Category Archive: Historic Properties

1. Historic Brentwood restaurant to be razed

   September 6, 2007 12:02 pm

   By Genea Webb
   FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
   Thursday, September 6, 2007

   The borough of Brentwood will be losing a vital piece of its history this fall.
   The Point View Restaurant, formerly the Point View Hotel, on Brownsville Road, will be razed to make way for a three-story medical building to be occupied by Brentwood Medical Group.

   According to former Brentwood Councilman Ed Haney, the building, which originally was an inn built in 1832, served as a stop for former Presidents Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and James Buchanan. The Point View was a stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves escaping to Canada.

   “The floor of the basement was dirt. There was a tunnel that led under Brownsville Road,” said Lions Club Secretary, Mary Cavataio.

   Dr. Dushan Majkic, one of the partners of Brentwood Medical Group, said the newly built facility would help the group of doctors serve the community better.
   “It’ll be a positive thing for Brentwood. We have lots of positive things to offer to the community and we’re very excited to offer full medical services to the community,” Majkic said.

   Council Vice President Jay Lieb agreed.

   “I think any new construction is good for the community and the location for the medical building is ideal,” Lieb said.

   Majkic and his partners plan to sale the existing medical building at 3028 Brownsville Road.

   A plaque signifying the importance of the Point View will be erected somewhere on the site of the new medical building. Demolition of the Point View will occur some time this fall. Construction of the medical building is expected to take six to eight months.

   The group held its meetings in the Point View until it closed last year.

   “We were very happy there and everyone felt comfortable there,” said Cavataio, whose group held its meetings at the Point View until it closed last year. “We used to have our annual Mother’s Day breakfast there.”

2. Neighbors pressing for historic designation for former North Side porn theater

   12:01 pm

   Thursday, September 06, 2007
   By Diana Nelson Jones,
   Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

   The city’s Historic Review Commission yesterday heard a Central North Side preservationist’s case for designating the Garden Theatre a city landmark, ahead of any action a developer might take to alter it.

   The theater, which had shown porn movies for more than 30 years, closed in February. It is now in the hands of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which is considering proposals from developers for the Garden and a score of blighted buildings along the intersecting corridors of North Avenue and Federal Street.

   “It’s the last of the nickelodeon-style movie theaters left in the city” with its interior intact, said David McMunn, president of the Mexican War Streets Society. The Mexican War Streets is a historic district that stops shy of including the Garden and the rest of Federal-North.

   Mr. McMunn handed commission Chairman Michael Stern a stack of letters in support of his proposal and said, “All the neighborhoods would agree that it’s something we want to save for the next generations.”

   After the meeting, he said, “Our neighborhood understands it’s a precious piece, but there are people who think, ‘Adult movie theater, take it away.’ That would be like tearing down Ford’s Theater because Lincoln was shot there.”

   The public will have the opportunity to weigh in on the merits of the building’s historic status at a 1 p.m. Oct. 3 hearing in the Robin Building on Ross Street, Downtown. The commission voted to give the Garden preliminary determination status to protect it until a final decision is made. City Council has the final word.

   Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, said he backs the proposal.

   “Oh yes,” he said, “it’s the anchor of that corridor, and it will become a major ingredient in the North Side’s collection of nationally significant cultural institutions.”

   Built in 1915, the Garden is a mix of styles, with a classical exterior of terra cotta detailing, a 1930s-era vertical neon sign and a 1950s-era marquee and canopy. The original canopy was copper. Inside, wall sconces and chandeliers remain intact, and the rewind room, the splicing room and the 1950s-era projectors are all in place, Mr. McMunn said. “It’s like a time capsule.”

   The building suffered extensive water damage from a leaky roof, but the Quantum Theater started the cleanup, preparing the theater for its June production of “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.”

   The Garden shares a block with an even older Masonic Hall, one of the first built, and an apartment building designed by Frederick Osterling, the illustrious late-1800s/early-1900s architect who also designed the Armstrong Cork factory in the Strip, the Arrott Building on Wood Street and the Union Trust Building on Grant Street, among many.

