Category Archive: Historic Properties
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Victorian Visitor: Is the lady of the house now the lady of the library?
By Millie Albert
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Wednesday, October 29, 2003Stories abound of unexplained activity in the house on North Balph Avenue, now home to Andrew Bayne Memorial Library. And some say the odd occurrences really picked up during the time that the centuries-old tree, nicknamed the “Lone Sentinel,” was being
removed from the property.
Many attribute the mysterious happenings to the spirit of Amanda Bayne Balph.
“I know of no one who fears Amanda,” said library director Sharon Helfrich. “We consider her a benevolent, playful spirit who wants to join in the activities.”
Amanda’s husband, James Madison Balph, a prominent Allegheny County architect, built the home in 1875. When Amanda, who was widowed in 1899, died 13 years later, her will stipulated that the home and its four acres be used as a library and park.
The Andrew Bayne Memorial Library opened in 1914, named in honor of Amanda’s father, a member of the 1837 Constitutional Convention who was elected Allegheny County sheriff in 1838.
The mansion is beautifully appointed with marble fireplaces, floor-to-ceiling windows, mahogany woodwork and a transom above the entrance etched with James’ initials. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation awarded it a Historic Landmark plaque in 1976 and a merit award in 1998.
Here are some of the tales of mysterious events that have been attributed to Amanda’s ghost.
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On a cold, October day a few years ago, a group of 30 first-graders were gathered in an upstairs room, silently engrossed in a Halloween story that was being read to them. For no apparent reason, the overhead fan began spinning, chilling the room and disrupting the children, teacher Debbie Scigilano recalled. Scigilano, who is still a teacher at Assumption School in Bellevue, remembers being puzzled. “But not wanting to alarm the class further, we continued with the program. Storytime ended and we went to another room to select books, turning off the fan on our way out. When we returned later to collect our coats, mysteriously the fan began to whirl again. I was later told that employees believe Amanda, who loved children though she had none of her own, turns the fan on to communicate her approval of children’s programs.”
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On a balmy evening a few years ago, more than 100 people lounged on the library’s lawn enjoying a live jazz band. Helfrich noticed lights shining through the attic windows. Certain that she had turned them off and locked the building before the concert began, she trudged to the attic while scolding Amanda for playing with the lights.
One year later, a group was assembled on the lawn at dusk watching a movie.
“The equipment was new and had worked perfectly, but it abruptly stopped working on that evening,” Helfrich said. “Again I looked to the attic, and again the windows were illuminated. As I climbed the steps to the attic, I offered a deal to Amanda. I promised her I wouldn’t be angry with her for turning the lights on this time if she would just let the DVD player work. I returned outside and the equipment worked fine for the remainder of the evening and the attic windows remained dark.”
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Amanda’s will specified that no trees were to be removed from the estate. But disease claimed all but one of the many stately elms that stood watch like sentinels over the house.
In 1998, the champion elm known as the “Lone Sentinel” became a victim of age and disease and had to have its branches removed and its trunk shortened.
During the work, the number of odd occurrences at the library increased, some said.
“It was during this time that I was alone in the old family parlor, now our computer room, when something caught my eye,” recalled Linda Momper, assistant director of the library. “As I turned, I saw a woman’s torso clad in dark clothing reflected in one of the bay windows. I dismissed it as imagination and continued on with my work for a minute, then turned again to the window. The reflection remained. Three times I did this, and three times the image was evident. The fourth time I checked, it was gone.”
During the same period, Helfrich said, she was filing papers in a small room with the door open when a dark figure silently glided past, continued down the hall and vanished.
“All doors leading to the outside are on an alarm system. Other doors have deadbolts. There’s no way anyone can get in without our knowing it,” Helfrich said.
It was also while the tree was being removed that computers would behave mysteriously.
