired by the English Arts and Crafts movement that the firm designed Downtown in the first decade of the 20th century. The other, the former White Dog Cafe, was among the nine structures sacrificed for the new Lazarus store in 1996. The cafe had been remodeled, but ah, what it once was and could have been again.
We have a second chance with the Regal Shoe building, which has had a happier fate. Over time its canopy was removed and some of its windows were covered over, but its integrity has not been greatly compromised.
Downtowns need low-rise buildings like this, buildings with a social and architectural history to anchor the modern office towers, and Fifth and Forbes provide them. Plan A disregarded them, calling for the removal of 62 buildings and acquiring them by eminent domain if necessary.
But massive demolition wasn’t the only troubling aspect of Plan A. Just as wrong-headed was its intent to wrestle ownership from dozens of local and often longtime entrepreneurs and concentrate ownership in the hands of a single developer, sending all of the profits out town. Fine for a suburban mall, but this is not the way cities work. Urban retail lasts longest when it is steady and incremental, supported by government policies that understand its organic, symbiotic nature.
If you’ve ever waited for a bus or been panhandled at the bustling corner of Fifth and Market, you don’t need me to tell you how good a transit cafe sounds. A place to come in out of the cold and heat and rain, pick up a coffee and a newspaper, “maybe even a bouquet of flowers on the way home,” said architect Rob Pfaffmann, president of Preservation Pittsburgh, the nonprofit advocacy group launched in 1991 after the demolition of the Syria Mosque.
Bringing flowers back to the vacant building would be a sort of homecoming, as Lubin & Smalley operated a florist’s shop there for about 70 years after Regal Shoe moved out.
A transit cafe is just one idea; the important thing is to get a retail establishment up and running again at that gateway location. Located at one of the entrances to the Fifth and Forbes district, the building has an importance beyond it size, just 15 feet deep and 80 feet wide.
Restoring and renovating the building would show that preservation is a viable and desirable component of the revitalization as it moves forward, Pfaffmann said. Office space on the second floor could be used to house community meetings during the Fifth/Forbes planning process.
Pfaffmann thinks he knows how to keep the costs down, to about $500,000 for the building’s shell. Preservation Pittsburgh has asked Belmont Technical College in St. Clairsville, Ohio, to consider making it a class project next year.
Each year, Belmont students in the Building Preservation Technology Program put their newly acquired skills into play on a summer field project. Students have worked at Fallingwater, Grey Towers (the Richard Morris Hunt-designed, faux-French medieval castle in Milford, Pike County) and the Octagon House in Washington, D.C. Pfaffmann thinks Belmont students could, for example, rebuild the mullioned windows of the Regal Shoe building.
Closer to home, Carnegie Mellon University students could participate in transforming the building into a green, sustainable design, which should be a component of the revival.
Preservation Pittsburgh also hopes to team with Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in making the project a case study at the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference, which comes to Pittsburgh in October 2006.
Partnerships will be a key to making this project work, as will a positive reception from the city and the Fifth/Forbes task force, not to mention interest from a shopkeeper. Task force chairman Herb Burger declined comment yesterday, saying it was the city’s decision. URA director Jerome Dettore has said that he is willing to wait for the right developer.
Pfaffmann didn’t say so, but the subliminal message of the project is critical and clear: Stop waiting for a big man with big money and big plans. Start somewhere, and start small. Just start.
(Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.)
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More than a Paycheck
by Jack Miller
Director of Gift PlanningThe first rule of being a fundraiser is to stay behind the scenes. The second rule is to
ignore the first rule when your boss “requests” it.Anyone who knows Landmarks’ president Arthur Ziegler knows that he is mission driven, yet a reserved person. So when I recently sought permission to publicize his estate commitment to
Landmarks, he declined.I argued that it is important for people to know that he not only committed his life to our mission, but created two Named Funds and made Landmarks a beneficiary in his estate plan to ensure that the mission continues.
Arthur responded by telling me that he believes that the commitment of the staff is a more significant endorsement of our mission. He directed me to tell the story from that perspective, and to “start with your own commitment.”
Not being people of means, my wife and I initially could only make Landmarks a beneficiary of a term life insurance policy. Last year, we were able to convey land we obtained through an estate liquidation to create a Named Fund in memory of our parents. It was a way to recognize the most important people in our lives and to thank Landmarks for its role in saving the center of my faith community, St. Boniface Church in the East Street Valley on the North Side.
Architectural Historian Walter Kidney’s relationship with the organization dates back to 1970 when he did freelance work, but he didn’t join the staff until 1987.
“I’ve seen employees come and go,” says Walter, “but it does seem to me that Landmarks and certain people find each other and that the relationship in such cases will last.
“Not only does the relationship last, but it becomes more organic and better integrated than it may in larger and more departmentalized organizations where money and status are the only rewards.
“Thus, it eventually seemed to make sense for me to give my architectural and design history books to help create a betterrounded in-house research facility and give researchers from outside more reason to use our library.” Books weren’t Walter’s only gift.
On his 71st birthday, he made Landmarks the beneficiary of his retirement plan, and last year he established Landmarks’ first flexible deferred gift annuity that will provide him with lifetime income when he retires, and, as he likes to put it, “a gift to Landmarks when I expire.”
Executive Director Louise Sturgess made Landmarks a contingent beneficiary in her will. “A person’s will, in effect, is a document to show what they value most in life,” says Louise. “Next to my family, I value the place where I work and the city that has been home to my family for generations.
“By including Landmarks in my will, I am able to express the enthusiasm I have for my job and my passion for this city, since Landmarks’ mission is so closely connected with the health and enduring character of the city.
“It’s encouraging to think that my gift to Landmarks will help fund programs in the future that teach people to appreciate the architectural heritage of this region and value the positive role that historic preservation can play in the life of a city.
“Who knows, perhaps my greatgreat grandchildren someday will walk across the Smithfield Street Bridge on a ‘Downtown Dragons’ tour, or touch the massive stones of the Courthouse wall, or look up at the stained glass skylight of the Union Trust Building.”
CFO H. Phipps Hoffstot II understands that philosophy. His late mother, Barbara, was a founder of Landmarks and his father, Henry, still serves on the Board. Phipps is not only giving back through his service to Landmarks, but he annually makes a Heritage-Society level gift.
“We’re lucky to have a staff that not only believes in our mission,” says Arthur, “but has made provisions to continue it.”