Category Archive: Historic Properties
-
Highland Park’s grandeur reborn – Fountain at center of renovated entry
By Ervin Dyer,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saturday, August 28, 2004In Highland Park, the past is present.
In the early 1900s, a grand Victorian entryway greeted visitors with imposing bronze sculptures, clustered Ionic columns, a fountain, reflecting pool and lush formal gardens.
Just beyond the entry of the twin stone pillars, there is evidence that that world is returning: polished stone work; sweat-soaked contractors; and the most refreshing sign, a gush of sparkling water 15 feet in the air.
Decades after its demise, the Highland Park Fountain is almost back.
The water seen spouting this week comes from crews testing new pipes that have been laid. Over the next few weeks, the fountain may be on or off, depending on the testing schedule.
According to city workers, no official opening has been scheduled yet.
But under yesterday’s sunny skies, walkers, residents and passers-by caught an early peek.
“It’s beautiful,” beamed Annette Marks, 67, a lifelong resident of the East End neighborhood that was laid out over 300 acres in 1778. “It’s going to be just like it was.”
As a child, Marks remembers Sundays in the park. There were plenty of picnics and leisurely walks with her parents. As a mother, she and her husband, Ron, took their own children swimming and strolling there. The fountain then, in the late 1960s, was in such disrepair it was taken down and covered in soil. Marks’ husband can’t recall there ever being a fountain.
At one point, the pond where the fountain was centered held lilies and, some remember, goldfish.
To see it gurgling again gave Annette Marks, a local museum fund-raiser, a flash of yesteryear. “They’re bringing it all back, reverting to what we had originally. It’s going to do a lot for this neighborhood.”
The spruce-up of the park began six years ago when the Highland Park Community Development Corp. received a $75,000 state grant to help pay for restoration of the garden, fountain and reflecting pool.
To receive the grant, the group raised an additional $75,000 in matching funds in foundation and private donations. Financial assistance also came from Allegheny Regional Asset District funding earmarked to aid the city’s parks.
It is estimated the completed project will cost about $700,000.
“It is quite lovely,” said Maxine Jenkins, a schoolteacher who lives in nearby Stanton Heights and regularly walks near the fountain.
Jenkins did not initially know the fountain was there, but watched its rebuilding. “I haven’t seen anyone sitting down there,” she said of the fountain’s new benches, “and it seems a little impractical to use funds when the city could be doing other things.”
Phase two of the project is expected to begin shortly. It will involve more horticultural work to restore the Victorian Gardens, which will offer a rainbow of seasonal color, said Philip Gruszka, a director with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, a group working with the city and Highland Park community groups to rebuild the park.
The city has four grand parks — Highland, Schenley, Riverview and Frick. Highland Park, when it opened in 1896, was the most formal and grand, said Arthur Ziegler, of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
It had a promenade, with the fountain and a lily pond, he said. “It was important” because it helped the newly developed community attract people and traffic to the East End.
It is believed the park was designed by German-born Berthold Froesch, a parks designer who lived in Morningside.
The 500-acre park, with the zoo and open-air reservoir, continues to be one of the city’s most well-used parks for walkers, runners and retirees. “To enter the park with less than an optimum image was not good,” said Ziegler. “This will give everything a new life and set the tone for other restoration in the park.”
As the temperature steamed toward 86 degrees, the fountain was one of the coolest spots at the park yesterday.
“It is certainly tranquil,” said Marette Simpson, a minister from Monroeville, jogging past the babbling fountain on her 3-mile run. “I’m ready to take a dip in it.”
(Ervin Dyer can be reached at edyer@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1410.)
-
Barn to re-create old homestead’s look
By A.J. Caliendo
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Wednesday, August 18, 2004The fifth generation of the Miller family was not very happy when Allegheny County informed them in 1927 that their farm was being bought to establish a county park, which today is South Park.
Though it was small consolation to the Millers, some of their land and their stone farmhouse have been preserved as part of the Oliver Miller Homestead, a historical attraction at the park. And now, because of a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, a barn will be built to replace the one that was torn down when the county took over the land.
