Category Archive: Historic Properties
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On the Whiskey Trail
Jasmine Gehris/Tribune-Review
By Jerry Storey
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, May 22, 2005Grant Gerlich, executive director at West Overton Museums, near Scottdale, would like to establish a small distillery at the site where Old Overholt whiskey had its beginning.
The curators at the Oliver Miller Homestead in South Park, and at Woodville Plantation, in Collier Township, Allegheny County, have more modest projects in the works to celebrate their whiskey heritage, building a barn to house an 18th-century still and planting rye, respectively.
The southwestern Pennsylvania museums are linked as three of the seven historic sites on the new American Whiskey Trail.
The others are the George Washington Distillery site at Mt. Vernon, Va., the centerpiece of the effort; Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York City; Gadsby’s Tavern Museum in Alexandria, Va.; and the Oscar Getz Museum, in Bardstown, Ky.
Also included on the tour are four operating distilleries in Kentucky — Jim Beam, in Clermont; Maker’s Mark, in Loretto; Wild Turkey, in Lawrenceburg; and Woodford Reserve, in Versailles — and two in Tennessee — George Dickel, in Tullahoma, and Jack Daniels, in Lynchburg. There are also two rum distilleries, Bacardi, in Catano, Puerto Rico, and Cruzan in St. Croix, the Virgin Islands.
The Web site for the American Whiskey Trail describes it as “a cultural heritage and tourism initiative of the Distilled Spirits Council in cooperation with Historic Mount Vernon.”
The three sites in southwestern Pennsylvania represent two different eras in whiskey making.
The Oliver Miller Homestead and the Woodville Plantation highlight the lives of early settlers, the importance of whiskey to commerce and the independent spirit that led to a short-lived rebellion in 1794 after the federal government taxed whiskey. The owners of the Miller and Neville homesteads were on opposite sides of the rebellion.
The homesteads are two of only eight sites in Allegheny County listed as National Historic Landmarks.
West Overton was developed after the Whiskey Rebellion. Although rye whiskey was made at the site in a log house as early as 1803, the 1838 distillery building, and the village that surrounded it, represent a tipping point in the nation’s transition from agriculture to industry, according to Gerlich.
None of the three area museums have extensive exhibits on whiskey making yet. But that doesn’t concern Dennis Pogue, associate director at Mt. Vernon, who invited the three museums to be a part of the American Whiskey Trail.
“There is more to the history (of whiskey) than just making whiskey,” he said.
Motorists speed by 18th-century history every day on Route 50.
The Woodville Plantation, also known as the John and Presley Neville House, is hemmed in by highways and surrounded by office buildings. The plantation, once spread out over 400 acres, now encompasses about five acres of land.
“It’s our little bit of Williamsburg,” said Julianna Haag, the president of the Woodville Plantation Associates, referring to the restored Colonial capital in Virginia.
The original log cabin was erected by Neville in 1775, making it the oldest domicile in Allegheny County. Now covered in clapboard, two small doors can be swung open to show visitors the original logs. The original cabin’s kitchen room, with its hearth and period utensils, is the most popular stop on the house tour, according to Haag.
John Neville and his son, Presley, had distinguished records in the Revolutionary War as a general and aide-de-camp to Lafayette, respectively.
John Neville had built a new mansion at Bower Hill and given Woodville to Presley by the time of the Whiskey Rebellion.
But then, his friend, President George Washington, asked him to collect the new tax on whiskey in western Pennsylvania. After angry neighbors burned his new mansion to the ground, John Neville had to move back in with his son.
Succeeding owners made several additions to the home, including, in the late 1820s, a wraparound veranda set off with latticework.
The dining room walls are painted in a bright verdigris green popular in the late 18th century. The bedrooms are papered in a replica of an 1815 pattern.
Early occupants of the Woodville Plantation made their mark by etching their names and messages in the windows with diamond rings, a 19th-century custom akin to later homeowners tracing their initials in wet cement.
There are few exhibits showing the home’s direct connection to the Whiskey Rebellion, although it is emphasized in tours.
Rob Windhorst, a member of the Woodville Plantation Associates, recently added a living connection to the era by planting some rye on the grounds.
Volunteer docents, dressed in 18th-century garb, give tours of the Woodville Plantation on Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m.
“We try to put ourselves in John Neville’s era,” Haag said.
Haag, who discovered the site when she helped her daughter with an eighth-grade history project, said associates emphasize educational programs, particularly for children.The group also published a collection of personal letters and documents from the Whiskey Rebellion.
One interesting outside exhibit is John Neville’s original tombstone, although he isn’t buried at Woodville Plantation. The most recent reconstruction project is an 18th-century privy, built by Julianna Haag’s husband, Doug, who modeled it after plans from Williamsburg.
In 1976, Woodville was acquired by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. It is operated by a board made up of representatives from the foundation, the Neville House Associates, the Allegheny County Committee of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America and individuals.