   The Garden was fought over for years in court by the URA and the New Garden Realty Corp. Appeals stopped short of the U.S. Supreme Court in February when the URA negotiated a deal for $1.1 million.

   The state Supreme Court had affirmed a lower court’s ruling in December that the URA did not violate the theater’s state or federal free-speech rights in its effort to seize it by eminent domain.

   The URA had amassed all the buildings it wanted for redevelopment around it.

   Mr. McMunn said the Central Northside Neighborhood Council, a partner in the URA’s redevelopment plans, favors the theater remaining a theater or other entertainment venue.

   First published on September 6, 2007 at 12:00 am
   Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626.

3. Neville Plantation cooks Colonial

   9:58 am

   Thursday, September 06, 2007
   By Gretchen McKay,
   Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

   Plenty of today’s cooks plant gardens in their back yards so they can enjoy fresh vegetables and herbs. Yet back in Colonial times, only the well-to-do could have afforded the so-called kitchen garden.

   Eighteenth-century houses lacked both running water and hoses, of course, so homeowners would have had to rely on slave or servant labor to fetch and carry those heavy buckets of water from a nearby stream or catch drain. Ditto with keeping the garden beds free from weeds.

   Adding to the cost were the plants themselves. As Rob Windhorst, president of Neville Historical Associates, points out, most seeds used by Colonists had to be shipped from Europe and were extremely expensive. The fact, then, that Woodville Plantation — the Virginia plantation-style home that Revolutionary War hero John Neville built in Collier in the late 1700s — boasted a kitchen garden with four large beds speaks volumes about his wealth.

   Not that his servants planted anything fancy, of course. Strictly utilitarian, the gardens — planted in a continuous rotation so that something was always ready to harvest — contained the basic building blocks of Colonial cooking: root vegetables, melons and beans along with herbs such as lemon balm and lovage, a close cousin to celery.

   Two hundred years later, the gardens are once again bearing fruit, having been sown since 1997 with a variety of veggies and herbs gleaned from heirloom seed projects. Many, in fact, are strains of the original plants that Mr. Neville and his family would have enjoyed on their dinner table so long ago.

   On Sunday, the public gets a chance to see how these foods would have been harvested and cooked when the plantation opens its doors for its first Harvest Day.

   This late in the season, many of the garden’s offerings are long gone. But it’s still full of early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, a compact, tear-shaped cabbage that fit easily in market baskets, and long Chantenay carrots, a French variety that was good for winter storage. There’s also plenty of horehound, a licorice-like medicinal herb, along with lemon balm, mint and chamomile.

   Among the more unusual 18th-century dishes that will be demonstrated using traditional methods (i.e., cooked over an open fire in cast-iron pots and pans) is a meatloaf-like “forced” cabbage adapted from Hannah Glasse’s 1745 cookbook, “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.” Docents also will prepare fried carrot puffs, a sweet, doughnut-like side dish.

   Woodville Plantation’s Harvest Day Celebration takes place Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at 1375 Washington Pike, Collier. Admission is $5 for adults and $10 for families. For more information, visit www.woodvilleplantation.org or call 412-221-0348.

4. The Granite Building To House Luxury Condominiums

   September 1, 2007 3:21 pm

   Built in 1889–90 as the German National Bank and now a contributing structure in the Pittsburgh Central Downtown National Register Historic District, The Granite Building provided German immigrants to the Pittsburgh area with a place where they could transact their banking in their native language.

   Designed by Bickel & Brennan, the “Richardsonian Romanesque” granite building imitates the style of the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail, designed by H. H. Richardson in 1884, just a few blocks away. Charles Bickel was a prominent Pittsburgh architect who designed several notable buildings downtown, among them Kaufmann’s department store.

   After more than a century as an office building, Landmarks board member Holly Brubach is renovating The Granite Building as luxury condominiums and making the building available for a September 26th Heritage Society tour and reception.

   Among the many downtown candidates for residential conversion, The Granite Building is considered ideal for its spaciousness and ample light. With only one 2,750-squarefoot unit per floor, The Granite Building provides the comfort and privacy of a single-family home in the heart of the city and represents another example of how historic buildings can stimulate economic development.