The grant request process started in 2001, when then state Sen. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, who is now in Congress, visited and noticed that much of the homestead was in disrepair and that modern day intrusions, such as exposed electrical wires, interfered with the ambience. Murphy thought the homestead should have more of the flavor of the time when Scots/Irishman Oliver Miller settled the land in 1772.
Murphy asked the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates if that group would oversee the renovation and building of the barn if he could persuade state lawmakers to get the money to cover the project. The nonprofit group, established in 1973 to tend to the property and conduct educational tours, agreed and the lawmaker went to work.
Murphy’s efforts resulted in a $500,000 grant from the DCED to Allegheny County, which, in turn, appointed the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation to oversee spending.
That news was music to the ears of Kathleen Marsh, president of the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates, who said the money would be put to good use, particularly the portion that will be used to build the barn.
“[The grant] means a great deal, ” Marsh said. “We will be able to display many of the things we haven’t had room to display.”
Those items include farm implements and furniture, along with “a lot of the smaller artifacts” that have remained in storage.
Most of those items have been collected by volunteers over the years, said Marsh, who acknowledged, “We don’t have a lot things that belonged to the Millers.”
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Property Manager Tom Keffer puts the total cost of raising the barn, designed by Landmarks Design Associates of Pittsburgh, at about $388,000. That amount includes some very specific guidelines of authenticity.
“Bidders had to base their bids on a barn that used no metal fasteners,” Keffer said, adding that the frame would be put together using the old-style mortise and tenon connectors.
Amish Timber Framers, of Doylestown, Ohio, will erect the frame. The company also cuts and mills the white oak trees that will be used.
While $388,000 might seem like a lot to erect an old-fashioned barn, OMHA Publicity Director, Paula Bowman, said it was not as simple as it was when the Millers settled here.
“Code issues and the [Americans with Disabilities Act] uses up a lot of the money,” she said.
The official ground breaking takes place at 4:30 p.m. Sunday on the homestead grounds.
“This will be a symbolic thing,” she said of the ceremony. Hopefully, when [the barn] is up, we’ll be able to have a much bigger party.”
Construction will begin soon, but there is no start date. It will take about three months to complete.
The barn will house a meeting room on its lower level. Currently, the 70-member associates meet in the homestead’s small stone house, which was built in the early 1800s to replace the original log cabin occupied by the Millers.
Other projects to be completed with grant money are the renovation of electrical wiring in the stone house and purchase of educational materials to help visitors understand the day-to-day existence of farmers in that time period.
The group will buy tools for a working blacksmith shop on the grounds.
(A.J. Caliendo is a freelance writer.)
-
City Council approves historic status for five Carnegie Library buildings
By the South Pittsburgh Reporter
By a unanimous vote, on Tuesday, July 13, Pittsburgh City Council designated five original neighborhood branch buildings, of The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, as City Designated Historic Structures.
The library branch buildings so designated include the branches in the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of Hazelwood (opened August 15, 1900), Homewood (opened March 10, 1911), Lawrenceville?(opened May 10, 1898), Mount Washington (opened May 31, 1900), and West End (opened January 31, 1899).
These designations culminated a seven-month public process, which began with the nomination for historic designation of the five library buildings by Walter Kidney, architectural historian for the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. After several public hearings, both the Historic Review Commission of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh City Planning Commission forwarded unanimous recommendations, to Pittsburgh City Council, in favor of the historic designations.
City Council held its own public hearings on the nominated library buildings on June 30. More than 45 citizens testified at the five public hearings, all supporting the proposed historic designations.
Twenty-two of these citizens specifically endorsed the historic designation of the Mount Washington Branch Library, located prominently on Grandview Avenue. Many of these people expressed concern regarding the possible relocation of this branch library out of the historic library building, which is the only library building construction that had been partially funded using monetary contributions from neighborhood residents.
