Category Archive: Neighborhood Development
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City of stairways may lose some of its character
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 26, 2005Efforts are under way to prevent the network of 737 public staircases linking Pittsburgh’s hilltop neighborhoods to the ground from becoming a casualty of the city’s financial crisis.
Pittsburgh’s staircases — the most of any city in the nation, even more than hilly San Francisco — were built in an era when automobiles were fewer and residents, especially mill and factory workers, needed a way to navigate the steep terrain. The staircases have 44,770 steps; the longest staircase, at 378 steps, runs along the “paper” street Ray Avenue in Brookline, linking West Liberty and Pioneer avenues.
About 18 of the city’s staircases have been closed off because they are in bad shape, according to the city’s Department of Public Works. Maintenance also has been abandoned on about a quarter of the steps that have not been closed off.
“Maintenance on the steps — removing snow, spreading salt and clearing debris and brush — is very labor intensive,” said Mike Gable, deputy director of public works. “We’re just not able to get to a lot of the things we did in the past.”
The city will, however, perform maintenance if it receives requests from residents or neighborhood groups.
In previous years, the city typically earmarked about $500,000 a year just for maintenance.
This year, only about $250,000 — all of it federal grant money — is available to pay for road paving and maintenance of retaining walls, fences and steps, Gable said.
The federal money can be used only in the 52 percent of city neighborhoods that qualify for aid, said Councilman Doug Shields, council’s finance chairman.
Among the cost-saving initiatives called for in the Act 47 financial recovery plan is a survey of the steps to determine which ones can be closed and demolished.
By mid-summer, the Public Works Department expects to provide city officials with a list of 60 to 100 staircases it recommends be demolished, said Rob Kaczorowski, the assistant director of public works.
The city’s plan to reduce its inventory of staircases comes at a time when neighborhood groups are rediscovering their value.
The Fineview Citizens Council uses its steps as a marketing tool for the neighborhood by hosting an annual 5-K “Challenge of the Hillside” race 400 feet up four public staircases. Money raised from the event is used to maintain the community’s 17 sets of steps.
The South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association launched an annual “Step Trek” celebration in 2000 that uses mapped routes along some of its 68 public staircases to showcase the neighborhood. Residents there also volunteer to clear brush.
Bob Regan, whose 2004 book “The Steps of Pittsburgh: Portrait of a City” chronicles the history of the city’s staircases, said he has been receiving an “overwhelmingly positive” response to his writings and lectures.
“My experience as I talk to neighborhood groups about the steps is that their consciousness has been raised,” said Regan, who conducted a lecture on city steps Thursday for the Lawrenceville Historical Society. “Folks who took the steps for granted begin to see them as a unique, historic artifact that they are willing to work with the city to preserve.”
Though the loss of some of the staircases might be inevitable, Regan said, he is calling for a cautious approach in the process.
“I’m not an idealist. I understand the realities of the fiscal constraint the city is facing. I realize some of the staircases will have to be closed and probably torn down. I just hope the city approaches it in a rational fashion,” said Regan, a Boston native working as a visiting professor of geographic information systems at the University of Pittsburgh.
“I’d hate to see a haphazard process at a time when we are just beginning to realize that these steps have the potential of being major tourist attractions.”
Kaczorowski, who is coordinating the survey, said the list that is turned over to the Murphy administration and City Council will have steps that are used the least at the top.
“We have some steps in the city that were originally built to provide access to a school that no longer exists, or that lead up to a street where there’s no houses anymore,” he said.
City Council President Gene Ricciardi, whose neighborhood has the largest number of staircases, 70, said the steps are among those uniquely Pittsburgh things that could help boost tourism.
“Besides still being a practical way for a lot of people to get around the hilltop neighborhoods, the steps can be a marketing tool for those who visit here,” Ricciardi said.
“They should be on the ‘must-do’ list with the inclines, the museums, the opera and the sports venues,” he said. “We are missing a golden opportunity if we don’t preserve them.”
