Category Archive: Historic Properties
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Foundation tries to save Market Square building
By Mark Belko,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, August 26, 2005The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is offering to repair a deteriorating four-story building at 439 Market St., Downtown, to keep the city from demolishing it.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks President Arthur P. Ziegler Jr. has sent letters to the city and the Urban Redevelopment Authority with his offer after learning that the vacant city-owned building, part of the Market Square historic district, could be facing the wrecking ball.
There is no doubt that the building is in need of work. The roof is falling in, floors are collapsing and walls need to be stabilized. Its condition has spawned complaints from some Market Square property owners, which, in turn, has prompted talk of demolition.
But the structure also is targeted for redevelopment by Preservation Pittsburgh as part of its plan for a “transit cafe” at Market and Fifth Avenue.
That proposal relies mainly on the former Regal Shoe Co. building at the corner, a structure designed by Alden & Harlow, one of the city’s most prominent architectural firms in the early 20th century. But the group also is interested in 439 and 441 Market as well.
After visiting 439 Market with Preservation Pittsburgh President Rob Pfaffmann Monday, Ziegler presented two proposals to the city and the URA in an effort to save the building.
One would be for Pittsburgh History & Landmarks to take ownership of the structure, plus the old Regal Shoe Co. building and 441 Market, both owned by the URA. As part of the transfer, it would put on a new roof at 439 Market and clean up the inside.
As an alternative, the foundation is offering to lend the city up to $33,000 interest-free for the new roof and to clean up the inside, with the loan to be repaid once the building is sold or developed by the city.
The only stipulation would be that the building, along with 441 Market and the old Regal Shoe Co. store on Fifth, be preserved and that the foundation have approval over any exterior design done as part of a redevelopment.
Ziegler was out of town and unavailable for comment yesterday.
But Cathy McCollom, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s chief programs officer, said it is not routine for the agency to offer to make repairs or assume ownership. But she added it was willing to do so in this case because “we believe those buildings are important.”
“It’s an attempt to address the issues of concern to the city and to allow time to look at the reuse of the buildings because once they’re gone, they’re gone,” she said.
Pfaffmann said the city has received an estimate of $30,000 to repair the roof and to clean up the inside of 439 Market. While neither that building nor the one at 441 Market were designed by Alden and Harlow, they both are “contributing buildings” with good facades that deserve to be preserved, he said.
“Preservation Pittsburgh and the PHLF have been constantly told by Mayor [Tom] Murphy that we ought to put our money where our mouth is. We believe this is exactly what we’re doing now,” he said.
All three buildings are part of the Market Square historic district, meaning that the demolition of 439 Market could not occur without approval of the Historic Review Commission, unless it were an emergency.
Neither Murphy nor his executive secretary, Tom Cox, was available for comment yesterday. They have fought preservationists in the past over plans for the Fifth and Forbes retail corridor. URA Executive Director Jerome Dettore reacted favorably to the proposal however.
“It sounds good to me. It’s an area where we’re all supportive of preservation. I think the preservation of those buildings is probably a good thing,” he said.
Dettore said negotiations over 439 Market would have to be handled through the city, since the building is owned by the city, not the URA.
Ron Graziano, chief of the city Bureau of Building Inspection, said any attempt to demolish the building at 439 Market is on hold as a courtesy to Pittsburgh History & Landmarks while it tries to work out a solution.
Aaron Klein, owner of Camera Repair Service Inc. a couple of doors down from 439 Market, said he would like to see something — anything — done with the building. He said it “already is falling down in the back” and attracts rats.
(Mark Belko can be reached at mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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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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Ceiling collapse a puzzler of plaster at Hartwood mansion
By Jerome L. Sherman,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, August 16, 2005Allegheny County officials still don’t know how 2 tons of Renaissance-style molded plaster peeled away from the ceiling of the Great Hall at the Hartwood mansion in Indiana Township last week and came crashing down on dozens of valuable antiques.
“We have no clue at all how this happened,” said Sylvia Easler, recreation superintendent with the county Parks Department, as she stood under a gothic archway next to the hall yesterday afternoon and watched laborers use a power saw to slice the plaster into small pieces.
No one was injured when the ceiling fell Thursday. A tour group had passed through the hall 20 minutes earlier.
Yesterday, an insurance agent and a preservationist from the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation visited the 76-year-old mansion in Allegheny County’s Hartwood Acres Park.
