Category Archive: Historic Properties
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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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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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Penn Brewery founder to tap retirement
Thursday, May 22, 2008Tom Pastorius, who helped pioneer the national craft beer industry by introducing Penn Pilsner in 1986 and founding what would become Penn Brewery on the North Side three years later, has announced that he will retire. “All good things must come to an end,” said Mr. Pastorius, 63, of Sewickley. He plans to hang up his lederhosen in September.
Tom Pastorius lifts a cold one at Penn Brewery in 2002.
He has continued working as Pennsylvania Brewing Co.’s chief executive officer after selling a majority interest to Birchmere Capital in 2003. But part of that deal was that he step down after five years.
When the Pittsburgh native and his wife, Mary Beth, started the company in the former Eberhardt & Ober Brewery, the restaurant was called the Allegheny Brewery and Pub and was the first “tied house” — brewery-owned pub — in the state since Prohibition.
Having served in the Army and lived for several years in Germany, Mr. Pastorius did everything the German way, importing not just the copper kettles but also a brewmaster and making Penn Pilsner like a favorite German beer. Penn Brewery became known for its German food and music, while its brews became well-known across the state and beyond.
In 1990, Penn won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival, the first of a dozen medals it would win there, in addition to honors from the World Beer Cup, the United States Beer Tasting Championships and other contests.
But looking back, Mr. Pastorius says, “I think what makes me feel best is we’ve been something special in Pittsburgh, and we’ve made a lot of people happy.”
He’s not sure if he’ll hang on to his stock and his seat on the board, but he does plan to keep a hand in the beer business, perhaps working to raise the membership and profile of the Pennsylvania Brewers Guild. “Look at what the wineries have done,” he said, citing their collaborative marketing and lobbying efforts.
He’ll officially say goodbye at the annual Penn Brewery anniversary party on Sept. 12.
Meanwhile, he’ll be in attendance at the June 7 Pennsylvania Microbrewers Fest, the craft beer blowout he started in 1995.
For more information, including how to buy tickets ($37 for one of three sessions — noon, 3:30 p.m. and 8 pm.), visit pennbrew.com.
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Vandergrift Main Street moves ahead
By Rossilynne Skena
VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
Monday, May 19, 2008Part of the now-vacant building at 143 Grant Ave. is “a time capsule,” said Shaun Yurcaba, Vandergrift Improvement Program Main Street manager.
Inside are two single-bedroom apartments, complete with details and woodwork left unchanged since the turn of the 20th century.
By fall, renters will be able to live there and look out over Vandergrift, the area the VIP has spent the last four years trying to improve.
The VIP is a nonprofit organization that’s facilitating the Main Street program, a community revitalization initiative, Yurcaba said.
This summer, contractors will restore the apartments — one two-bedroom and two one-bedroom. The VIP is getting bids for painting along with electrical and plumbing work.
Yurcaba said the building facade has been partially restored with the help of a $300,000 grant from the Allegheny Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based Scaife Foundation that gives grants to historic preservation projects, made possible through the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
A new roof has been installed and asbestos abatement has occurred, Yurcaba said. The storefront needs to be restored, she said.
“We’re hoping that this building will be an example to others on what they can do to restore and rehabilitate others,” Yurcaba said.
A business will move into the first floor by late summer or fall, Yurcaba said. Plans for the business are being finalized, she said.
Yurcaba said the VIP has seen a couple of businesses relocate to the area and another reopen, although she said the VIP can’t take complete credit.
Carino’s Ristorante, 133 Grant Ave., will reopen next month, and owner Mark Carino said he’s anxious to get back into the business.
The restaurant, which had been in Vandergrift for 20 years, has been closed for about two-and-a-half years. Carino of Vandergrift said the restaurant will be “kind of different this time.”
“It’s going to be more neighborhood-friendly, more price-friendly,” Carino said, describing the previous restaurant as the “white tablecloth” kind.
Carino’s will offer pasta dishes, sauces, sandwiches, salads and appetizers and will be “kind of sports-oriented” with TVs.
Carino said VIP’s revitalization efforts were one of the deciding factors to open again.
“I like what they’re doing. They’re very pro-active. Before they came along, I thought it was stagnant. Now, they’re trying to do things. I can see other people trying to do things also,” he said.
Allan Walzak is president of StrongLand Chamber of Commerce, which represents Vandergrift among other municipalities, backs the VIP.
“It’s very important to us that every community within the chamber has an opportunity to move forward, to grow and develop,” he said. “We are here to help them.”