Ricciardi said he will push for at least some of the revenue from a bond-refinancing proposal in the works to be used to maintain the steps.
Council next week will consider refinancing about $250 million in debt at a lower interest rate, which would generate about $7 million to finance public-works projects.
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Step by step
Some facts about Pittsburgh’s steps:Number of staircases: 737
Total number of steps: 44,770
Total number of feet: 24,176, or about 4.5 miles
Number of staircases that are legal “paper” streets: 334
Number of staircases with more than 300 steps: 5
Number of staircases with fewer than 25 steps: 189
Number of wooden staircases: 80
Number of brick steps: 1
Neighborhoods with the most staircases: South Side, 70; Beechview, 39
Number of neighborhoods with no staircases: 24
Decades in which most staircases were built: 1940s, 204; 1950s, 137
Longest staircase no longer in existence: Indian Trail steps, more than 1,000 wooden steps up Mt. Washington from Carson Street to the intersection of Shaler Street and Grandview Avenue, Duquesne Heights
For more information about Pittsburgh’s steps, visit: www.saveoursteps.org
Source: Bob Regan, author of “The Steps of Pittsburgh: Portrait of a City”
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com.
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Landmarks Awards $2,000 grant to South Side Local Development Company
March 3, 2005
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s $2,000 grant to South Side Local Development Company (SSLDC) launched the inaugural East Carson Street Architectural Lighting Program. The two buildings to be lighted this year are the historic Maul Building at 1700 East Carson Street and the handsome Bridge Cafe at 2302-2304 East Carson Street.
The lighting of these key historic landmarks located at intersections for highest visibility will be some time this spring.
Laura Beres, Business Policy Specialist for SSLDC said, “Only through the generous support of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation could we highlight the handsome architecture on South Side and celebrate the historic nature of the district.”
Next year SSLDC hopes to light five more buildings, and to date, the $2,000 grant from Landmarks has leveraged an additional $18,000 to launch this significant program. We hope that such a program will be modeled in our city’s other significant historic commercial corridors.
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Wilkinsburg & South Side Secure Loans from Landmarks
January 19 , 2005
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has recently invested in the
Wilkinsburg area with a low-interest loan in the amount of $68,000 to the
Black Vietnam Veterans Era, Inc., for a heating system in their building at
1027 Wood Street.A preservation loan in the amount of $250,000 was made to South Side Local
Development Company to assist in the acquisition of the old Foto Hut
building on 1505 East Carson Street. SSLDC in association with TREK
Development, plans to renovate this structure with office/commercial use on
the ground floor with housing above. -
Bridge work, North Shore garage moving forward
By Mark Belko,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, January 14, 2005The city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority hopes to get started by autumn on a long-awaited project to convert a bridge once used to haul molten iron over the Monongahela River into a pedestrian and bicycling trail.
The $6.6 million conversion of the Hot Metal Bridge linking Second Avenue and the South Side got a boost yesterday when the URA board approved an agreement with the state to provide funding for the project.
At the same time, a $30 million parking garage proposed on the North Shore to replace spaces lost to development is in line for critical state money to help move the project along.
John Coyne, URA director of engineering and construction, said the agency hopes to seek bids for the Hot Metal Bridge project by mid- to late-summer and begin work by early fall.
The work would include rehabilitation of the century-old Hot Metal Bridge to take pedestrian and bike traffic over the Monongahela River and construction of another bridge to span Second Avenue. The project would link trails on the South Side with the Eliza Furnace trail on the other side.
“This is a big, big missing link in the trail system,” URA board Chairman Tom Cox said.
The rehabilitated Hot Metal Bridge — which shares the same name and stone piers that support the adjacent vehicular bridge — would feature a 14-foot-wide concrete deck for use by pedestrians and bicyclists. Coyne said the URA still is trying to decide whether to offer separate lanes for the two groups.