Designation as City Designated Historic Structures means that these five library buildings cannot be demolished, or their exteriors altered, without approval of the Historic Review Commission of Pittsburgh. Such designation does not protect the interior of the building, or furnishings, equipment, or artifacts in the building. Nor does designation require that the owner or lessee continue operations in the building. All five library buildings are owned by the City of Pittsburgh and leased by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
In addition to the five library buildings which just received historic designation, the Main Branch in Oakland, Allegheny Regional Branch on the North Side and the South Side Branch, of The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, are already protected by the Historic Review Ordinance.
South Pittsburgh Reporter – PO Box 4285 – Pittsburgh – PA -15203 – Phone: 412-481-0266 – Email: news@sopghreporter.com
-
Historic status for ex-factory site crumbling
By Sandra Tolliver
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, June 24, 2004The owner of the former Nabisco bakery in East Liberty has asked the city to withdraw a nomination to designate the building a historic site because the property owner was not party to the request.
The Historic Review Commission bylaws, however, say a nomination can be withdrawn only by the nominator, although a building’s owner has the right to speak at a public hearing.Both the Regional Industrial Development Corp. (RIDC), which owns the building, and the Young Preservationists, which nominated it for city historic status, will send representatives to the commission’s July 7 meeting.
Robert Stephenson, president of RIDC, said historian Lu Donnelly should have contacted his organization to discuss the idea before nominating the former Nabisco factory. Donnelly filed the nomination on behalf of the Young Preservationists as a member of the group’s advisory board.
“I think it’s very rude for people to take it upon themselves, without discussion, to go forth and make a nomination like that,” Stephenson said.
In a June 14 letter to the city’s Department of Planning, the RIDC president had asked the historic-preservation staff to withdraw the nomination.
“We certainly weren’t trying to ruffle anybody’s feathers,” said Deborah Gross, vice chair of the Young Preservationists.
She said the organization still believes the Nabisco plant is a valuable part of Pittsburgh’s history.
“It’s significant architecturally. It’s significant in terms of national industrial history,” Gross said. “It’s certainly a visual landmark and a real place-making piece of architecture for the East End.”
Nabisco built the factory in 1918 and operated it until 1998. A second operator, Bake-Line Group, reopened the plant as a bakery for four years but closed it in March.
RIDC — a private, nonprofit economic-development corporation — continues to evaluate proposals for the building’s re-use, Stephenson said.
“We’re trying to do something with the property, and it will be done in a first-class, quality fashion,” Stephenson said, declining to comment on specifics of any proposals. “The bakery concept is still being somewhat looked at.”
Historic designation by the city does not affect a building’s use but does require approval by the Historic Review Commission if a property owner wants to alter a building’s exterior, change signage or demolish a building.
Sandra Tolliver can be reached at stolliver@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7840.
-
PennDOT, Riverlife panel to seek plan for Route 28
By Joe Grata,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, June 23, 2004“Alternative 13” could prove a lucky number for resolving controversy over a two-mile stretch of Route 28 between the North Side and Millvale.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will organize a special task force in cooperation with the Riverlife Task Force to resolve differences and develop a consensus for how the narrow, congested and outdated four-lane road will someday be reconstructed.
The Riverlife Task Force and other entities have objected to 12 previous designs, including the latest one PennDOT calls a “hybrid” because it was thought to have addressed issues and concerns expressed in public meetings last summer.
The public-private collaboration will include as many as two dozen other interested parties, including the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Washington’s Landing Homeowners Association, Mount Troy Citizens Council, Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese and the city planning department.
Stakeholders in the long-standing project are to hold their first workshop within a month and then meet biweekly thereafter. The goal is to reach agreement on a preliminary design by the end of the year, when a public hearing will be held.
PennDOT officials said they want to keep the up-to-$180 million project on track for a fall 2008 groundbreaking. Construction could take four years and inconvenience more than 60,000 cars and trucks a day.
The strategy to resolve differences about the highway design, including whether to save historic St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church, was disclosed yesterday during the third and last open house held by PennDOT to review its three latest proposals.
“[Reaching consensus] will enable us to build the best and safest highway we can while being as sensitive as possible to the environment,” said Earl Neiderhiser, acting PennDOT District 11 executive. “I believe we can do it.”