“There are two computers behind the check-out desk, and I was working at one,” Helfrich recalled. “Alone behind the desk, I heard what sounded like a scanning noise. As I looked at the second computer’s monitor, numbers appeared there. Then just as mysteriously as it started, it stopped. This happened often during this period. There were also reports of a woman wearing a large, Victorian-style hat appearing in the window of Amanda’s bedroom. My opinion is that Amanda was unhappy about the tree and her spirit was restless.”
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A crew working after hours to refinish wood floors in the house reported hearing footsteps repeatedly in the room above, Helfrich said. The time was 2 a.m., the workers were alone in the library and all the doors were locked.
Other times, workers who were called to fix malfunctioning phones would find nothing wrong. Then, unexpectedly, the problem would correct itself, she said.
In addition, Helfrich said, “Books would appear in the wrong stack just seconds after I had shelved them in the correct place.”
From 1975 to 1982, Ted Zettle and his wife, Corrie, lived in an upstairs apartment above the library, at a time when the second and third floors were rented.
“We often heard unaccounted footsteps and a metallic beeping,” said Ted Zettle, who now lives in West View. “Incidentally, after our son, Max was born, the sounds became much more frequent. It’s difficult to explain, but there’s a definite friendly presence in the house. We experienced a warm, welcoming feeling there. The house is very elegant, and my guess is that Amanda is happy sharing the home she loves.”
Does Amanda’s spirit move playfully throughout the library as some believe or can the mysterious circumstances be logically explained?
The answer may lie in Amanda’s portrait, which hangs over the fireplace in the parlor where she welcomed guests for more than 30 years. An attractive lady, dressed in dark clothes, with softly coifed hair and a slight smile, her countenance is benign.
“She appears serene, but look closely,” Helfrich said. “There’s a definite twinkle in her eye.”
Millie. Albert is a freelance writer.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette -
Riverlife Task Force proposes tunnel to untangle Route 28
By Joe Grata,
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Friday, August 22, 2003A city group has offered a new engineering concept to untangle the traffic mess on a stretch of Route 28 where the 31st Street Bridge and Rialto Street intersect it.
The design would accommodate local traffic on a landscaped deck at the existing level of Route 28 and relocate mainline traffic into a four-lane tunnel beneath it and next to railroad tracks at the foot of Troy Hill.
Thru traffic would move nonstop on Route 28 after reconstruction of its last two miles between Millvale and the East Ohio Street/Interstate 279 interchange on the North Side.
More importantly, the plan would eliminate thousands of feet of retaining walls up to 60 feet high that other alternatives call for and preserve the wooded hillside along the highway, says the Riverlife Task Force, a group dedicated to enhancing the river corridors of Pittsburgh.
The group hired a national consulting firm, Vollmer Associates, known for creating environmentally friendly transportation projects, to create the alternative to Pennsylvania Department of Transportation plans for rebuilding the stretch of Route 28.
Edward Patton, manager of engineering services for Vollmer’s regional office in Pittsburgh, said the design at the 31st Street Bridge establishes the pattern for the rest of the project — a boulevard concept that residents and preservationists favored at a public meeting last month.
Separately, the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is investigating the acquisition of air rights over two unused tracks of four that Norfolk Southern Railway owns. The tracks abut Route 28, sitting below a retaining wall that helps create the shelf of land for the highway. Owning air rights would allow engineers to consider building part of Route 28 over the railroad property, toward the Allegheny riverfront.
Both the Riverlife Task Force and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation plans for Route 28 would save historic St. Nicholas Church.
“I’m interested in seeing what [the Riverlife Task Force] plan looks like,” PennDOT District 11 Executive Ray Hack said. “At this stage of the planning process, we’re open to ideas. This is the time for anyone with suggestions.”
PennDOT engineers are to provide Vollmer Associates with information on geology, traffic volumes, elevations and other technical matters so the firm can continue to advance and refine its concept.