In addition to the Sunday tours held May through October, appointments for private tours and school groups are available.
The Oliver Miller Homestead is in the middle of a park. Stone Manse Drive, which leads to the homestead, is just off Corrigan Drive, the main road in South Park.
According to a history of the homestead, Oliver Miller emigrated with his family to America from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, in 1742. He purchased a tract of land on Catfish Run in 1772 and settled on the site six years later, building a two-story log cabin.
The cabin was replaced in 1830 by the current Stone Manse, which stayed in the family until the 1927 formation of South Park.
Visitors in shorts, T-shirts, sweats and bicycle helmets mingle with docents in Colonial dresses and bonnets at the homestead, often wandering unaware into the 18th-century world.
Mary Olesky, president of the associates, said neighbors who live near the homestead often don’t know it’s there.
But those who find their way to the Stone Manse are greeted by guides in period garb conducting tours and discussing history. On any given Sunday, visitors will find quilters, wool spinners, chair makers and blacksmiths demonstrating pioneer crafts. Volunteers also prepare a meal from the era, such as catfish cooked on the griddle on April 17, opening day.
There is a series of programs that run from opening day through a Dec. 11 frontier Christmas. On July 17, a skit titled “Serving the Writ,” will be performed several times to dramatize the outbreak of the Whiskey Rebellion.
Three of Oliver Miller’s sons were involved in the outbreak, according to the homestead’s history, when on July 15, 1794, Gen. John Miller and a U.S. marshal went to the home of William Miller near the homestead. The officers attempted to serve a writ which imposed a $250 fine for Miller’s failure to register his still.
As the rebellion spread throughout western Pennsylvania, Washington, in turn, formed an army of 12,000 men who quickly put an end to it.
Guides at the Oliver Miller Homestead retell the story of the Whiskey Rebellion to visitors.
“We try to educate people,” said Noel Moebs, 78, a retired geologist who has been involved with the associates since it beginning 30 years ago.
In addition to the presentations, a number of books on the Whiskey Rebellion are on sale at the log house.
While Allegheny County owns the Oliver Miller Homestead, the associates have been responsible for operating the site and making all the improvement on it for the past 30 years. The group receives no tax revenue from the county for the improvements.
“It’s all donations,” Moebs said.
In addition to the Stone Manse, the property includes a springhouse, a reconstructed log house, a blacksmith forge and various heirloom gardens. The most important Whiskey Rebellion artifact on display at the homestead is the bottom half of an 18th-century still that belonged to the Millers.
“It is a real museum piece,” Moebs said.
A new barn is being built to house the still and other exhibits depicting the Whiskey Rebellion.
Moebs hopes the honor of being part of the American Whiskey trail will guide more visitors to the Oliver Miller Homestead, which is open Sundays through Dec. 11 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The last tour begins at 4 p.m.
West Overton is an agriculture village founded by Henry Overholt in 1800 and expanded by his son, Abraham, located on Route 819 near Scottdale. The collection of stone buildings, the Overholt mansion, the distillery building and an enormous barn is hard to miss.
Gerlich said that Abraham Overholt, living in eastern Pennsylvania with his father at the time of the Whiskey Rebellion, was captivated by it. He said Abraham realized “that’s where the future was.”
Soon after the German Mennonite family moved to southwestern Pennsylvania, Henry Overholt established a distillery in a log building.
“They had a recipe they brought from Germany,” Gerlich said.
After Henry Overholt’s death in 1813, Abraham expanded the distillery, bricking in the log building and erecting a gristmill. With his rye crop, the gristmill, and distillery, he had everything he needed for his product.
“You could grow it, mill it and distill it,” Gerlich said.
The brand Overholt made at West Overton was Old Farm Rye Whiskey. He also made Old Monongahela Whiskey at a distillery at Broadford, Connellsville Township, Fayette County.
The name was changed to Old Overholt after his death in 1875. It became a popular national brand.
Gerlich pointed out that a true Manhattan or Old-Fashioned mixed drink has to be made with Old Overholt.
During Prohibition, the distillery was shut down at West Overton, but “medicinal whiskey” was made at the Broadford site. Old Overholt was distilled at Broadford until a 1965 fire; the brand is still made at the Jim Beam Distillery in Kentucky.
The new makers of Old Overholt have made at least one change, however. Gerlich pointed out that they’ve added a slight smile to the portrait of the dour Overholt on the label.
As the birthplace of Henry Clay Frick, West Overton was also at the center of the Connellsville coke industry. Frick, Overholt’s grandson, was a towering, controversial figure in the coal and coke era. In recognition of this, a coke oven was reconstructed and set in front of the museum.
Helen Clay Frick, Frick’s daughter, donated the West Overton site to a nonprofit association.
As important as the coal and coke heritage is to the area, Gerlich said he doesn’t want the whiskey era in southwestern Pennsylvania slighted. He said whiskey also would have broader appeal to many tourists than coal and coke.