PennDOT has spent about 10 years and $10 million on engineering and other facets included in an environmental impact statement that federal agencies must approve before land acquisition and final design can start.
Besides saving St. Nicholas Church, Troy Hill homes and Rialto Street, differences have ranged from geometrics at the 31st Street and 40th Street bridges to building six miles of retaining walls — up to 65 feet high — by digging deep into the hillside over much of the two-mile stretch.
PennDOT’s hybrid alternative, although it is the 12th plan presented over the years, is called Alternative 6M, with the “M” designating a modification that would make Route 28 an urban boulevard for the East Ohio Street portion past St. Nicholas and a faster, safer expressway over the remaining 1.5 miles to Millvale.
The Riverlife Task Force has been the main opponent of the high-speed section, objecting mostly to the number, length and height of retaining walls that would scar the hillside above the narrow shelf of land where Route 28 is to be reconstructed.
The 5-year-old organization formed by civic leaders to enhance the city’s waterfronts wants lower walls and bifurcated walls to preserve a “green look” through the river corridor and landscaped plazas at bridge interchanges serving local traffic. It wants urban design features to be incorporated in the project, noting that Route 28 is a major gateway to Pittsburgh.
Ed Patton of Vollmer Associates, the specialized highway design firm engaged by the Riverlife Task Force, said he was optimistic the task force could succeed in creating an environmentally friendly project.
So was Todd Kravits, design location engineer for PennDOT. “We can work together,” he said.
PennDOT officials said they want to keep the up-to-$180 million project on track for a fall 2008 groundbreaking. Construction could take four years and inconvenience more than 60,000 cars and trucks a day.
(Joe Grata can be reached at jgrata@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1985.)
-
Historic status sought for Nabisco
By Sandra Tolliver
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, June 14, 2004As factories go, the Nabisco bakery in East Liberty was a trend-setter, built to advertise the quality of the packaged cookies and crackers that helped foster America’s fondness for convenience foods.
The brown brick building, with Mellon Park as its front lawn, dominates two blocks in East Liberty. It is a neighborhood landmark that provided thousands of Pittsburghers with careers before its closing by Nabisco in 1998 and, after a four-year revival by Bake-Line Group, again this spring.Now the Young Preservationists Association has nominated the building for historic designation by the city’s Historic Review Commission. The structure is part of Pittsburgh’s industrial past and stirs sentimental memories for residents who awoke to the smell of cookies baking, one group member said.
“When Nabisco was there, I’d walk out of my house in the mornings and go, ‘Wow, if only the whole city could smell like this,'” said Miriam Meislick, who lived a block away. “You’d walk around hungry all day.”
The designation must be approved by the city’s Historic Review Commission and Planning Department, along with city council. Though the nomination has just been filed, Maria Thomas Burgwin, of the Planning Department’s historic preservation staff, said the factory meets five of the 10 criteria for historic structures. It must meet only one in order to qualify for the designation. If the designation were approved, the Nabisco plant would join 68 other buildings designated as historic by the city.
“Most buildings like this are just overlooked. We take them for granted. When there’s been a lot of extra thought and detail put into a building like this, we should notice,” said Lu Donnelly, a historian and adviser to the Young Preservationists.
The Regional Industrial Development Corp. bought the building after Nabisco’s departure and does not want historic designation to limit its options for the site, said Bill Widdoes, project manager.
“If for some reason there’s a use or proposed use that comes in that requires the building to be demolished, it would prohibit that,” Widdoes said. “We don’t have any such plans now, but if that kind of use comes along, we couldn’t pursue that. Right now, we need all our options.”
Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, said his organization supports the Nabisco nomination.
“It’s a handsome plant, in a prime location, and we are very much hoping that a new use will be found for it,” Ziegler said. “The listing would at least give us all a chance to comment on future plans and draw public attention to it.”
National Biscuit Company built its Pittsburgh plant in 1918 as part of a nationwide expansion that followed successful branding of its products. Nabisco hired an in-house architect because the company’s president, Adolphus Green, wanted his factories to have style and dignity that would inspire worker loyalty, Donnelly said.