“The Riverlife Task Force is focusing on the potential impact of PennDOT’s project on the green hillsides and the communities that will be affected,” said Ted McConnell, the task force’s legal counsel. “We’re looking for a design that’s sensitive to the setting.”
Lisa Schroeder, director of the task force, said although Route 28 sits some distance back from the Allegheny River, the group became interested in PennDOT’s highway plans “because the hillside helps define the river corridor and is part of the city’s unique topography.”
This isn’t the first time the 3-year-old Riverlife Task Force has become involved with PennDOT. It persuaded the state to develop and install see-through guardrails on the Fort Pitt Bridge instead of 42-inch-high solid concrete barriers, thereby preserving views of the city and three rivers.
PennDOT’s newest options for Route 28 at the 31st Street Bridge would realign Rialto Street to create a four-way intersection, extensively altering the hillside, while Vollmer’s concept would keep Rialto in place.
PennDOT has also proposed elevating the southbound lanes of Route 28 and cutting them into the hillside. Vollmer would place the mainline traffic in the underpass-like tunnel, only minimally disturbing the hillside.
The speed limit would probably be 40 mph under both PennDOT’s and the Riverlife Task Force’s boulevard concepts, but Route 28’s capacity and traffic flow would be substantially improved.
Estimated cost of the PennDOT project is $160 million to $200 million, depending on the alternative chosen, but the timetable does not call for work to begin before 2008.
Joe Grata can be reached at jgrata@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1985.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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General’s funeral will be re-enacted
By Meredith Polley
For the Tribune-Review
Sunday, August 10, 2003To commemorate the bicentennial of Gen. John Neville’s death, visitors to the Neville House in Collier today can experience a closed-coffin re-enactment of a 19th-century funeral.
The Rev. Richard Davies, of Old St. Luke’s Church, which Neville helped found, will perform a service at 2 p.m. in the parlor of the mansion known as Woodville Plantation.If weather permits, costumed soldiers and a drummer from the Fort Pitt Royal Americans then will carry the coffin outdoors to a spot where a number of modern dignitaries will assist in recreating the general’s funeral.
They include historian Ron Carlisle, author of “The Story of Woodville;” U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair; and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Executive Director Louise Sturgess.
The Neville House Associates volunteers who run the house planned the event to draw attention to Neville’s career and Woodville’s history.
“We want to show people what funerals of the day were like,” said Neville House President Nancy Bishop. “We know it’s unusual, but mostly because it is the 200th anniversary of Neville’s death, we knew we had to do something.”Neville, who died at 72 on July 29, 1803, served in the Revolutionary War, was a commandant at Fort Pitt and a friend of George Washington. The local tax collector, Neville lost his later residence, called Bower Hill, when angry farmers protested the excise tax on whiskey in 1794.
Visitors who attend the service may be asked to read eulogies to make the funeral authentic and interactive.
The event will include the dedication of a memorial shelter on the grounds built to house three original Neville tombstones — including those of Neville and his wife. The house will be open from 1 to 4 p.m. All events are free.
Mari Jean Ferguson, a Neville House docent and professor at La Roche College, showed off a collection of artifacts Thursday.
Ferguson said she hopes the services will be inspirational.
“It helps to have our heroes,” she said. “To know that others overcame many challenges in the past can inspire us today, and the connections people make with history can show that we are one big family
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No Surprise: Landmark asset destroyed for faulty vision
No Surprise: Landmark asset destroyed for faulty vision
August 7th, 2003
Grand Marble Columns 
Lobby View 
DESTROYED 
ABANDONED Lord & Taylor has announced that it will close the store that it built at enormous public cost in the once grand main banking room of Mellon Bank.
Landmarks had opposed the destruction of this exceptional room with its sixteen marble columns, the marble floor and counters, the grand chandeliers, and the bronze ornaments.
We felt that the space was a tremendous magnet to attract people to the Fifth/Forbes area, and it should be given a use that enhanced it.