The most prominent reminder of whiskey making at West Overton is the museum building, which is the shell of the old distillery and gristmill. An exhibit inside the museum also chronicles the era.
The museum sponsors a series of programs throughout the year, including a quilt show June 4 through July 1.
Someday, Gerlich would like to set up as a tourist attraction a small-batch distillery that would also sell its product. In the meantime, he said the whiskey era would play a more prominent role in presentations and programming at West Overton.
The museum is open May through Oct. 1, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays.
The Jim Beam Distillery tour features a museum that shows how whiskey is made. There are also a number of historical exhibits such as old rack houses and what may be the oldest moonshine still in America, according to Doris Calhoun, who heads up the visitors center.
In addition, the tour offers an inducement to visitors that the three historic sites in southwestern Pennsylvania can’t match — at least not until West Overton gets its distillery.
Calhoun said visitors 21 and older can attend tastings of the product. The visitors are served one-half-ounce glasses of two different “ultra-premium” bourbons, which is “the maximum amount state law will allow,” she said.
Samples may be available at other distilleries on the tour. Although Old Overholt rye whiskey is made at the Jim Beam distillery, it isn’t offered in the tastings.
“Some do tastings, some don’t,” Calhoun said.
The centerpiece on the historic portion of the whiskey trail is the distillery Washington built in 1797 at Mt. Vernon, his Virginia home for 45 years.
An operating gristmill has been reconstructed at Mt. Vernon. A five-year archaeological dig at the original distillery site is complete and a reconstructed distillery is being erected there, with funding from the Distilled Sprits Council.
The council is not the first to recognize the appeal of a whiskey trail.
The Scottish Whisky Trail has been around for decades and has become a popular tourist destination. Pogue, Mt. Vernon’s associate director, acknowledged that it has one advantage over the American Whiskey Trail in that there are a number of historic sites and distilleries in a small area that tourists can visit in a few days.
Even if all the sites on the American Whiskey Trail can’t be taken in a few days, Pogue said that individually or collectively, they have an important story to tell.
Jerry Storey can be reached at jstorey@tribweb.com or (724) 626-3581.
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Ancient habitation site is now listed historic landmark – Rockshelter recognized 50 years ago
By Crystal Ola
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Sunday, May 15, 2005Fifty years after the discovery of an area providing clues to the way North Americans lived 16,000 years ago, Meadowcroft Rockshelter will be able to celebrate the anniversary this summer with its recent designation as a National Historic Landmark.
“We have been working toward this goal for more than five years,” said Dave Scofield, director of Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Museum of Rural Life in Jefferson, three miles west of Avella. “This is a real validation not only of the importance of the site, but the significance of the site on a national scale.”
For thousands of years, the rock overhang offered protection for those who camped at the site. The rockshelter is believed to provide the earliest evidence of human habitation in North America.
Meadowcroft Rockshelter has received international attention since James Adovasio began excavating the site in 1973. Adovasio is the director of the anthropology and archaeology department at Mercyhurst College. He will give a lecture and slide show and lead a special tour of the site June 18, July 16 and Aug. 20.
Adovasio caused a stir in the anthropology and archaeology world when he used his research to challenge the theory that the first Americans crossed the Bering Strait and settled in the southwest about 12,000 years ago. Before the discovery of the rockshelter, the oldest evidence of human habitation in North America was near Clovis, N.M.
But the discovery of items such as chips of pottery, charcoal and deer bones led Adovasio to postulate people were living in America thousands of years earlier. Humans also returned to the site for thousands of years, as evidenced by campfires and even an 18th-century gin bottle left by Europeans, perhaps making Meadowcroft the site with the longest record of human habitation in the country.
Public tours of the rockshelter began two years ago when stairs were built to the site. The rockshelter entertains 5,000 visitors annually.
Meadowcroft is working with the National Parks Service to schedule a public recognition ceremony, possibly in June, Scofield said. He also hopes to share plans at the ceremony to construct a permanent, protective roof over the area, which would also make the site more accessible to larger tour groups. The roof may be built next year, but construction is contingent on fund-raising efforts.
Meadowcroft is in very exclusive company; 4 percent of the 77,000 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places are named National Historic Landmarks, Scofield said.
“It doesn’t happen every day,” he said.
Regular tours are available during museum hours. The museum is open noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays in May and Wednesdays through Fridays from noon to 5 p.m., in addition to the weekend schedule, from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
Tickets for Adovasio’s insider tours cost $20 each and advance registration is required. The June 18 tour is sold out.
For more information, go to www.meadowcroftmuseum. org or call 724-587-3412.
(Crystal Ola is a freelance writer.)
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Historic designation OK’d for Buhl building
By The Tribune Review
Wednesday, May 4, 2005The Pittsburgh Planning Commission on Tuesday approved a historic designation for the former Buhl Planetarium building on the North Side.