Architect Albert G. Zimmermann’s Nabisco designs were featured in American Architect magazine in 1912 and 1916.
“If you think about factories at that time period, most of them were big, red brick mill buildings with no decorative style, just utilitarian,” Donnelly said.
The Nabisco plant had showers and locker rooms for employees, fireproof stairways, and large windows providing natural light. The original building stands seven stories, with two eight-story towers. Additions were built in 1928 and 1948.
The factory is among dozens of buildings in Western Pennsylvania identified by the Young Preservationists as potentially historic. The group, formed in 2002, has more than 50 members. Its vision is “a future in which young people are at the helm of historic preservation,” according to its Web site.
“It just seems like there’s so many people now who don’t really seem to care about saving our historic buildings, who say, ‘It looks kind of old. Let’s just demolish it and put up a subdivision,'” said Sean Capperis, an intern with the group. “I grew up in a subdivision, and it’s so sterile.”
—
Criteria for historic designation
A building must meet at least one of 10 criteria to receive historic designation from the city:
1. Location at a significant historic or prehistoric site.2. Identification with one or more people who significantly contributed to the cultural, historic, architectural, archaeological or related aspects of the city, state, region or country.*
3. Exemplification of a distinguished or unique architectural type, style or design.*
4. Identification as the work of an architect, designer, engineer or builder whose work is historically significant.*
5. Exemplification of important planning and urban design techniques.
6. Location as a site of an important archaeological resource.
7. Association with important cultural or social aspects or events in history.*
8. Exemplification of neighborhood development or settlement significant to cultural history or traditions.
9. Representation of a cultural, historic, architectural, archaeological or related theme expressed through distinctive areas, properties, sites, structures or objects.
10. Unique location and distinctive physical appearance represents an established and familiar visual feature.*
* Criteria touted for Nabisco plant
Source: City of Pittsburgh Department of Planning
Sandra Tolliver can be reached at stolliver@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7840.
-
Carnegie Libraries in Hazelwood, Homewood, Lawrenceville, Mt. Washington and the West End Public Hearings Scheduled
Material From May25th Email Alert by Glenn A. Walsh
Yesterday, the City Council President finally scheduled public hearings [five–one for each library nomination] for the five Carnegie Library buildings nominated to be historic structures, under the City Historic Review ordinance.
The schedule is as follows:
Wednesday, June 30th, 2004
1:30 p.m.
Bill # 282
Homewood Branch Library, 7101 Hamilton Ave., 13th Ward1:45 p.m.
Bill # 283
Lawrenceville Branch Library, 279 Fisk St., 9th Ward2:00 p.m.
Bill # 284
Mt. Washington Branch Library, 315 Grandview Ave., 19th Ward2:15 p.m.
Bill # 285
West End Branch Library, 47 Wabash St., 20th Ward2:30 p.m.
Bill # 286
Hazelwood Branch Library, 4748 Monongahela St., 15th WardNote that, even though only 15 minutes has been scheduled for each hearing, the number of people testifying will determine the true length of each hearing. If one or more hearings has more than five people pre-registered to testify, then that hearing will continue until all people registered have spoken. THe next public hearing wouuld then begin late.
-
End may be near for H. Samson
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW REAL ESTATE WRITER
Tuesday, April 27, 2004For 145 years, the H. Samson Funeral Home has served a Pittsburgh clientele that includes the city’s most prominent, historic and best-known families — Heinz, Mellon, Scaife, Hunt and Hillman, to name a few.
Soon, Samson itself could become history, if plans to sell the funeral home property are completed.Possible uses for the property, at 537 N. Neville St., Oakland, include housing, possibly condominiums.
A spokeswoman for Samson’s owner, the Cincinnati-based Alderwoods Group, confirmed Monday that a deal to sell the property is pending.
“The property currently is under a conditional contract at this time, but no deal has been finalized so we can’t disclose any terms,” said Tamara Malone.
The county values the property at $1.26 million.