5. Cathedral of Learning bricks mistakenly cleaned

   August 30, 2007 11:10 am

   By Andrew Conte
   TRIBUNE-REVIEW
   Thursday, August 30, 2007

   The Cathedral of Learning’s dirt nearly had its finest moment.
   After clinging to the 42-story University of Pittsburgh building for 70 years, the black soot almost received its own plaque to recognize evidence of the city’s industrial past.

   “Somebody has to honor those people who made the city,” said E. Maxine Bruhns, director of the cathedral’s Nationality Rooms, who came up with the idea. “These grimy stones were a perfect tribute.”

   University officials agreed to keep a few blocks dirty near the Fifth Avenue entrance when they spent $4.8 million this summer to wash the Indiana limestone exterior, fix mortar joints and replace rusty fasteners. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation planned a marker.

   “The new generation of students attending Pitt have no idea this city was the workshop to the world,” said Louise Sturgess, the foundation’s executive director. “The dirt visually lets people know what the air was like, and the air was filled with the gritty soot from all of the industry.”

   Bruhns hand-picked the blocks for their markings and high-profile location. Workers built a cover so the area wouldn’t be cleaned, and the school newspaper reported in June that a crew member was assigned to protect it.

   But after most of the building had been cleaned and the cover removed, another worker noticed the blemish. Without asking, he washed away the grime — so the blocks look as fresh and bright as the rest.

   Overall, the cleaning project turned out better than anyone expected, said Park Rankin, the university architect. It was just an oversight that Bruhns’ blocks were washed, he said.

   Still, the damage has been done — or undone.

   Standing near the spot Wednesday, Paul Sawyer, 24, a junior from Whitehall, said he forgot all about the formerly dirty facade when he returned to campus this month.

   “I didn’t even notice,” he said.

   Andrew Conte can be reached at aconte@tribweb.com or 412-320-7835.

6. Bottle Brigade raises money to restore Braddock library

   10:53 am

   By Kacie Axsom
   TRIBUNE-REVIEW
   Thursday, August 30, 2007

   John Hempel doesn’t drink soda. But the University of Pittsburgh biologist has helped to collect about 6,500, 20-ounce soda bottles to help the environment and raise money for restoring the Braddock Carnegie Library.
   Hempel sends the bottles to New Jersey-based TerraCycle as part of its Bottle Brigade program. TerraCycle makes and distributes lawn and garden fertilizer — essentially worm poop, as company publicist Paul D’Eramo puts it.

   The company gathers the waste matter and puts it in tanks with hot water and extracts nutrients from it, D’Eramo said. They package it in those reused bottles from about 3,800 groups such as Hempel’s.

   TerraCycle sends empty boxes that can hold as many as 70 bottles to Bottle Brigade participants, which includes schools and nonprofits. Groups fill their boxes, and twice each year, TerraCycle sends a check for 5 cents per bottle to the school or charity of their choice, and 6 cents per bottle if they have been washed and de-labeled. That means every filled box is worth $3.50 to $4.20 for a charity.

   Hempel’s chosen cause is the Braddock Carnegie Library, because he is the vice president of Braddock’s Field Historical Society, which owns it. He and his colleagues at Pitt have placed barrels around their department and have earned about $370 to go toward restoration projects.
   That $370 could buy fewer than two seats in the library’s music hall, Hempel said. It’s also about $30 shy of the $400 needed to replace one of the 39 window sashes.

   “Relative to the amount of money the music hall restoration needs, it disappears in the decimal dust,” Hempel said. “It’s at least a way of bringing in a trickle of money, and it’s satisfying.”

   Hempel maintains a personal compost pile and recycles newspapers, bottles, cans and Styrofoam, he said. He also sprays the TerraCycle product on his orchids.

   “In many ways, (recycling is) easier than lugging a bag of smelly stuff down to the curb,” he said.

   Laurel Roberts is a lecturer at Pitt and has been collecting bottles with Hempel for about eight months. She estimates she’s collected 300 to 400 in that time.