Built in 1939 on the site of the former Allegheny City Hall and donated to the city by the Buhl Foundation, it was among the first planetariums in the country.
The square structure of Indiana limestone topped by a copper dome was spared when the heart of the North Side was razed in the 1960s to make way for the Allegheny Center. After a decade of dormancy, the planetarium building has since 2004 been incorporated into the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. The designation now needs the approval of City
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City group honors preservation efforts
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, May 3, 2005Dan Sufak paid little attention to the Victorian details of his family’s Round the Corner Tavern when he would slip in the backdoor for a sandwich as a schoolboy in the 1950s.
But when he and his wife, Susan, bought the Lawrenceville bar and hotel in 1984 — 90 years after it first opened — they vowed to undo decades of neglect to restore the features that set the Butler Street building apart from scores of other neighborhood watering holes.
“I always hated the way the placed looked,” Sufak, 61, said of the oldest continuously operating bar in Pittsburgh. “It’s a unique building, but a lot of bad things were done to it for a long time.”
Susan Sufak, 60, said she and her husband were embarrassed about the way the building looked. “So when everybody around here started fixing up their properties a few years ago, we decided to do ours,” she said. “We didn’t want it to be known as the ugliest place on the street.”
The Sufaks are among 20 property owners in the city who will be honored Friday at the Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission’s 22nd annual preservation awards ceremony.
“Unlike some parts of the country, Pittsburgh has not had a substantial amount of government money available for people who want to do historic preservation,” said Angelique Bamberg, the city’s historic preservation planner. “We feel it’s important to recognize people who have taken the initiative and used private funds to preserve the historic fabric of our communities.”
Local historic preservationists say the restoration of older structures pays financial and cultural dividends.
“When Americans travel, it often is to historic cities,” said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “We love to walk the streets of London, and visit the sites in Rome and Paris. The older buildings in this region are part of our cultural heritage. They are worth saving.”
State Sen. Jim Ferlo, a longtime activist in preserving the city’s historic buildings, said even if people cannot see the cultural benefits of saving older buildings, they should recognize the economic value.
“A decade ago, if anybody would have said lofts in older Lawrenceville buildings would be selling for $200,000- $250,000, they would have been laughed at,” said Ferlo, D-Highland Park, who serves on the state’s Historic and Museum Commission. “There clearly are tremendous development opportunities in historic preservation.”
Ziegler said attempts to revitalize Pittsburgh neighborhoods by replacing historic structures with new ones generally have failed, while efforts to restore older buildings have succeeded.
“Station Square has worked, Allegheny Center Mall didn’t,” Ziegler said. “The restoration of homes in the Mexican War Streets has been a success, while efforts in the 1960s to remake East Liberty with modern housing units failed.”
The loss of buildings with architectural treatments that cannot be reproduced are not the only casualties of demolition.
“When the old Market House on the North Side was torn down for Allegheny Center Mall, we lost what was the vital core of a community for 100 years,” Ziegler said.
“And the same thing happened with the absurd idea of putting a pedestrian mall in East Liberty. It seems that nearly every time we try replacing the old with the new, it’s a failure. I think there’s a lesson there.”
Honorees
Projects that will be honored at the 22nd Annual Preservation Awards ceremony at noon Friday in Pittsburgh City Council chambers, 414 Grant St., Fifth Floor.
901 Allegheny Ave., Allegheny West — The Pittsburgh Presbytery
Owner: The Rev. Dr. James Mead, the Pittsburgh Presbytery
Architect: MacLachlan, Cornelius and Filoni Architects Inc.307, 313 and 315 Terminal Way, South Side
Owner: Pittsburgh Terminal Properties
Architect: Jill Flannery Joyce, Joyce Design Group900 East Carson St., South Side — George C. Cupples Stadium
Owner: Pittsburgh Board of Public Education
Architects: John A. Martine, Alan J. Cuteri, and Sean Beasley — STRADA1290 Mifflin Road, Lincoln Place — Mifflin Elementary School
Owner: Pittsburgh Board of Public Education
Architects: John A. Martine, Alan J. Cuteri and Cas Pelligrini — STRADA2000 E. Carson St., South Side — Southside Steaks
Tenant: Marc Feldstein
Architect: Jason Roth, Hanson Design Group1609-13 E. Carson St., South Side — Former Lorch’s Department Store
Owner: 17th Street Partners
Architect: David Morgan, Morgan Associates Architects4720 Fifth Ave., Oakland — Central Catholic High School
Owners: Catholic Institute of Pittsburgh, Diocese of Pittsburgh
Architects: David Brenenborg and Charles Brown, Brenenborg Brown Group315 Shady Ave., Shadyside — Parish House at Calvary Episcopal Church
Owners: Calvary Episcopal Church
Architects: Kent Edwards and David L. Ross, The Design Alliance Architects4905 Fifth Ave., Oakland — Rodef Shalom Temple
Owners: Rodef Shalom Congregation
Architects: David L. Ross and Bradley Smith, The Design Alliance Architects1535 Lincoln Ave., Lincoln-Lemington — Powerhouse Full Gospel Holiness Church