Tom Keffer, the foundation’s construction manager and superintendent of properties maintenance, said he initially suspected that water damage might have caused the collapse, but he didn’t find any moisture concentration when he examined the ceiling’s remains. He said the building is well maintained.
The 31-room mansion, built in 1929 in the Tudor style of Elizabethan England, was the home of John and Mary Lawrence, whose father, William Flinn, was a powerful state senator.
Mary Lawrence sold the mansion and her 400 acres of property to Allegheny County in 1969 for a little more than $1 million. The county expanded the park to 629 acres and opened the mansion to the public in 1976.
Lawrence’s son, John, who grew up in the mansion and now lives in Grove City, Mercer County, said he would contact some private donors to help raise money for the building’s restoration.
“I feel sick about it,” he said. “The county shouldn’t have to foot the entire bill. This isn’t the end of Hartwood, believe me. We will recover.”
County officials said it was too soon to estimate the cost of the damage, but it likely is extensive.
Some damaged items included two rare Georgian folding walnut game tables, a Flemish tapestry from the 1600s, a Steinway grand piano made in 1901, and an Aeolian pipe organ.
The 400-year-old oak wood paneling that lines the walls is relatively unscathed, as is a large Bijar Persian rug.
Keffer took digital photographs of the ceiling’s elaborate molds of fruits, flowers, oak leaves and other nature scenes and will help the county find ways of reproducing the original patterns.
Tom Donatelli, county public works director, said he will research construction techniques from the 1920s to try to determine why the metal support structures in the ceiling failed. The rest of the house is in good shape, he said.
He hopes to have enough of the repair work completed by the holiday season to allow Hartwood to hold its annual Celebration of Lights festival.
(Jerome L. Sherman can be reached at jsherman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1183.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Hopes rise on fallen ceiling damage
By Bill Zlatos
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, August 16, 2005Damage from the collapse of the Renaissance-style ceiling at Hartwood Mansion might be less than feared, the manager of the county-owned facility said Monday.
“I think we can salvage more than we originally thought even though things look awful right now,” said Sylvia Easler, recreation superintendent for county parks and manager of the Hartwood Acres mansion. The 629-acre park lies along Saxonburg Boulevard in Hampton and Indiana townships.
Several tons of plaster fell Thursday from the ceiling of the Great Hall of the mansion, built in 1929 for John and Mary Flinn Lawrence. Her father was state Sen. William Flinn, who owned the city’s largest construction firm in the late 19th century.
Many of the furnishings, whether damaged or unscathed, are now stored in the dining room. There lie legless English chairs from the 19th century, two matching game tables valued at a total of $17,000, and a brass chandelier from Flinn’s home in Highland Park.
“We have some excellent craftsmen in the county,” Easler said. “They’re optimistic they can help with a lot of this.”
County officials and an insurance adjuster still have not compiled a damage estimate.
Inside the Great Hall, falling plaster damaged the corner of a hand-carved oak mantel, made in 1610 and removed from an English castle. A damask, ball-and-claw-foot couch from the 1800s stands intact under a huge sheet of plaster while a needlepoint settee worth $5,000 is flattened.
Perhaps the room’s prize, an 1870 Bijar Persian rug, was rolled up and safe from the debris. With 1,000 knots per square inch, the rug is worth $75,000.
Originally, officials from Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation cited moisture as a possible cause for the collapse in the 54- by 23-foot room. Now, Easler said, the method used to hang the inch-thick plaster ceiling is considered a suspect.
“The general consensus was that it’s amazing that it lasted this long,” she said. “There was no additional reinforcement besides the nails.”
The accident forced the cancellation of mansion tours and indoor weddings. Outdoor weddings will still be held on the grounds.
Easler said two couples who had indoor weddings scheduled for this weekend have found other sites.
“The community rallied around and were very supportive of trying to find another place,” she said.
Bill Zlatos can be reached at bzlatos@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7828.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Architecture detectives on the case
By Violet Law
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, August 14, 2005Moisture may be the culprit that caused the ornate plaster ceiling in the Great Hall of Hartwood Mansion to come crashing down, a restoration expert said Saturday.
Tom Keffer and other specialists at Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation plan to play architecture sleuths today to determine what caused the collapse. Keffer said yesterday that the high humidity that has prevailed this summer could be a culprit.
“I won’t know that for sure until I get out there,” said Keffer, the preservation group’s construction manager and superintendent of properties maintenance. “I may not know even at first glance.”
The Great Hall, about half the size of a football field, has been buried under several tons of plaster that crashed from the ceiling Thursday afternoon — narrowly missing a tour group that had just passed through.