The federal government will supply $6 million of the funding. The URA has applied for state funds to cover the rest. At one time the Hot Metal Bridge was used to carry molten iron from blast furnaces on the Hazelwood side to Bessemer converters and open hearth furnaces on the South Side.
To help on the North Shore, the URA board agreed to apply for $2.5 million in state funds for the $30 million garage project, which has been delayed for months by the lack of financing.
Gov. Ed Rendell already has awarded $5 million for the garage after terminating a $4 million grant to the Steelers for a proposed amphitheater on the North Shore. The Steelers and local officials had asked Rendell to shift the amphitheater grant to the garage project.
If the Sports & Exhibition Authority receives all $7.5 million from the state, it should help in efforts to secure private funding for the 1,240-space garage.
The URA board also approved a final tax increment financing plan for the $40 million overhaul of the Greyhound bus terminal Downtown.
(Mark Belko can be reached at mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Landmarks & Wilkinsburg Initiate Neighborhood Study
December 14, 2004
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation staff have been working with residents and business owners in Wilkinsburg on a Wilkinsburg Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. Modeled after a program in Philadelphia, the WNTI as it has come to be known, collects detailed data on vacant and abandoned buildings in a specific Wilkinsburg neighborhood. The date includes
property owner, tax liens, sales price and lot size.The study area is a 6-blocks near St. James Church known as the Hamnett Place neighborhood. 54 parcels have been researched; and with extensive community input including tours, community-wide meetings, and individual conversations with social service agencies and area churches, recommendations have been made for rehab or demolition. An executive summary of this report will be available on the web in upcoming weeks.
Of the 54 parcels examined, 19 were determined to be vacant; multiple units have been recommended for rehabilitation and some initial costs have been determined for restoration work. Other buildings have been recommended for demolition to allow for parking for multi-use restored buildings such as the Crescent complex at the corner of Rebecca and Jeanette and some green space parklets have also been recommended for parcels upon which buildings will be demolished.
The next steps will allow for residents to work with county and municipal officials on a public/private action team to move the project forward. Additional funding will be sought and further discussion held, including those with other stakeholders and corporations urging investment in the area.
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Historic status eyed for area
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, November 15, 2004An effort to get a historic district designation for the city’s Oakland Square section has cleared its first major hurdle: Enough homeowners have signed on to the idea to put the matter before the city’s Historic Review Commission.
Architect Nathan Hart, who has been spearheading the process, said his pitch to residents and landlords mostly has steered clear of purely aesthetic reasons for historic designation and focused more on the economic benefits of an approval.The city has 11 other historic districts, including East Carson Street, Manchester, the Mexican War Streets and Schenley Farms.
The proposed district would cover Oakland Square, Parkview Avenue and part of Dawson Street. The neighborhood, which is perched several hundred feet above Panther Hollow, was conceived in the 1890s by developer Eugene O’Neill to mimic the streets of Victorian England.
“I try to get people to look ahead to the day when the demand for off-campus student housing has diminished,” said Hart, who also is president of the Oakland Community Council.
The University of Pittsburgh has announced plans to build more housing near the Peterson Events Center to accommodate 1,000 students.
“Creation of the historic district is as much about preserving the future of the neighborhood as it is about preserving the past,” said Hart, who believes landlords will be better able to survive declining demand for student housing if they can appeal to a different type of tenant.
“The idea is to rent to working people rather than college students,” Hart said. “They appreciate the beauty of a finely restored Victorian home, which translates into higher rents.
“Landlords also stand to save the considerable cost of cleaning and repairing apartments that is associated with renting to students.”
Lee Gross, who has bought and restored dozens of Victorian-era buildings on the South Side and in Lawrenceville, agrees that people are willing to pay for a piece of Pittsburgh’s past.
“I’ve found there is a nice market for restored historic buildings, both for rental and purchase,” said Gross, owner of A1-Realty. “People are definitely attracted to the Old World charm of these buildings.”