Owner: Powerhouse Full Gospel Holiness Church
Architect: Jill Flannery Joyce, Joyce Design Group410-16 North Craig St., Oakland — The Luna Lofts
Owner: 410-416 North Craig Street, LP
Architect: Dutch McDonald, EDGE Studio6101 Penn Ave., East Liberty — Former Liberty Bank Building
Owner: Liberty Bank Building, LP
Architect: Dutch McDonald, EDGE Studio5501 Elgin St., Highland Park — King Estate or Baywood
Owner: Dr. and Mrs. Frank H. Brown3718-20 Butler St., Lawrenceville — Round Corner Tavern and Hotel
Owner: Dan and Susan Sufak
Architect: Keith H. Cochran, Cochran Associates Architects3519 Butler St., Lawrenceville
Owner: 3811 Associates
Architect: Jill Flannery Joyce, Joyce Design Group5165 Butler St., Lawrenceville
Owner: Wylie Holdings, LP
Architect: Jill Flannery Joyce, Joyce Design Group5166 Butler St., Lawrenceville
Owner: Wylie Holdings, LP
Architect: Jill Flannery Joyce, Joyce Design Group5169 Butler St., Lawrenceville
Owner: Wylie Holdings, L.P.
Architect: Jill Flannery Joyce, Joyce Design Group4054 Penn Ave., Lawrenceville
Owner: Elizabeth Beroes
Architect: Jill Flannery Joyce, Joyce Design Group145 44th St., Lawrenceville
Owner: William Cornell
Architect: Jill Flannery Joyce, Joyce Design GroupTony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com.
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Meadowcroft, Chatham Village become Landmarks
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, May 02, 2005One of the earliest places of human habitation in North America and one of its most influential planned communities have been designated National Historic Landmarks.
Washington County’s Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Mount Washington’s Chatham Village this month joined fewer than 2,500 places around the country to be so honored.
“It’s something that will give us some national exposure, and by reinforcing the significance of that archaeological site, it will help us attract more visitors to Meadowcroft and ensure its preservation,” said David Scofield, director of Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Museum of Rural Life.
The designation “comes at an ideal time, since this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Rockshelter’s discovery in 1955,” said James Adovasio, the Mercyhurst College professor who’s been the site’s principal investigator since 1973.
Adovasio’s research challenged the long-held view that humans crossed the Bering Strait and first settled in North America near Clovis, N.M., about 12,000 years ago. Artifacts, animal bones and other evidence suggest there was human habitation under a rock overhang at Meadowcroft 16,000 years ago.
Meadowcroft opened for its 37th season yesterday, and visitors will be able to tour the excavation site and an additional historic building at Meadowcroft Village. An 1870s clapboard-covered log church, moved from just outside Jollytown, Greene County, in 1997 to Meadowcroft, joins four other relocated historic structures open to the public — a schoolhouse, two log houses and the Pine Bank covered bridge.
Two of the buildings — the schoolhouse and one log house — are associated with the family of Meadowcroft founders Albert and Delvin Miller. A blacksmith shop also is on site; all have costumed interpreters.
This season’s programs include Adovasio leading “insider” tours of the rockshelter from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. June 18, July 16 and Aug. 20. Information: 724-587-3412 or www.meadowcroftmuseum.org.
For Chatham Village, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1998, designation as a National Historic Landmark means more that just added prestige.
The U.S. Dept. of the Interior annually reviews the conditions of and threats to National Historic Landmarks, and makes legislators aware of potential threats.
“They are getting the word out of the need to preserve these properties,” said architect and 20-year Chatham Village resident David Vater, who wrote the original National Register nomination.
Vater said the federal agency pursued the National Historic Landmark designation after reviewing the National Register nomination and a theme study of the early planned communities of master planner-architects Clarence S. Stein and Henry Wright.
The designation regards Chatham Village, built in the early 1930s, as “one of the most celebrated and influential projects to result from Stein and Wright’s highly creative, 10-year collaboration and the efforts of the Regional Planning Association of America to promote social reform and improvement in the housing of moderate-income Americans in metropolitan areas.”
Its plan of low-rise buildings clustered around a village green helped shape the design of the first federally funded public housing projects of the 1930s.
Eight to 10 village families open their homes every other year for the Chatham Village house and garden tour, which will be held Oct. 5.
(Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.)
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South Side church becomes restaurant
By Johnna A. Pro,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, April 14, 2005The historic Cleaves Temple on the South Side had been left to deteriorate in recent years, its stained glass windows covered in grime, its majestic columns and dome towers marred by the hands of vandals and Mother Nature.It was little more than a crumbling eyesore on Carson Street between 10th and 11th streets, a fate hardly befitting a building that served as a place of Christian worship for nearly 100 years.