While it is not unusual to see caved-in ceilings in dilapidated historical homes, Keffer said, “I haven’t seen anything like that in something as diligently maintained” as Hartwood Mansion.
The stately Tudor built in 1929 was purchased by the Allegheny County Parks Department in 1969 and is a popular venue for concerts, theater and weddings. The 629-acre property straddles Hampton and Indiana townships along Saxonburg Boulevard.
All scheduled events inside the mansion have been canceled.
Last spring, Keffer helped reglaze 37 steel-framed casement windows in the cottage section of the mansion and on the first floor. He saw no signs of problems in the Great Hall ceiling, which contained hand-cast motifs of thistles and flowers.
Salvage and restoration work is to begin as soon as possible. Among the items damaged by falling plaster were a chandelier, a 1901 mahogany Steinway grand piano, an Aeolian pipe organ, early Georgian gaming tables and a large Flemish tapestry.
“We’re going to decipher what we can repair and what is beyond repair,” said mansion Manager Sylvia Easler.
Friends of Hartwood, a volunteer group dedicated to rehabilitating the mansion, plans to raise money to help restore the antique furniture and any damage not covered by insurance, said Amber Bierkan, the group’s president.
Restoring the Renaissance-style ceiling to its original grandeur could be time-consuming, Keffer said. He plans to take close-up shots of the debris and collect a small sample of the plaster for analysis.
“Hopefully we can find enough of the medallion pieces to duplicate them,” said Keffer. “I’m almost scared to look.”
For Easler, who has overseen the mansion for 20 years, it might be as if the sky has fallen on her head.
“I just love this house. Everyone here does,” Easler said. “We are kind of consoling each other.”
Violet Law can be reached at vlaw@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7884
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Hartwood mansion ceiling falls down, 76-year-old home closed indefinitely
By Jerome L. Sherman,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saturday, August 13, 2005On Thursday afternoon, Susan Gallant was one of 14 people admiring two rare antique European card tables from the 1800s during a tour at the Hartwood mansion in Indiana Township.
About 20 minutes later, those card tables and dozens of other priceless objects in the mansion’s Great Hall were crushed when two tons of plaster fell from the ceiling in one piece.
“I was terrified,” said Gallant, 46, of Boston, who was on the tour with her father and her 9-year-old daughter. “We were upstairs and we heard this really strange crackling sound.”
No one was injured at the mansion, which is owned and operated by Allegheny County and is located in Hartwood Acres Park.
The 31-room English Tudor is closed indefinitely, but all other facilities at the park are open.
The county parks department won’t be able to start estimating the extent of the damage until Monday, when representatives of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation visit the mansion.
Sylvia Easler, recreation superintendent with the parks department, said county workers need to wait for preservation experts with the landmarks foundation to examine the molded plaster, an original part of the 76-year-old structure, before they remove it.
Yet many antique items likely were destroyed or heavily damaged, including a Steinway piano, a handmade needlepoint sofa, a Flemish tapestry from the 17th century, and a brass chandelier that fell with the ceiling.
“Our goal is to get the building opened again as quickly as possible,” Easler said.
The mansion was built in 1929 for John and Mary Lawrence, whose father, William Flinn, was a powerful state politician and owner of a construction company that completed the Liberty Tunnels in Pittsburgh and the Holland Tunnel in New York.
In 1969, Mary Lawrence sold the mansion, most of its contents, and 400 acres to Allegheny County for a little more than $1 million. It opened to the public in 1976.
The mansion is a popular destination during the winter holiday season, when it gets as many as 400 visitors a week, Easler said.
It’s also known for hosting weddings and the occasional high tea in the Great Hall, the largest room.
Andy Baechle, county parks director, said the hall’s ceiling hadn’t received any restoration or repair work. No one had noticed any problems that needed repair.
“It was a complete surprise to the county,” he said.
When the tour passed through the hall on Thursday, some people saw a bump in the ceiling, Gallant said.
“Our knees were trembling” after the collapse, she said.
“We are counting our blessings that no one was in there,” Easler said.
(Jerome L. Sherman can be reached at jsherman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1183.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Historic landmark in Fayette for sale
By By Judy Kroeger
Daily Courier
Saturday, August 6, 2005The historic Isaac Meason House is for sale.
Owners Terry and Diane Kriss have given up the fight to have the acreage surrounding the 1802 mansion along Route 119 in Dunbar Township rezoned agricultural.