Walzak also serves as president of the Casino Theater, a partially-restored building in Vandergrift. He said there has been community interest and support of the theater.
Last week, the VIP received an $850 grant from the Laurel Highlands Visitors Bureau for the program’s farmers market, which will be held Thursdays this summer, beginning July 10, Yurcaba said.
The VIP this month received a $75,000 grant from the Department of Community and Economic Development to pay for the program’s operations, including running programs, keeping the office running and keeping the staff working on projects, Yurcaba said.
The VIP will also receive a DCED grant for $35,000 by fall or winter to help pay for building renovations, she said.
Another DCED grant, the Facade Grant Program, offers money to downtown businesses owners and property owners to rehabilitate their storefronts. The VIP receives this $30,000 grant each year for four years, Yurcaba said. The VIP has this $30,000 to grant to property owners to do renovations, and applications for funds are available at the program’s 132 Grant Ave. office or at its Web site, officialvandergrift.com. As much as $5,000 is available for each facade, depending on the project.
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National Negro Opera House Hearing at Pittsburgh Council
PREPARED TESTIMONY OF
ANNE E. NELSON, ESQ.
GENERAL COUNSEL
PITTSBURGH HISTORY & LANDMARKS FOUNDATION
BEFORE THE PITTSBURGH CITY COUNCIL
PUBLIC HEARING ON THE NATIONAL NEGRO OPERA HOUSE
CITY HISTORIC STRUCTURE DESIGNATION
MAY 7, 2008
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (Landmarks) supports the nomination of 7101 Apple Street, the National Negro Opera House, to be a City-Designated Historic Structure. Built in 1894, this Queen Anne-style house received a historical marker from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1994, and is included in African American Historic Sites Survey of Allegheny County, published by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 1994, and A Legacy in Bricks and Mortar: African-American Landmarks in Allegheny County, published by Landmarks in 1995.
Therefore, Landmarks supports the designation of this site as a City of Pittsburgh Historic Structure.
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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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Mt. Lebanon theater project creates buzz
By Craig Smith
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, May 1, 2008A Mt. Lebanon theater that showed “The Graduate” and “To Sir With Love” — significant art films of the 1960s — might revisit that genre with a $3 million renovation.Along the way, officials hope the project will be the catalyst for increased business in the community.“It’s a great community project that will light the spark for more economic development in the region,” said Mt. Lebanon Commissioner D. Raja, who purchased the Denis Theatre on Washington Road in November to keep it from being converted to an office complex.
Raja has signed a 15-year lease to rent the building to the Denis Theatre Foundation, which announced plans Monday to revive it.
The Denis will reopen as an art house, showing independent and foreign language films, and documentaries. It could be a venue for lectures, film series, student productions and cultural events. A church has expressed interest in conducting services there.Since word of the plan first started circulating around the community, “the buzz has been amazing,” said Joe Rovita, owner of Empire Music and president of the Uptown Business Association.The Denis opened in 1937 as a one-screen moviehouse with a capacity of 1,200. Ownership changed repeatedly over the next six decades, before Raja bought it last year. The 11,000-square-foot theater closed in 2004.
Raja, of Bangalore, India, is co-founder of Computer Enterprises Inc. He and his wife, Neeta, bought the property in November for $668,750, real estate records show.
Renovating the theater will be a huge project, said Anne Kemerer, executive director of the Denis Theater Foundation, which hopes to raise the $3 million in government grants and private donations.
“Time has not been kind to the Denis,” she said. “There is water damage, vandalism, some outdated equipment.”
The theater’s marquee, which is not salvageable, lies in pieces in the lobby. Its basement is filled with 70 years’ worth of accumulated theater equipment.
But officials are optimistic the renovated theater will bring people to Mt. Lebanon.
“Because Mt. Lebanon is a walkable community, the theater has great potential,” said Dan Woodske, Mt. Lebanon’s commercial district manager.
Theaters can draw people to Main Street in the evening and on weekends — two key periods that have been lost to the malls, Woodske said.
“Very few stores stay open past 5 or 6. There’s nothing right now to bring a steady flow on the weekends,” he said.
A number of old movie theaters in the Pittsburgh area have been preserved, including the Oaks Theater in Oakmont, The Strand in Zelienople, The Hollywood Theater in Dormont and the Ambridge Family Theater in Beaver County.
Craig Smith can be reached at csmith@tribweb.com or 412-380-5646.
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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