If Samson does close, Malone said, its business will be transferred to Alderwoods’ two other local funeral homes: the more than 100-year-old H.P. Brandt Funeral Home in the Perrysville section of Ross and the Burton Hirsch Funeral Home in Squirrel Hill.
What is certain is the pedigree of the business, founded in 1859 by undertaker Hudson Samson, a Pulaski, N.Y., native who moved here at the age of 19.
“Hudson was an innovator who made strides to be in the forefront of the funeral service business,” said Heather Rady, the funeral director at Samson. “And the reason the funeral home became so prominent, I believe, was the caring, compassionate nature of the Samson family. They were very much involved in the community and established a rapport with many people.”
“In their heyday, they probably were the most prominent funeral home in the city,” said Kermit D. Dyer of Monroeville, who served as funeral director at Samson from 1954 to 1977. He recalls the names of such famous Pittsburgh personalities as Rosey Rowswell, who preceded Bob Prince as the voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates; Hall of Fame Pirates third baseman Pie Traynor; and William Larimer Jones, of Jones & Laughlin Steel, among those whose funeral arrangements were handled there.
“I can still see people lined clear up Neville Street to see Rosey Rowswell,” said Dyer.
“They had a really good reputation of being the creme de la creme of funeral homes,” said Rose Carfagna Au of Ralph Schugar Chapel Inc., and a board member of the Allegheny County Funeral Directors Association.
According to the firm’s history, Samson’s original location was on the site of the old post office building at Smithfield Street in the heart of the city’s Golden Triangle. There, beginning in 1859, Samson ran a one-man operation, making his own coffins and then hitching up a horse to deliver them to homes or cemeteries.
After a short time operating at another location on Seventh Avenue, Samson eventually moved in 1884 to a new building at 433 Sixth Ave., which is believed to be the first structure in the United States built exclusively for a funeral home. It housed, among other things, the first crematory installed within a municipality in the nation, and a chapel, now a standard funeral home feature.
The three-story building “was the expression of remarkable imagination and foresight for the year 1884, and many architects and morticians from other cities came to Pittsburgh to examine the facilities and consult with the owner,” according to the company’s Internet site. “There were also living quarters for employees who remained on call 24 hours a day.”
After Samson’s death in 1902, the business was passed to his son, Harry G. Samson, who moved the funeral home to North Neville Street in 1922. The move to “an attractive residential area with the quiet of wide, tree-shaded lawns” was made to escape the growing congestion Downtown, the company said.
The property, which consists of two buildings connected by a glass-enclosed walkway, can be likened to a mid-Victorian Italian villa, according to Walter Kidney, historian for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Through most of its years, the business was in Samson family hands, with Harry’s son, Howard, taking control after Harry’s death in 1948. Howard’s wife, Elinor, assumed responsibility when he died in 1974.
Other innovations pioneered by the family included the first motorized funeral hearse to be used in Pittsburgh, in 1910. In later years, the business also owned a private plane that was used to transport the deceased from other locations back to Pittsburgh, Rady said.
Family involvement ended with Elinor’s death in 1995. The business was transferred to another family-owned funeral home organization, CMS West, owned by the Stoecklein family.
In 1997, Samson was among six funeral homes and about 35 cemeteries sold by CMS to the Loewen Group International of Canada. Loewen declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1999 and in 2002 emerged as the reorganized company known as Alderwoods Group.
Alderwoods is the second-largest operator of funeral homes and cemeteries in North America, behind Service Corporation International of Houston. As of January, Alderwoods operated 730 funeral homes, 150 cemeteries and 60 combination funeral home-cemeteries in the United States and Canada.
—
Mighty Samson
The H. Samson Funeral Home has handled funeral arrangements for the following families and individuals:
Heinz (H.J. Heinz Co.)Mellon (Mellon Bank)
Hunt (Alcoa Inc.)
Scaife (philanthropy)
Jones (Jones & Laughlin Steel)
Hillman (Hillman Co.)
Richard S. Caliguiri (Pittsburgh mayor)
Pie Traynor (Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman)
Rosey Rowswell (Pirates announcer)
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.