Terry Kriss recently took out a half page advertisement in “Maine Antique Digest” offering the house for $750,000.
“This is not a joke,” the ad reads, and specifies that Kriss, who restores antique cars for a living, would trade “for quality Corvettes, Mustangs and muscle cars.”
Kriss does not believe that anyone wants to purchase the property, which consists of four acres surrounded by an auto body shop, Laurel Mall and a strip mine, and is counting on someone wealthy enough to dismantle the 20-room house, brick by brick, window pane by window pane and reassemble it somewhere else.
This is not the first time he has taken an unconventional route to sell the house. In 2003, he marketed it on the Internet auction site eBay, but no buyers met the $1 million minimum bid.
Kriss has tried to attract preservationists to the landmark, which he opens to tours by appointment, but has given up on saving it at its present site, hemmed in by development that makes the mansion hard to see and access.
The house is surrounded by commercial property, with a 15-foot driveway as the only access.
“I am not even allowed to have a business sign at the bottom of my driveway,” he said.
Kriss’ father, Peter Kriss, bought the house in 1977. Terry and Diane have spent more than $250,000 to restore it and an additional $100,000 in legal fees to preserve the site from encroaching businesses and a cellular phone tower. They were successful in stopping the tower’s erection.
The zoning is another matter.
“The Kriss property is zoned A-1, agricultural,” said Tammy Shell, executive director of the Fayette County Office of Planning, Zoning and Community Development. “The properties around it are zoned B-1, general business. The Kriss property is about 4 acres and the surrounding properties are about 30.”
The first request for the business rezoning was in 1968 and some of the land owners asked in 2000 to have their property rezoned general business, he said. The zoning hearing board and the county commissioners granted that request.
Shell said that the revised zoning maps under the county’s new comprehensive plan are not yet available. However, she said that any changes in zoning will likely not affect the property around the Meason House.
“The commissioners are working on the text, but anything legally operating, Cellurale’s Auto Shop, for example, will be permitted, even if the zoning has changed.”
Kriss has given up. “I have fought for 29 years. I’m 49. This house has taken all my adult life. All I want to do is save the house. I have shopped the home to be dismantled and moved. I’m saving the house. It will be rebuilt somewhere.”
He approached Commissioner Joseph Hardy, who has bankrolled a number of restoration efforts.
“I got no response,” Kriss said.
Long the home’s biggest advocate, Kriss now characterizes himself as “its biggest threat. It’s hard to say, but I want to move forward with my life.”
Two years ago, Kriss was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He’s now disease-free.
“I beat it. I’m still here, but the problems are still here. It’s been a real privilege to live here, but there’s pain and grief and an embarrassment to the historic and preservation community.”
Lynda Waggoner is vice president of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and director of Fallingwater. She understands Kriss’ frustration.
“We’ve been involved with trying to preserve the Meason House for a number of years,” Waggoner said, “but the Pennsylvania Conservancy is more interested in nature conservation. Fallingwater is an example of man living in harmony with nature.”
But she has tried to help preserve the Meason House. “We’ve been looking for a win-win situation, but we haven’t been able to make it work.”
As for moving the house to erect it somewhere else, “Houses are moved all the time, even castles at the turn of the century,” Waggoner said. “But, I think it would be a shame for Fayette County to lose this building.”
Kriss estimates that dismantling the house and rebuilding it in a more accessible location will cost between $2 and $4 million. “Even out of its historical context, it would be an instant tourist attraction.”
The mansion and its outbuildings were built for Isaac Meason, who, in 1791, built the first commercially successful iron furnace and forge west of the Alleghenies. He also built the world’s first iron suspension bridge and owned 20,000 acres, including all of New Haven, which is now a part of Connellsville.
The Meason House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. Kriss has compiled a history of the house and its significance to local and national history at www.isaacmeasonmansion.com, which also includes information about the sale.
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Time is running out on historic Meason house
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, July 31, 2005Somebody do something, quick.
Because if nobody does anything, one of the most important historic houses in the country could be taken apart stone by stone, sill by sill, and sold for parts.
“To Be Dismantled,” reads the headline of a half-page advertisement in the June issue of Maine Antique Digest. Beneath it is a photograph of Fayette County’s Isaac Meason House, with the following caption: “This is no joke! I want to sell you this architecturally significant, ‘one of kind,’ 18th-century, cut-stone Palladian mansion, located in southwestern Pennsylvania. Accepting offers on stone, millwork, hardware, etc., etc.
“Please visit our website to view the many details. Quality Corvettes, Muscle and Classic Car Trades Considered. no dreamers please.”