Instead about $27 million dollars of public money was used for loans and grants to the May Company and its subsidiaries Kaufmann’s and Lord & Taylor and the asset was destroyed.
Across the country, department stores are vacating, dying, or at the best, like Kaufmann’s downtown, shrinking.
They have been described by retail developers as “dinosaurs.”
Landmarks advocated putting the public dollars that were invested in Lazarus, and Lord & Taylor ($70 to $90 million?) into loft housing in the historic buildings together with a considerable amount of new housing coupled with a great new glass Market House at Market Square. Bring in the people and the retail will follow on its own is our belief.
The Cultural District also could serve as an anchor and we proposed better linkage at Liberty Avenue and Market Square to induce people going to the theatres to come into the Fifth/Forbes area.
Lazarus and Lord & Taylor have not brought the promised results of independent retailers springing up voluntarily all around them. In fact, there is a far greater degree of vacancy around Lazarus today than there was before it was built when vacancy was zero.
We believe that the current Fifth/Forbes developer Kravco is on the right track and will release a plan that organically builds the revitalization of the area in a way the speaks to our local market and that will therefore work. We believe the firm will not artificially inflate dinosaurs, but will engage with the future rather than with paleontology.
The tragedy is that the great banking room can never be regained, and in addition the taxpayer is now holding the bill for its destruction.
Copyright © 1997-2007 Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, 100 West Statio
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How about a store less ritzy Downtown?
y Mike Seate
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, August 4, 2003You can’t help feeling sorry for our city over the imminent closing of Downtown’s 3-year-old Lord & Taylor department store. Sure, the pundits with their “told-you-so’s” are right: It was silly to throw taxpayer money at the store in the belief that downtown Pittsburgh could support four upscale department stores.
As a shopping hub, Downtown peaked when steel was the undisputed king.The Murphy administration and the city Urban Redevelopment Authority — which gave an $11.75 million loan to May Department Stores Co., Lord & Taylor’s St. Louis-based parent company — had to at least suspect we were already pretty well covered in the $90 umbrella department by Kaufmann’s and Saks Fifth Avenue. Then came Lord & Taylor and, with a loan of its own, a Lazarus followed.
Today, the city is in a mad scramble to fill the soon-to-be-vacant store with another retailer better suited to Fox Chapel or Sewickley than the central business district of an ailing mid-sized city like our own. It’s time to face reality.
Downtown Pittsburgh is like hundreds of other middle-income cities where discount retailers — Wal-Mart, Kmart, maybe a Target — serve poorer, urban consumers while well-to-do shoppers patronize upscale shops in the suburbs.
Don’t lump me in with the urban-bashers who are laughing in their suburban malls over this fiasco. I wanted to see Lord & Taylor help turn Downtown’s grimy Fifth Avenue business corridor around. As someone who grew up shopping in the Downtown, I’ve had a hard time watching the area’s decline over the past 30 years.
I’m sure Mayor Murphy’s team and the URA must have had a vision of returning Downtown to its former glory. You can visit the Carnegie Library in Oakland and see vivid images of a city most of us wouldn’t recognize: streets full of well-dressed white people in furs, suits and fedoras. It more closely resembles a scene from a Fred Astaire movie than the Downtown we know today.
It seems painfully clear to nearly everyone — except city officials — that those shoppers aren’t interested in coming to Downtown in significant numbers. Not when they can shop with free parking, no weather and — let’s face it — fewer poor people and people of color out in the ‘burbs. That doesn’t mean Downtown has to become a sea of plywood-covered windows and “Mookie’s House Of Bling-Bling” jewelry shops.
Me’Shawn Beverly, of the Strip District, was shopping Downtown on Friday. This single mother of three said the Burlington Coat Factory on Smithfield Street is the type of store — reasonably priced, that is — that families like hers need to see more of Downtown.
Beverly, a domestic worker, says she visited Lord & Taylor only once, “to check things out when they first opened.” She was a more frequent visitor than others I spoke with — including some who thought the regal-looking building still housed a bank.
“I still don’t get why there’s no grocery store or a T.J. Maxx down here like up at Waterworks. Get us a grocery store, and I won’t be catching jitneys to the South Side every Saturday,” Beverly said angrily.
I hope she and others will say that loud enough and often enough that someone in city government will listen.
Mike Seate is a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He can be reached at (412) 320-7845 or e-mail him at mseate@tribweb.com
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Lord & Taylor leaving Pittsburgh – 3-year-old Downtown store among 32 retailer is unloading
By Len Boselovic and Dan Fitzpatrick,
Post-Gazette Staff Writers
Thursday, July 31, 2003May Department Stores said yesterday it intends to sell its Lord & Taylor store on Smithfield Street and 31 others in 15 states in a $380 million restructuring.
The announcement deals another blow to the city’s languishing plans to revitalize its struggling Downtown retail district.
The St. Louis-based chain yesterday said it is divesting stores that aren’t supporting its strategy of repositioning the chain as an upscale retailer. Although they represent 38 percent of Lord & Taylor’s 86 locations, the 32 stores account for only 19 percent of sales.
It’s not certain when the Downtown store will close. It employs 75 and opened three years ago as a strategic piece of a Fifth-Forbes renewal plan that never took off. May has a lease agreement with the Urban Redevelopment Authority that calls for it to operate the store through 2005 or pay off an $11.8 million URA loan that helped finance its opening.
Spokeswoman Sharon Bateman would say only that Lord & Taylor will continue operating all stores targeted for divestiture until it can get out of leases at those it rents and sell the stores that it owns.
Retail analysts expect it will be tough to find buyers given the economy and competition, and said the urban location won’t make the sale of the Pittsburgh store any easier.
Mayor Tom Murphy and URA Director Mulugetta Birru — the duo that worked hard to woo Lord & Taylor to the city — indicated that they would sue if May failed to live up to its obligation to operate the store through 2005.
But analysts expect that won’t prevent May from leaving town sooner and speculated that a payoff of its loan is included in the $380 million May said the overall restructuring will cost.
Lord & Taylor bought its Downtown site from Mellon Financial for $9 million in 1998 and opened the store two years later after extensively renovating the building over the protests of preservationists who lamented the destruction of the neoclassical, marble interior.
Downtown boosters hoped Lord & Taylor would serve as one of the last pieces of a puzzle aimed at spurring transformation of a ragtag corridor into a vibrant retail and entertainment center.
But as the Fifth-Forbes plans stalled, so did sales at the new Lord & Taylor, totaling only $11.2 million in 2001 and $9.1 million last year, according to the URA — sharply below the $35 million threshold at which the chain was supposed to contribute money to help pay off the URA loan.
While the store was a poor performer, city officials said they were caught by surprise by yesterday’s announcement.
Birru, in fact, cited an upbeat conversation he had six to eight months ago with a May executive vice president who admitted that sales were slow but stressed that May “would never give up in the Pittsburgh market and they would make it work.”
Birru was miffed at how the announcement yesterday was handled. “I haven’t spoken to them; they haven’t called us … they should let us know on the phone that they are closing and why they are closing and how they would cooperate in dealing with us,” he said.
Joining Birru in frustration yesterday were the preservationists who fought May’s decision to gut the building’s interior. “We believe this has been a high price to pay for a retail store,” said Cathy McCollom, an official with the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “It was a spectacular, unique interior that was lost forever.”
Murphy tried to put a brave face on the news, saying the city “firmly believes that the Golden Triangle can become a thriving, vibrant retail district.”
If the city is to take any comfort in yesterday’s news, it’s that Pittsburgh wasn’t being singled out.
Lord & Taylor also is abandoning stores in Harrisburg, Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and Tampa, Fla., two stores each in Miami and Dallas, three stores each in Atlanta, Houston and Denver, as well as several other locations.
May expects the closings to save it $50 million annually and allow it to focus on making the chain more appealing to an affluent clientele. One criticism of the Downtown store and other Lord & Taylor locations targeted for abandonment is that their merchandise wasn’t all that different from department stores such as sister Kaufmann’s or Lazarus.
With Lord & Taylor out, it’s not certain what will become of the Downtown site. Some have suggested Nordstrom, another high-end retailer long sought by the city, as a possibility, but those efforts have been unsuccessful to date and analyst Eric Meyers doesn’t think Lord & Taylor’s exodus will change that.
“I don’t think Pittsburgh is a market they are terribly interested in,” said Meyers, an equity analyst with Federated Investors, Downtown. Even if Seattle-based Nordstrom were interested, it would probably prefer a suburban location such as Robinson, he said.
Target and Wal-Mart, two discount retailers, do have some urban stores, “but the economics have to be good, which means a lot of support from the city,” Meyers said. “I think it’s going to be a tough market for the real estate.”
Dusty Elias Kirk, an attorney with Pepper Hamilton who is familiar with real estate development issues, said the announcement could further complicate Murphy’s efforts to redevelop Fifth and Forbes. “That’s not a corner you would want to have empty for long,” she said.
Herky Pollock, a retail broker with CB Richard Ellis/Pittsburgh, agreed.
“The fact that a well-known national department store was unable to be successful in the best retail corner in Downtown, coupled with the fact that Lazarus is not doing well Downtown, does not signify great hopes for the retail corridor as it currently exists.”
A closing of Lord & Taylor, Pollock added, “certainly would cause retailers to pause about the overall vibrancy of the Downtown market. How could it not?”
Retail broker Kevin Langholz with Langholz/Wilson & Associates predicted that with Lord and Taylor’s exit, “Downtown Pittsburgh will continue its downward spiral in the minds of retailers.”
But Midge McCauley, a retailing expert hired by the mayor to recommend changes for the Fifth and Forbes corridor, said she and her suburban Philadelphia-based employer, Kravco Co., remain committed to the project.
“I don’t like to see stores close,” McCauley said, but Pittsburgh “has more department stores than most cities. Even if you lose two of your four department stores, you still have more than most cities.”
Despite the condition of Fifth and Forbes, some big-name retailers continue to mull moves here.
Saks Fifth Avenue has been talking for years about expanding its store on Smithfield. Upscale Dallas department store Neiman Marcus toured Downtown last year, looking for possible locations. And Chicago home furnishings retailer Crate & Barrel has said Pittsburgh is a market on its radar.
Finding a new user for the 125,000-square-foot Lord & Taylor building will be challenging, though.
Real estate experts said May probably will not sell it to a department store competitor, with a May-owned Kaufmann’s still operating across the street. And converting it to office space would be expensive and perhaps unlikely in what remains a soft commercial real estate market.
Before the building became a Lord & Taylor, the previous owners at Mellon Financial tried a number of different things before settling on the retailer. They thought about making it a conference center or a large display area for Mellon’s products. They even considered using it as a small hotel for Mellon employees or working with the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh to develop it as a museum.
“There is a use for everything,” said Rob Geiger of real estate brokerage Grant Street Associates, who helped Mellon sell the building to May. “It just takes a little work to find it.
(Post-Gazette staff writers Tom Barnes and Tim McNulty contributed to this story. Len Boselovic can be reached at lboselovic@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1941. Dan Fitzpatrick can be reached at dfitzpatrick@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1752.)
Joe Grata can be reached at jgrata@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1985.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Lord & Taylor leaving Downtown
By Michael Yeomans
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 31, 2003For the second time in a year, May Department Stores Co. dropped a bomb on Downtown Pittsburgh.
Less than three years after gutting the marble interior of a landmark Pittsburgh building, once the headquarters of Mellon Bank, to open a $30 million Lord & Taylor department store, the company said Wednesday it wants to sell or close the store and leave town.
Last summer, the St. Louis-based company combined its then-Pittsburgh-based Kaufmann’s division with its Filene’s division, consolidating the management of the two in Boston, where Filene’s is based. The move cost Downtown about 1,200 jobs.
Shocked city officials are scrambling to find out what their legal options are.
Mayor Tom Murphy, who was notified of the Lord & Taylor plans yesterday by a senior May Co. official, said the chain could be required to operate the store for at least another two years as part of a deal in which it received an $11.75 million loan from the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority.
“The city and URA incorporated a clause into the original agreement requiring Lord & Taylor to operate their Pittsburgh store for a minimum of five years, and we look forward to discussing these issues in further detail with the May Co.,” Murphy said in a statement.
May Co. said the Downtown Lord & Taylor, which opened in November 2000, was an underperforming store in its brief life.
“That store did not achieve a suitable level of performance and did not support efforts to turn it into an upscale fashion retailer,” company spokeswoman Sharon Bateman said.
Bateman said the store will operate as usual until the company sells it or closes it. She declined to speculate when that could happen.
In all, May said it intends to sell or close 32 stores in 15 states, including two in Pennsylvania — Downtown and Harrisburg. The chain also has four stores in the Philadelphia area. May will keep 54 stores open in 11 states and the District of Columbia as it repositions the chain as a more upscale boutique. May also said it will close two other stores it operates.
The company said the moves will cost it $380 million, but ultimately yield savings of $50 million a year. About 3,700 employees will be affected, and May said severance and retirement benefits will be available for those who qualify.
Jane Elfers, chief executive of Lord & Taylor, said the stores to be closed represent 38 percent of the chain’s locations, but only 19 percent of its sales.
Customers at the Downtown store were surprised by the announcement.
Lois Peters, of Uniontown, was in Pittsburgh yesterday specifically to shop at Lord & Taylor for a dress for her daughter, Mackenzie. She said she will be disappointed to see the store close.
“Some stores are just special. This is one of them,” she said. “We knew what we wanted, and it was right there.”
Carol Epps, 42, of Greentree, said she will have to switch over to Saks Fifth Avenue.
“(Lord & Taylor) has a nice selection and seemed to be more on the higher end,” she said.
Steve Baumgarten, a retail analyst for Parker/Hunter Inc. in Pittsburgh, said the city might attempt to once again lure Seattle-based Nordstrom to Pittsburgh to fill the Lord & Taylor space.
A Nordstrom spokeswoman said yesterday the company has no plans for a store in Pittsburgh. Mayor Murphy, in his initial plan to redevelop the Fifth and Forbes corridor, made landing a Nordstrom store a cornerstone of his plan.
Baumgarten said May did too little to differentiate Lord & Taylor from Kaufmann’s. The area’s flagship Kaufmann’s store Downtown is next door to Lord & Taylor.
“I shop at both, and there is a lot of similar product in both stores. They cannibalized each other,” he said.
Margaret “Midge” McCauley, director of Downtown Works — a division of Kravco, the Philadelphia company picked by Murphy to put together a redevelopment plan for the city’s Fifth and Forbes and Market Square areas — tried to put the best face on the Lord & Taylor decision.
“I think we can go forward without it. You still have three department stores, which is more than most cities have,” she said. “I’m very upbeat about Pittsburgh. You’ve got all the elements in place for a successful revitalization of Downtown.”
Department stores in general are suffering at the hands of discounters such as Wal-Mart, Target and Kohl’s.
Through the month of May, May Department Stores has suffered declining same-store sales for 13 consecutive months. Department store chains are doing several things to attempt to reverse their slide.
Last month, May fired about 1,500 employees, about three or four in each of the company’s 447 stores, after cutting 1,600 jobs last year in the combination of Kaufmann’s and Filene’s.
On Friday, Federated Department Stores Inc. will unveil its new Lazarus-Macy’s name in its five regional stores, including its Downtown location. The move is an attempt by Cincinnati-based Federated to establish a national brand by using the familiar Macy’s name.
In addition to the name change, Cincinnati-based Federated has identified Pittsburgh as one of six regions where it will spend $100 million in an attempt to make its stores more convenient for shoppers.
Some of the changes include more signs, automated price scanners throughout the stores, lounges in the fitting rooms and the addition of “upscale” shopping carts.
Richard Istvan, store manager for the Jos. A. Banks Clothier Downtown, said Lord & Taylor’s departure will mean less customer traffic in the Fifth Avenue corridor.
“I’m surprised they’re going before Lazarus,” he said.
Lord & Taylor stores on closings list
Here is a list of the 34 stores that May Department Stores Co. plans to close. All are Lord & Taylor stores unless otherwise noted:
COLORADO — Three stores in Denver.
CONNECTICUT — Stores in Manchester and Meriden.
GEORGIA — Three stores in Atlanta.
FLORIDA — Two stores in Miami; one each in Boca Raton, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Palm Beach County and Tampa.
IOWA — One Famous-Barr store in Des Moines.
KENTUCKY — One store in Louisville.
LOUISIANA — One store in New Orleans.
MARYLAND — One store in Baltimore.
MASSACHUSETTS — One store in Springfield and one store in North Attleboro.
NEBRASKA — One Jones Store in Omaha.
NEW YORK — One store in Albany.
NORTH CAROLINA — One store in Raleigh.
OHIO — One store in Columbus.
PENNSYLVANIA — One store in Harrisburg and one store in Pittsburgh.
RHODE ISLAND — One store in Providence.
TEXAS — Two stores in Dallas/Fort Worth and three stores in Houston.
VIRGINIA — One store in Norfolk.
By The Associated PressMichael Yeomans can be reached at myeomans@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7908.
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Project’s cost included gutting of landmark
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW REAL ESTATE WRITER
Thursday, July 31, 2003Amid the optimism that greeted plans for a new Lord & Taylor department store in Downtown Pittsburgh in 1998 came voices of concern about the chain’s plan to gut the interior of the once richly marbled former Mellon Bank headquarters at 514 Smithfield St.
Now, with word Wednesday that the May Department Stores Co., parent of Lord & Taylor, will sell or close the Pittsburgh store, there appears to be vindication for those who raised doubts about renovations to the grand stone building once known as the “Cathedral of Earning.”
“We are disappointed that the interior was lost, and we feel it was a high price to pay,” said Cathy McCollom, director of operations and marketing for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
The foundation was among those that urged Lord & Taylor officials to proceed with caution on renovations to the historic structure that opened in 1924 with ceremonies attended by government and business dignitaries led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon.
The bank interior featured a large open area ringed by 20 massive marble columns. Only four of those columns were left after the May renovation work, which included the installation of an escalator to carry shoppers to four floors built in what was once an impressive open interior space overlooked by a glass skylight 62 feet above the floor.
“Of course, we are very disappointed that a major retailer (will close) in the city’s Downtown area,” McCollum said. “But as preservationists, we think it was an extremely high cost that a unique interior has been lost forever.”
“Philosophically, what this means to me is validation that when you make a decision to renovate a building like that, you have to think well beyond the immediate tenant that is going to occupy it,” said Rob Pfaffmann, architect with Pfaffmann & Associates, a Pittsburgh-based architectural firm. “These buildings live well beyond their immediate (uses).
“Now we have lost a lot of the architectural fabric in that building, and it turned out that we didn’t have to lose it.”
Nonetheless, Pfaffmann said, Lord & Taylor’s departure could bring a new opportunity for the 79-year-old building, possibly another retailer or law office or financial firm, but with a new approach to the design.
“Let’s see if we can do better,” he said. “I think there still is enough left to bring in another high-end tenant that may be able to create something unique there.”
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review