   She told her students about the project and where they can find a collection bin, and when she’s out walking her dogs in her Highland Park neighborhood and sees a bottle, she picks it up.

   “It’s easy, and it’s actually fun,” Roberts said. “When you find one, it’s almost like a scavenger hunt.”

7. Many twists and turns for East plans in last three years

   August 22, 2007 4:36 pm

   By Peggy Conrad,
   Staff Writer
   Woodland Progress
   Wednesday, August 22, 2007

   By the end of this month or early in September, East Junior High School in Turtle Creek could be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

   “It’s an excellent designation, an excellent honor,” says Ron Yochum, chief information officer of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.

   He hired a specialist in the field, Laura Ricketts, to research and document the history of the building and submit the proposal, which is “a very, very complicated process,” according to Yochum.

   In March, the commission voted unanimously to nominate the structure to the National Register. The National Park Service requested some additional details, which Ricketts submitted with the nomination on July 16.

   “We’re hopeful the National Park Service will agree with us, as well as with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission,” Yochum says.
   A decision could be made in the next couple of weeks, as the approval process takes about 45 days to complete. The designation would provide protection for the structure if any federally funded project were threatening the building.

   The school board voted to begin the process of closing East earlier this year and is scheduled to make a final decision in October. Generations of area residents have attended the school, and many are anxious to see what will become of it.

   The first cornerstone for the building was laid in 1917. The school opened in 1918 and the first class graduated in 1919.

   In 1939, an addition to house the gym and additional classrooms was built by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency that provided jobs during the Great Depression. A plaque stating the details of the addition is housed, but not currently mounted, at the school.

   Originally Union High, the institution was the first joint high school in Pennsylvania, combining Turtle Creek, Wilmerding and East Pittsburgh high schools, according to Bob Mock, head of Committee to Save Turtle Creek High School.

   The building became Turtle Creek High, then East Junior High after the merger that formed Woodland Hills School District.

   “To remove such a wonderful landmark in the community would be tragic,” says Yochum. “I think it’s an asset for the community that should be preserved.”

   If it achieves historic status and a project threatens the building, the case would go into an automatic review process, he says. If the district were to renovate the building, it would not be a problem, unless the renovation would affect the facade.

   “I’m sure the community would not be happy with that.” Yochum, whose agency has been offering assistance to Committee to Save Turtle Creek High School, could not be more correct in that assessment.

   About two and a half years ago, the group of Turtle Creek residents came together to protest the district’s plans to demolish the building and construct a new junior high school on the same spot.

   “Had they done that, knowing what we know now, what a big mistake they would have made,” says Mock, who rallied his neighbors to join the cause.

   A national preservationist who attended a town meeting in Turtle Creek in 2005 in support of preserving the school said the structure was a “slam dunk” for the National Register.

   “It sailed right through at the state level,” says Mock, a 1968 alumnus of the high school. “This is a positive for our community and a positive for the school district.”

   The past few years have been a roller-coaster ride for anyone invested in the future of East. A brief outline follows:

   • August 2004 — HHSDR Architects presented preliminary plans for renovation and for new construction. The architects did three to four variations on plans for a new building in the months that followed.
   • January 2005 — Hundreds of residents turned out for a town meeting held by the board to voice their opinions on proposed renovation plans for several district buildings. Options for East included the possibility of relocating the school.
   • April 2005 — Survey companies were authorized to begin surveying the property at East in preparation for renovation or reconstruction.
   • November 2005 — The school board voted in favor of borrowing approximately $30 million to fund the proposed building of a new East Junior High and renovations of the Wolvarena and high school soccer stadium. The district scheduled groundbreaking for the new school building in the summer of 2006.
   • November 2005 — A town meeting organized by Commit-tee to Save Turtle Creek High School overflowed with outraged residents who wanted the building to be preserved.
   • December 2005 — The board directed HHSDR to de-velop further renovation plans following objections by residents to the planned demolition and rebuilding of the school. Construction costs increased to estimates of $20,641,170 for renovation and $20,329,874 for new construction.
   • Initial plans called for putting an addition on the front of the building, but the committee requested the facade not be altered. The administration said keeping the exact shell of a renovated building would increase the cost.
   • February 2006 — The board decided to not vote on whether to rebuild or renovate the school until it received more public input on the issue. The district sought residents from all its communities to serve on an ad hoc committee to study the proposed renovation / construction plans.
   • May 2006 — After meeting for two months, the committee recommended the district create detailed and comparable design plans, one each for a renovated and new structure, and that the board commit to the least expensive option. Be-cause of a lack of support among members, the board voted to not follow the recommendation and to no longer pursue constructing a new building, but to have renovation plans developed in more detail.
   • June 2006 — HHSDR presented an update on work needed immediately at East and asked for direction. Cost of the urgent “A-list” items was $500,000 to $750,000.
   • A “B-list” of needed but not urgent items would have cost about $5 million. Following discussion, it was clear the board would not reach a consensus, so the architects were asked to return at a meeting on June 28.
   • There was no discussion regarding renovation at that meeting because the board had not had adequate time to meet with the architects and make a decision.
   • October 2006 — The superintendent announced the district would consider closing East and two other schools due to declining enrollment.
   • Superintendent Roslynne Wilson recommended, as part of the Next Quarter Century Plan, closing Rankin Intermediate, Shaffer Primary and East, as they had the biggest enrollment declines. The proposal was based, in part, on state Act 1, which limits how much districts can hike taxes. The closing of East would save more than $800,000 a year.
   • December 2006 — Parents voiced concerns at a public hearing on the plan to consolidate schools. Several board members were concerned that the proposal would have a negative impact.
   • January 2007 — All who spoke at a second public hearing were opposed to the consolidation plan. At its next meeting, the board listened to residents and voted down the superintendent’s plan as well as a counterproposal to close East in 2008.
   • March 2007 — The board voted to begin the process of closing East and consolidating all seventh- and eighth-graders at West Junior High in 2008-09.
   • The Swissvale school, to be renamed Woodland Hills Mid-dle School, would have to be renovated at a cost about $5 million and would have about 740 students in the first year.
   • July 2007 — The board held a public hearing on the possible closing of East. Res-idents were opposed to closing the building without a definite plan in place on its future use.

   Several options were discussed, including moving ad-ministration offices to the school, turning the building into a creative and performing arts high school for the district and turning it into a charter high school.

   Wilson said the process to close the school will include formation of an ad hoc committee that will be asked to report to the board on Oct. 3. The board expects to vote to close the school on Oct. 10.

   “It’s been a long saga with a lot of twists and turns,” says Mock, who believes East deserves historic designation for many reasons. The white brick structure was built in the neo-classical style as part of a “City Beautiful” campaign designed to uplift communities in the early 1900s, he says.

   “There’s a lot of history here.”

8. $43,000+ in Grants Awarded to Maintain and Restore Religious Proprerties

   August 8, 2007 11:28 am

   Carole Malakoff
   Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation
   August 8, 2007

   Since January, $43,899 has been paid out in matching grant funds to help eight congregations maintain and restore their historic religious structures. Five of these grants were from last year’s grant cycle.

   The organizations were:

   2006:

   – Calvary United Methodist, North Side
   – Hawthorn Avenue Presbyterian, Crafton
   – Union Project, East Liberty
   – St. Andrews Episcopal, Highland Park
   – St. Anthonys Chapel, Troy Hill

   2007 (to date)

   – Zion Christian Church, Carrick
   – Bethel Presbyterian, Bethel Park
   – Valley Presbyterian, Imperial

   Three are churches that were just awarded grants this February and have already completed work. These grant funds enabled congregations to restore stained glass windows, perform roof and gutter work, and do stonework.

   Tom Keffer ,Landmarks construction manager, has provided technical assistance to three congregations. He consulted on issues of general renovation procedures, roof repairs, and stained glass restoration.

   Work recently completed at Monumental Baptist Church in The Hill included stone work above the main doorway. The lintel was on the verge of collapsing. Only one of the double doors could be opened safely. After work was completed, both doors can now be opened enabling safe and easy access into the sanctuary. Monumental Baptist raised their matching funds through Sunday service collections.