It has come to this. Terry Kriss, the man who has performed painstaking research and restoration on the 20-room house, the man who has spent more than $100,000 in legal fees to protect it, now seems to be the No. 1 threat to its preservation.
How can you dismantle a house that you have loved so well for so long? “Nowhere in my wildest dreams would I ever think I would be advocating for the demolition of this home,” Kriss said recently at his kitchen table, next to the massive stone fireplace where a kettle hangs from its original crane.
“People who see my ad are appalled, but when they hear my story, they understand.”
Decades of battling encroaching commercial interests and two years of battling prostate cancer have left Kriss, a classic car and antiques dealer, ready and willing to do the unthinkable: Take apart the house he and his father saved from certain ruin.
But is Kriss serious, or is this just a ploy to get the attention of the media and preservationists? Articulate and passionate, Kriss is convincing when he says it’s time for him and his wife, Diane, to move on.
Two years ago, they listed the house on eBay and hired a public relations firm to promote it. That move garnered national media attention and rankled preservationists who had worked to save it.
At the end of the monthlong auction, the Krisses had interest from two men, but neither of their offers met the million-dollar reserve. Kriss estimates it would cost the buyer another $2 million to $4 million to disassemble and relocate the house.
With the fortune that built the house long ago dissipated, his prayers “for that one Meason descendant” to come to the rescue are unlikely to be answered.
A learning lab
Diane Kriss places a stack of studies, appraisals and plans almost a foot tall on the kitchen table.
“The house has been studied to death,” her husband says. “We know its paint colors throughout its history. Do something with all this knowledge!” Six years ago there was an idea, a good one, and it came from Fallingwater’s executive director, Linda Waggoner: Make the house a laboratory where students from a local university could learn restoration techniques in a new program designed to train master craftsmen.
Waggoner was a member of the Meason House Working Group, which also included representatives of the National Park Service, Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, Preservation Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, as well as historian Eliza Smith Brown, philanthropist Lea Hillman Simonds and lawyers Hannah Leavitt and Harley Trice.
The group’s plan was to give the Krisses a nonrefundable $45,000 for a yearlong option on the house, during which time members would try to raise $1.5 million. From that kitty, it would purchase the house for $450,000 and give a university the million-dollar endowment it would require to establish the new program.
But Kriss, whose parents bought the house in 1977, thinks it’s worth $750,000, and that’s the figure he held out for.
“I take offense to being low-balled out of my house,” he said in rising tones.
“It’s very hard for a nonprofit to justify paying more than an appraisal, and he just never seemed to appreciate that,” Waggoner said.
But $300,000 isn’t all that separated the preservation groups and the Krisses from coming to an agreement. Terry Kriss, under siege from illness and in a nonsupportive community environment, felt that a year was too long to wait.
Frustrated, he put the house on eBay in May 2003. On May 22 of that year, representatives of Preservation Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation issued a tersely worded press release stating that if the Meason house is lost, “it will not have been for lack of effort on the part of Pennsylvania’s preservation community.”
A standout building
When Isaac Meason’s house was completed in 1802, Thomas Jefferson was president, Meriwether Lewis was preparing for his cross-country river trip and iron manufacturing was the largest industry in Pittsburgh, a village of about 2,000 people. Blacksmiths made tools, kettles, pans and other objects for immigrants to take west, using iron smelted in outlying regions by iron masters like Meason.
The richest man in nearby Fayette County, Meason also owned two saw mills, a grist mill and 6,400 acres of the finest coal and iron land in Western Pennsylvania that once were part of the short-lived plantation of George Washington’s guide, Christopher Gist.
The house Meason built was an expression of that wealth, a building that rivaled the best houses of the British Isles. Likely also influenced at least in part by Philadelphia’s Cliveden, it went one better, with cut sandstone and limestone on all four sides; Cliveden is rubble stone on all but its facade.
But while Cliveden today is operated as a historic house museum by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in serene Fairmount Park, the Meason house is surrounded by an auto body shop and a shopping center. For years a strip mine operated just a stone’s throw from its back yard.
The house outlasted the mine, but the damaged chimneys are in danger of tumbling down. The Krisses won a court battle with a cell phone company that wanted to erect a tower near the house, but he lost a zoning fight. The county permitted a change from agricultural to commercial zoning to allow the auto body shop to continue to operate just yards from the mansion’s iron gates, and in the process expanded the commercial zone from half an acre to 29 acres.