Since January, though, contractors and artisans working for developer and restaurateur Clint Pohl have worked painstakingly to recapture the building’s past while readying it for a future as a restaurant, the Halo Cafe, much to the delight of the city’s historical preservationists.
“It’s going to be fabulous,” said Maria Burgwin of the city’s Historic Preservation office, which approved the renovation plans in the fall. “We hate to see vacant buildings in historic districts.”
The project is the second one undertaken by Pohl, who spearheaded the renovation of the St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in the Strip District, turning it into Sanctuary, a nightclub.
While records about Cleaves Temple are sometimes sketchy, the building was constructed in 1913 by J.O. Keller at the behest of a congregation of Ukrainian Presbyterians formed several years earlier. At the time, the two existing churches that served the large Ukrainian population living on the South Side were Byzantine Catholic churches.
The newly formed congregation found a patron in a wealthy woman named Mrs. William McKelvey of East Liberty Presbyterian Church. She donated the money to construct the church, a building with an exterior reminiscent of an ornate Eastern European church and an interior reflecting a classic Calvanist tradition. On the outside, the red-brick facade featured an entrance reminiscent of a Greek Temple with a wide staircase leading from the sidewalks and four massive columns supporting a triangular gable. On either side of the building were twin hexagonal towers capped at some point by Byzantine onion domes, each topped with a traditional Orthodox three-bar cross. Stained glass windows adorn the building.
Inside, rich woodwork, clean lines and simple frescoes were the church’s hallmarks.
The church was initially called the First Ruthenian Church. In 1949, that congregation merged with South Side Presbyterian, which today remains one of the most vibrant churches in the neighborhood.
Some historians have written that the building’s onion domes were added in its early history and it was used as a Greek Catholic Church, although none of the experts cite a specific reason for that conclusion.
What is certain is that by the 1950s, members of the South Side Christian Methodist Episcopal Conference owned the building and had renamed it Cleaves Temple CME Church. It would remain an active congregation through the turn of the century until the building was put on the market.
Enter Pohl — owner of Andora restaurant in Ohio Township — who was looking to do a project on the South Side. While much development in the neighborhood is occurring on the far end of Carson Street at the South Side Works, Pohl was drawn to blocks near the 10th Street Bridge, where an eclectic array of businesses are.
While he wasn’t looking for a church in particular, Cleaves Temple caught his eye.
“I was looking for a real estate investment and it happened to be a church. It’s good architecture and it’s inexpensive,” said Pohl, who paid $135,000 for the property, but will invest 10 times as much on the renovations. He also will provide parking at a lot less than a block away.
“I see this as the entrance to the South Side,” Pohl said.
He enlisted the design help of architect Felix G. Fukui of Fukui Architects, who also helped to create Sanctuary.
“Structurally, it’s great,” Fukui said. “The challenge is to marry the new and the old. To tie the rhythm and the form of the church together with the modern design.”
In this case, that means restoring stained glass, bringing the woodwork back to it original luster, using the former balcony space for seating and designing lighting so that it fits with the interior space.
Because the building sits back from the street, Fukui has redesigned the entrance so that a center staircase will lead from street level down to a lower level lounge. Two other staircases will sweep from street level up either side to the portico and the restaurant’s main entrance.
The restaurant, expected to open in early June, will feature intimate booths and table seating surrounding a main bar. The separate spaces are meant to provide patrons privacy while allowing them to be part of the activity. Additional dining space will be in the former balcony.
Jeff and Laura Mae Greene of Greene Glass in Sharon have overseen the restoration of the two dozen stained glass windows.
“I just loved the building from the first time I saw it,” Jeff Greene said. “I just was fascinated with the idea of fixing a building like that up.”
The stained glass was less damaged than it appeared, Greene said.
“In the scale of what we have seen over the years, it was in pretty good shape. To the untrained eye, it can often look pretty bad. It was not in disastrous condition. The painting is beautiful, well done, and the colors are fantastic. The bulk of the effort was just cleaning them.”
Louise Sturgess of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation said that one of the reasons the South Side remains a vibrant neighborhood is because so many of its former churches have found new uses.
Cleaves Temple, while not one of the largest, has always attracted attention because of its charm.
“It’s been scaled to fit right in that block of workers rowhouses,” Burgess said. “It should be grander but humbly fits in there with the streetscape. When you think about the scale of things it takes you by surprise to see this ethnic church.
“I think it’s great that it’s being reused. We’re all for imaginative reuses as long as the historical integrity is retained. It’s wonderful how generally on the South Side, historic churches have been treasured, given a new life and a new use. They create a quality of life that wouldn’t exist without them. They help people feel connected to the story of a neighborhood’s history.”
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Phipps completes first phase of expansion project
By Kellie B. Gormly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, March 29, 2005Visitors to Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens this weekend will find a warm and bright spring greeting in the new Welcome Center, which is the first phase of a $36.6 million expansion project.
“It’s the first building in a major expansion of the conservatory that’s going to make Phipps the finest conservatory in the entire country,” says Richard V. Piacentini, executive director of the Oakland attraction. “We think it is the most attractive entrance to a botanical garden in the entire country.”Officials will discuss details of the new Welcome Center at a news conference scheduled for Thursday, which marks the official public opening. A grand-opening celebration for the public is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.
The 10,885-square-foot Welcome Center — portions of which have been opened for about a month — includes updated visitor amenities, the 2,000-square-foot Shop at Phipps and the 78-seat Cafe Phipps. The center, topped by a 46-foot glass dome, sits mostly underground, with a small lobby on the ground level that leads to the Palm Court and the rest of the conservatory. The dome allows plenty of natural light to spill in, making it seem to visitors that they are not underground, Piacentini says.
“One of the biggest problems we had in the design process was figuring out how to put the building in front of the conservatory without blocking it,” he says. “This is an absolutely brilliant solution.”
The next phase of the project — a state-of-the-art greenhouse production facility designed to grow plants for exhibition — is scheduled to open this fall, followed by the 12,000-square-foot Tropical Forest Exhibit in the fall of 2006. The final two phases are adding facilities for special events and education administration. Timelines for these two projects depend on funding received, Piacentini says.
IKM Inc., a Downtown architectural firm, designed the Welcome Center, which replaces a pavilion that was built in the 1960s and complements the design of the 112-year-old conservatory, Phipps officials say.
“The Phipps Welcome Center is a beautiful and contemporary addition to a grand historical landmark,” said Jim Stalder, chairman of the Phipps Board of Trustees, in a written statement. “However, behind the beauty is an environmentally conscious structure that strives to lessen the impact on its surroundings while maintaining historical significance.”
Landscaping surrounding the Welcome Center is a work in progress, but Piacentini says the grounds can be tended and more flowers planted when the rain subsides.
Meanwhile, Phipps officials today will install more than 100,000 brightly colored, tulip-sized flags on the sloping front lawn to give a colorful spring flower appearance, he says.
The Welcome Center includes an upgraded ticketing and admission system, a visitor locker area, new restroom facilities and a grand stairway to the Palm Court, which leads to other conservatory exhibits. The Shop at Phipps — which is about four times the size of the old gift shop — will carry botanically themed merchandise such as cards, toys, beauty products, home items, gardening books and cookbooks, and actual house plants.
Cafe Phipps — operated by Big Burrito Group, which owns area restaurants including Mad Mex, Soba and Casbah — offers self-service meals and snacks featuring locally grown produce.
About the Welcome Center
Nearly 25 percent of the materials used are manufactured from within a 500-mile radius of Pittsburgh. Much of the material — such as steel, concrete, limestone block and bricks — also are extracted regionally, and much material was recycled.
The facility is awaiting Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification at the silver level, which means it meets strict environmental and sustainability guidelines.
The building is environmentally conscious in its operations. For instance, energy used to operate the building comes from wind power, which helps prevent global warming and conserve natural resources.
About the Tropical Forest ExhibitThe 12,000-square-foot facility, scheduled to open in the fall of 2006, will be about one and a half times the size of the existing tropical exhibit, which is about 7,900 square feet. It will be 60 feet high and feature cascading indoor waterfalls spanned by an overhead catwalk.
The Tropical Forest Exhibit will have a rotating schedule, with a new country’s tropical region featured every two years. The first country featured will be Thailand.
The forest will have an 8,000-square-foot, single-pane glass wall that will maximize sunlight. It will include a Palm Circle, where as many as 40 visitors can gather to hear presentations, sample tropical foods, weave baskets, pot plants and participate in other learning activities.
Docents will lead in-depth tours throughout the exhibit, and hands-on educational areas will be available. Phipps’ Botany in Action researchers will be on hand throughout the year to talk with visitors and explain their work.
The exhibit will be environmentally friendly in its structures and operations. For instance, it will utilize a venting system on its glass roof that aims to conserve energy, and a blanket-curtain system at night to retain heat.
Source: Phipps Conservatory and Botanical GardensKellie B. Gormly can be reached at kgormly@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7824.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Phipps’ new welcome center makes a grand entrance
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, March 29, 2005Entrances matter.
The new entrance to Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens marks the passage into the great glasshouse as a dramatic and memorable event, and along the way gives Pittsburgh an elegant outdoor room.
Via a long ramp from the sidewalk, the visitor descends into the landscape and is gathered in by welcoming arms — the pair of exterior, winding stairs that flank the courtyard and lead to the upper walkway. In the center of the courtyard wall, with its echoes of Renaissance gardens, is the entrance door to the lobby. Open it and the courtyard’s sense of enclosure gives way to a feeling of expansiveness under a sky framed by the new glass dome.
To the right is Cafe Phipps; to the left is The Shop at Phipps, both earth-sheltered but with generous windows looking onto the courtyard. What beckons first, though, is another winding stair, this one leading the visitor up into the dome and ending in a balcony that provides not only an overview of the rotunda but also of the landscape beyond: A sweeping panorama bracketed by the extending Phipps wings and encompassing Carnegie Institute and its puffing steam-plant, the cascading buildings of Carnegie Mellon University, the sloping lawn of Flagstaff Hill and the woods of Schenley Park.
We have seen this view before, of course. But after our vertical journey through the landscape, the historic, horizontal landscape is refreshed and reframed by the glass dome. We see it with new eyes and a new appreciation.
Phipps Conservatory’s $5 million welcome center, designed by IKM Inc. and built by Turner Construction Co., completes an Oakland trifecta in which the public and the public realm are the big winners. With the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy’s transformation of Schenley Park’s horribly disfigured, vacant nature center into a showcase visitors center and Phipps’ restoration and revival of Botany Hall, whose tile roof nears completion, there is every reason to celebrate and give thanks for the renewal wrought in recent years.
In fact, the Phipps welcome center is better than what was originally proposed. The scheme announced in March 2001 had two entrances: a main entrance at the rear, near a new 200-car parking garage, and a small glass pavilion set in a reflecting pool at the historic entrance to accommodate walk-ins and provide a sparkling evening reception area.
Phipps hoped to share the garage and its cost with another institution, but when a partner couldn’t be found and funding became tighter in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, that plan was abandoned and a new one hatched.
There will be no rear entrance. But behind the conservatory, new production greenhouses are under construction and a tropical forest glasshouse is expected to open late next year. Alas, it will not step down into Panther Hollow, a big opportunity lost.
But another was found.
“In the old days, you went up about 6 feet to enter” the conservatory, said IKM’s Jim Taylor, the project’s master planner and designer, along with project manager Joel Bernard and Sonny Sanjari, who worked on design development.
“We realized if we went down, you could get everything” — cafe, shop, lobby, bathrooms, locker room and the courtyard as a bonus, about 11,000 square feet of new space in all.
And with the dome, a lot more volume, adds IKM president Mike Marcu.
At the top of the interior winding stair is the conservatory’s entrance, housed in a rusticated limestone addition that recalls Phipps’ original rusticated sandstone entrance of 1893 at the same location. It also contains the elevator and, below ground, the bathrooms.
The earth-sheltered portions — the cafe and shop — will have a 40 percent to 50 percent energy savings over a one-story, above-ground building. The large operable windows looking onto the courtyard provide significant daylight and natural ventilation, as do the dome and its vents.
When the most recent entrance, which dated to the 1960s and replaced the 1893 stone entrance, was demolished, 75 percent of its waste material was recycled. New materials were selected for recycled and non-toxic content and local production. All of these and other sustainable strategies are expected to add up to a Silver LEED rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.
For the courtyard design, detailed by IKM’s George Bedo, the architects studied Italian Renaissance walled gardens, but inspiration also came from the conservatory itself, in the arches of the Palm Court. A band of green tiles high on the courtyard wall and others recessed in the columns that join the courtyard arches lighten the mood.
Through Taylor, who studied in Rome, the twin winding stairs that enclose the courtyard have their source in the Villa Giulia, built in the mid-1500s for Pope Julius III and a national museum since 1889.
“My wife says all of my work relates to the Villa Giulia,” said Taylor, sounding like a man who thinks his wife may be onto something he himself hasn’t quite grasped.
The courtyard walls are cement stucco, with Indiana limestone framing the windows. The base molding is granite. The budget prevented the use of stone paving in the courtyard; it’s aggregate and brushed concrete. Let’s hope funding can be found for an upgrade over time. In warm weather, the courtyard will be outfitted with cafe tables and a shopping kiosk.
The conservatory has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. So throughout, the architects followed the Secretary of the Interior’s standards for rehabilitation of historic buildings, which call for additions that do not radically change the existing architecture and can be clearly differentiated from it. While the new dome’s geometry comes from Phipps’ wings, its cupola is a subtle distinguishing feature. The entrance’s steel-and-glass canopy is another contemporary marker.
The landscape will be gently terraced and mostly lawn, with strips of planting beds for seasonal display. The two Chinese redwoods planted in the 1930s and moved to accommodate the welcome center are doing well in their new location flanking the entrance to the outdoor gardens, said Phipps’ director Richard Piacentini.
Piacentini, who also is current president of the American Association of Botanical Gardens & Arboreta, thinks the architects have created “probably the most dramatic and beautiful entrance of a conservatory in the country,” and it would be hard to disagree.
One thing is certain: At last Phipps has the entrance it has so long deserved.
Information:412-622-6914 or www.phipps.conservatory.org.
(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