The original 67 houses in Oakland Square were built of brick or stone in the late-Victorian or Queen Anne style and feature stylish wood porches, false gables, dormers, round-head windows, mansard roofs, fireplaces and decorative wood details inside and out, according to Walter Kidney of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Hart, who has bought, restored and sold or rented several historic homes in the neighborhood, said the only concern raised by people who declined to sign the petition was a potential loss of control over their properties.
Maria Burgwin, who is on the staff of the Historic Review Commission, said historic designation need not burden property owners. The review of work is limited only to the exterior of homes that can be seen from the street and on new alterations.
Cathy McCollom, executive director of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, said historic district status also can open the door to federal and state tax incentives to do historic preservation work.
The proposed district also might qualify for assistance through the state’s proposed “Elm Street” program, which addresses the lack of financial assistance in residential areas, she said.
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com.
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Edgewood Club is a neighborhood gem
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, November 04, 2004The Edgewood Club blends so amiably into its neighborhood that it is possible to pass by and not notice what a quietly extraordinary — and extraordinarily satisfying — building it is. The club, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, opened in 1916 in its present location at the corner of Swissvale and Pennwood avenues, in a concrete stucco building designed by architect Edward Brown Lee. A Vermont native and 1895 Harvard grad, Lee came to Pittsburgh in 1900 to work for Alden and Harlow on the Carnegie Institute buildings. In 1901, he won a two-year Harvard fellowship to Europe, which included study at Paris’ Ecole des Beaux Arts and travel in England, France and Italy.
He returned to Pittsburgh in 1904 and spent the rest of his largely unsung career here, designing school, office and hospital buildings and contributing to the civic life of the city as longtime chairman of the Art Commission. Although he collaborated with Henry Hornbostel on the City-County Building, he considered his own masterwork the 16-story Chamber of Commerce Building of 1917. His office was located there, employing 10 to 20 architects at various times. But perhaps his greatest contribution to the city was the more than 100 residences he designed over a career that spanned half a century.
They are, perhaps, one reason that Lee’s Edgewood Club has a remarkable domesticity for an institution, announced by its two-story scale, its red tile roof and the long, columned pergola that stretches down Swissvale Avenue. The pergola would seem more happily at home on a Tuscan villa or on a Sewickley Heights country house than on a middle-class social club hard by the railroad tracks.
Lee delivers on that promise of homey comfort, security and amenity just inside the front door, which opens into a hexagonal room that devotes an entire wall to a fireplace surround of predominantly blue matte tiles — a modern, minimal approach to the hearth that eliminates the expected, clutter-collecting mantel. This is high drama at low cost. While the room now holds tables and chairs, it was outfitted originally as a lounge, with wicker and upholstered furniture. With its fire blazing, it must have given a hearty welcome on a cold winter’s day.
Because the building program also called for a public library and the site was a triangular one, Lee proposed a V-shaped building, with one wing housing the social club and the other the library, located on the second floor (above the club’s bowling alleys) but with its own entrance. The hexagonal room acts as the hinge or pivot point connecting the wings, which terminate with a flourish in Spanish Mission-style gables.
About half of the men of Edgewood took the train Downtown to work, of which Lee would have approved. He traveled to most of his appointments by train and never owned a car.
“A car is an instrument of the devil,” he told his son. “It tempts a man to live too far from his work.”
There were few cars anywhere when the club was founded in 1904 as a way to ameliorate the social and cultural isolation of a community seven miles from Downtown.
The idea of combining a library with social, recreational, cultural and athletic facilities was not new; Andrew Carnegie had done it at Braddock, Homestead and Duquesne. And it was to Carnegie that Edgewood residents turned when they began planning their new building. They requested and received a $12,500 grant, matching the amount in their own coffers, and they were off and running.
The Swissvale Avenue wing of Lee’s building contains a stage and two-story assembly hall, a great medieval barn of a room with a hardwood floor that has hosted countless club and community dances, weddings, reunions and other parties over the years. The library has a similar, though more ornate, beamed ceiling, but its effect is muted and marred by the recent installation of too-prominent contemporary lighting.
Membership has expanded beyond the borough and is open to all East Enders living in the city or Edgewood’s neighboring communities. The club (www.edgewoodclub.com) currently has about 375 single and family memberships, ranging from $250 to $780 annually. Most of the 1,000 people those memberships represent come in the summer months, to use the outdoor pool and tennis courts and indoor, seasonal cafe.
“The mission of the club is to strengthen the community and provide safety,” said Ron Gallagher, its general manager. “It’s good to know your kids have a place to go to be safe.”
To celebrate its centennial, the club is hosting a luncheon and building tour, with talks by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation architectural historian Walter Kidney, architect David Vater and architect Robert Grubb. The latter has designed recent renovations to the building, which included replacing the club’s bowling alley with a new children’s library.
Tickets for the Nov. 13 event, which runs from 1 to 3:30 p.m., are $25; reservations must be made by tomorrow by calling 412-731-3443.
The club also has published an informal, softcover book, “The Edgewood Club: 100 Years of Memories,” produced and written by Colleen Derda and Laura Horner, with additional essays by Grubb and former Pittsburgh Press writer and Edgewood resident Bill Modoono. It’s available for $10 at the club.
Lee, who believed so firmly in the club’s mission that he donated half of his commission to the project, never lived in the community he served so well. Beginning in 1917, the architect, his wife, Margaret, and son Edward Jr. were living in an L-shaped farmhouse at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard, where they raised fruit, vegetables, nearly 100 chickens and a cow. The Lees’ 1929 Christmas card shows the skeleton of the Cathedral of Learning rising above the ghostly outline of their lost house, whose site is now part of the tower’s lawn.
In 1930, Lee made over a relic group of worker row-housing on William Penn Place into Downtown’s most intimate and European-flavored space, with the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club and offices flanking a courtyard and fountain enclosed by brick walls and an iron gate. Within this charming assemblage Lee built for his family a penthouse apartment he called the Cedar Chest, for the Tennessee cedar with which he lined it.
“The stairway into the apartment was papered with blueprints,” his son recalled in “A Pencil in Penn,” a collection of Lee’s sketches of Pittsburgh and vicinity. Edward Jr., then a Community College of Allegheny County professor, published the book in 1970 and wrote the accompanying text.
“Walls of the bedroom were lined with fine old steel engravings. Maps were everywhere, especially on the ceilings, including a big map of New England with the birthplaces of the family members all starred.”
A photograph of the apartment is included in “A Pencil in Penn,” whose drawings of rural, urban and industrial scenes show the same sensitive hand and well-trained eye at work on the Edgewood Club.
(Post-Gazette architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.)
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Heinz factory conversion creates lofty living on North Side
By Alison Conte
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, October 9, 2004The transformation of the old H.J. Heinz factory on the North Side into luxury apartments could be called the new Industrial Revolution.
Heinz Lofts includes the Bean, Meat, Cereal and Reservoir buildings, which were named for the commodities that were produced or stored inside them. More than 150 of the planned 267 apartments will be available this month.Boasting great views of the Allegheny River, the Strip District and Downtown, the complex — which formerly housed manufacturing rooms, shipping docks and test kitchens — also will have a cafe, convenience store, community room and fitness center. The varied amenities will make Heinz Lofts “a town within a town,” says Debbie Roberts, property manager for Amore Management Co. of Monroeville, which handles leasing.
“This is precedent-setting in terms of the magnitude of the project,” says Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. “It is one of the most historically significant industrial complexes in Pittsburgh.”
Renovating challenges
This kind of industrial renovation and historic reuse is the specialty of the Ferchill Group of Cleveland, which is undertaking the $70 million project. Chief executive officer John Ferchill developed the Bridgeside Point Building at the Pittsburgh Technology Center and also is remodeling the Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Wis., into a residential and entertainment complex.
“We do a lot of renovations of old warehouses,” says Michael Wellman, project manager. His firm, Sandvick Architects of Cleveland, is familiar with the building codes that can be applied to older buildings and the challenges in historic preservation.
“The factory doesn’t naturally lend itself to a layout for housing,” says Jonathan Sandvick, principal of the firm. “We need to accommodate long, deep spaces and high ceilings.”
The challenge led to unusual floor plans. Because of the width of the building, each apartment has a long hallway leading in from the central corridor. In some units, the bedrooms, laundry and baths are off these hallways. Others feature a galley kitchen along the hall. Think of an ocean liner without interior cabins, where every stateroom has a porthole.
At the end of the halls, the living areas are saturated with natural light from the large square or semi-round arch windows that fill the exterior walls.
“We use borrowed light from these spaces, and interior windows to bring light to the bedrooms,” Wellman says.
This design leaves plenty of room for large living/dining areas with high ceilings, some of which include a fireplace, den or roof deck. For easy entertaining, many models have a kitchen and breakfast bar as part of the living rooms.
The architects faced a hefty challenge of working with the factory’s original equipment and structural elements such as pipes and columns, exposed brick, ductwork and steel beams.
“We celebrated these features, used them as sculpture in the spaces throughout,” Sandvick says. The 15-foot-high ceilings offered height to spare, so multiple levels with steps up or down to bedrooms have been incorporated.
Keeping the past intact
Because the Heinz factory is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the developer is eligible for a 20 percent tax credit if it follows certain conditions regarding reconstruction, Wellman says. This includes preserving the original exterior and one-third of the window frames.
Along with extensive cleaning of the masonry work, Roberts says, 2,000 new windows had to match the look and feel of the existing ones.
Two of the towers that the factory used will be brought back to serve as a gateway to the site. “We are also saving or reconstructing six of the bridges that connect all the buildings on the third, fourth or fifth floor,” Wellman says.
In the fifth-floor penthouse apartment of the Cereal Building, builders are using a window for a door. To get to their private roof deck, residents will mount a short staircase and duck through 4-foot-tall windows that have been converted to 4-foot-tall doors. The quirky arrangement is part of the charm.
Other remnants of the buildings’ past will be found in reconditioned stairwells, where the wood railings, terrazzo tile and ironwork are being cleaned and painted. To preserve the Heinz legacy, Sandvick says, some of the common areas will be decorated with Heinz 57 memorabilia and artifacts found during the construction.
Bridges that connect the buildings will allow residents to walk from one of the 500 garage parking spaces in Shipping, pick up mail and dry cleaning in Cereal, and stroll to their home in Reservoir, unencumbered by weather. Indoor parking is just one of the features drawing potential tenants to the site.
“People at all stages of life like the location, the amenities and the variety of floor plans,” Roberts says. “They can get public transportation to the city or walk over the bridge to the Strip.”
The Cereal building will be the “town square” for Heinz Lofts, where residents can gather in a community room with a kitchen, TV and fireplace. There also will be an indoor/outdoor cafe, mailboxes, convenience store, dry cleaning pickup and coin-operated laundry.
A business services center offers a conference room, fax, wireless Internet and conference call capabilities. Exercise equipment, a sauna, individual lap pool and hot tub are features of the fitness center.
For the ultimate Heinz Lofts living experience, one of the newly reconstructed towers will be part of a two-bedroom apartment. Another apartment will be incorporated into the rebuilt bridge and suspended three stories off the ground.
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, which has been involved in the factory restoration, further protected the buildings by accepting a facade and development rights easement from the Ferchill Group. Nothing can be built over or above them — the exterior must continue to look like the historical buildings of the factory. Landmarks has permanent control over any changes to the exterior, foundation President Ziegler says.
Because the easement restrictions diminished the value of the property, Ziegler says, John Ferchill was able to take a charitable contribution, obtaining substantial dollars in federal tax deductions that helped his funding needs.
“The factory will look the same — the fine arched windows and red brick,” Ziegler says. “But it is better because people will be living in it. It brings housing close to town, to the river and the North Side, helping development in all these areas.”