Yet within the bounds of its 4-acre site, the house remains a breathtaking example of Palladian architecture in a Georgian landscape. Cliveden has lost its dependencies, but the Meason house is flanked by six: carriage house with slave quarters, kitchen, pantry, hall, office and smoke house. The house and four dependencies are set on a raised, circular lawn enclosed by a stone wall.
“I know of no other such feature in America, and have only seen it a few times in the very greatest houses of Britain, notably [Robert] Adam’s Kedleston,” wrote preservation consultant and University of Pennsylvania architectural historian George Thomas in a report on the house in 1990. With workmanship that “may well be the best in America of that time,” the Meason house is “the standout building of its time” in the United States.
“Many Georgian double-pile houses [with four rooms of equal height on two floors] were built after Meason’s mansion, but none exceeded this masterpiece in sophistication of design,” write Deborah S. Burns and Robert J. Webster in their 2000 book “Pennsylvania Architecture,” which documents the work of the Historic American Buildings Survey and features the Meason house on its front and back covers.
Its architect and builder was Scottish-born Adam Wilson.
“It is regrettable that we do not know more about Wilson; but if the spirit and quality of his one remaining work, the Meason House, are any true reflection of the man, he was a person of rare good taste, who conceived his scheme ‘in the grand manner’ and executed its detail with exquisite refinement,” architect Charles Stotz wrote in his 1936 book “Early Architecture of Western Pennsylvania.”
What now?
Today, preservationists who worked to rescue the Meason house are as burned out as the Krisses and at a loss for what to do next.
“If I had that magic answer, we might be well on our way to saving it,” said Susan Shearer, president of Preservation Pennsylvania. “But as we say, preservation really is a local activity. There has to be that local will to care about place.”
Waggoner agrees. “Given the lack of interest in the community, maybe the best solution is that it be dismantled and moved to somewhere where people will appreciate it.”
“I wish I knew” what to do next, said Arthur Ziegler, president of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and a vice president of Preservation Pennsylvania. “I think it’s one of the most important houses in Western Pennsylvania, and I think it is that in its setting, with the Chestnut Ridge to its back. I have never been in favor of moving the house.”
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which operates 26 historic sites and museums and has a history of advocacy for the Meason house dating to 1987, has no plans to purchase it due to a lack of funds, said spokeswoman Jane Crawford.
The situation “is very disappointing to us,” said Bonnie Halda, manager of the Preservation Assistance Program of the northeast regional office of the National Park Service, which also has had a long involvement with the house. She believes the preservation trades program is still the most viable re-use of the house, because it involves a university as a long-term partner and because, by training future preservationists, “the benefit would extend beyond the preservation of the house.”
The Meason house has been a National Historic Landmark since 1990, one of fewer than 2,500 in the county. If it were to become a national historic site owned and operated by the National Park Service, the process must begin in Congress, with the commissioning of a study that would examine its suitability as a site, Halda said. But such a study is not in the works.
A few local philanthropists, including Fayette County Commissioner Joe Hardy, have been approached, but no one has made a direct appeal to Gov. Rendell or former Gov. Ridge for emergency funding to save the house. “Without a clear plan for its future, I doubt [the governor] would be interested,” Waggoner said.
Yet the importance of the Meason house cannot be overstated. If its present circumstances seem tragic and hopeless, look beyond the present acrimony and consider the long view. The auto body shop and shopping center must be seen for what they are: temporary intrusions on a historic landscape that can be restored. The Meason house, on the other hand, was built for the ages. It should still be standing 200 years hence to tell the story of the region’s early iron and steel industry, of slave-holding in Western Pennsylvania, of the Gists’ occupation and the land’s association with the English conquest in the 1750s.
If the Meason house were in Philadelphia, Virginia or South Carolina, it would have been rehabilitated and opened to the public long ago, and it’s an embarrassment to Fayette County, the region, the state and the nation that it has not.
When the National Trust for Historic Preservation and co-sponsoring Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation hold the trust’s annual conference in Pittsburgh next year, will the Meason house be a must-see stop on its tour list, or will it be forgotten and ignored? Waggoner’s plan deserves to get further than it did, and only a sale can make that happen. In the spirit of compromise, perhaps the Krisses can accept less for the house and the preservation community can find a way to re-engage and offer more. Having a new caretaker in the house will buy time to work out the details of a plan.
Somewhere, somehow, the money must be found to save this house and its landscape.
Is anyone listening? Does anyone with the will and the wherewithal to make a difference care?
(PG architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette