Category Archive: Neighborhood Development
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Property owner’s plans requested
By Jaime McLeod
For the Tribune-Review
Sunday, May 26, 2002The owner of 10 abandoned buildings in the 100 block of Eighth Avenue in Homestead has until Tuesday to submit a plan on how it will correct numerous code violations cited at the properties.
If the owner of the properties, Gustine Properties Inc. of Pittsburgh, fails to submit a written formal plan on how it will proceed with fixing up the buildings, the matter will go before the local district justice, who can impose up to $5,000 in fines.Since 1998, the South Side company has been attempting, in conjunction with the CVS Corp., to demolish the structures and build a 10,000-square-foot drug store on the site.
In 2000, the Homestead Council decided the store should not be the first sight to greet visitors to Homestead’s main street. At the suggestion of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, which determined the buildings have historic value to the community, the council denied a request by the developers to tear down the buildings. Council members preferred that the buildings be renovated instead.
The refusal ignited a $7 million lawsuit against the borough, council, the planning commission, Mayor Betty Esper, the borough of West Homestead and its mayor, John Dindak.
The suit also named a number of private organizations and individuals, including the foundation; its president, Arthur P. Ziegler Jr.; and general counsel, Elisa Cavalier; the Homestead Area Economic Revitalization Corp.; the Steel Valley Enterprise Zone Corp.; and local business owners George DeBolt, David Lewis and Judith Tener.
The private parties, who were being defended by the American Civil Liberties Union, were dropped from the lawsuit in March, but the company continues to pursue litigation against the municipalities and its representatives.
In the meantime, residents and business owners, most notably former codefendant and West Homestead resident Lewis, who owns four buildings in the borough, have complained that the company has allowed its properties on Eighth Avenue to deteriorate to levels that violate local building codes.
Many have agreed with Preservation Pittsburgh President Sandra Brown that the condition of the properties is “demolition by neglect.”
Stephen Volpe, Homestead code enforcement officer, conducted a walk-through of the 10 buildings owned by Gustine on April 22 as part of a “neighborhood sweep” that encompassed a number of structures located on Sixth through Ninth avenues.
He would not discuss the details of the inspection, but Cindy Dzadovsky, borough manager, said violation notices for five of the buildings were mailed to Gustine on April 26 and that exposure to the elements was the primary area issue.
Gustine was given 30 days to make changes and repairs necessary to bring the buildings into compliance with Homestead’s building codes.
If it fails to do so, it will be assessed fines not to exceed $1,000 apiece for each violation, Dzadovsky said.
Bob Gustine, the in-house lawyer for Gustine Properties, said the company is awaiting advice from Dusty Kirk and George Medved, the attorneys handling the lawsuit against Homestead, before making any changes to the property.
Neither Kirk nor Medved could be reached for comment.
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Preserving, improving Pittsburgh with Art Ziegler
By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, May 11, 2002Four decades ago, Arthur Ziegler was a grassroots activist fighting to preserve Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods from the rampaging bulldozers of urban renewal.
Today, as president of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, he is a major player in the city’s development and preservation scene.
In addition to developing Station Square into the city’s premier tourist draw for out-of-towners in the late 1970s, his group has been nationally acclaimed for preserving architectural landmarks and for restoring inner-city neighborhoods without dislocating their residents.
Ziegler played an important role in challenging — and ultimately improving — Mayor Murphy’s original, primitive plan for redeveloping Fifth and Forbes avenues Downtown. And this week his group joined with Preservation Pittsburgh to nominate the Mellon Arena for city historic designation, a move which, if enacted, would make it difficult to demolish the 41-year-old landmark. I talked to Ziegler by telephone Wednesday.
Q: Knowing what you know about the historical preservation business in this town, what are the odds that the Mellon Arena is going to be standing five years from now?
A: The odds I can’t predict. What we are asking for is simply time to see if any feasible new use can be found for the arena. If none can be found, I don’t think it will be standing. But if we can find good uses, I think it will be.
Q: What, realistically, can it be used for without competing with a new arena next door?
A: I’m assuming that it has to be uses that do not compete. That the Penguins need their new arena and they need it exclusively, so we have to find altogether different uses for this building.
We proposed one already to be studied, having it as a maglev stop for downtown Pittsburgh. If maglev is built, it would make a fantastic train station and intermodal center. It could have two floors that could be developed for restaurants or entertainment, themed perhaps — African-American or nationalities.
Q: Could it end up being used for a sports museum, a jazz museum, shopping?
A: Yes. It could end up being anything. We think the people from the Hill District should be deeply involved in leading this effort, and it should involve all the surrounding land, to weave the Lower Hill and the city back together. Maybe this building could be the principal address.
Q: Fifty years after the city wiped it out. I guess there’s irony there — also indictments there, but that’s another story.
A: I’d agree with all of that.
Q: So in other words, the arena could be changed considerably inside and still hold on to its historical value.
A: I’m assuming it cannot be a sports arena, that we have to find altogether new uses for it. But it is an incredible structure. It’s unique.
Q: It’s almost like a work of art now.
A: It’s interesting also that Edgar Kaufmann, who really was the proponent behind moving the Civic Light Opera there (in the 1960s), is represented. His legacy to Pittsburgh is two fabulous early-modern buildings, Fallingwater and the Civic Arena.
Q: Switching over to Station Square, which you once had quite a hand in, is it still healthy and evolving in a good way?
A: Yes. It has had a transition here, as the hotel was totally renovated and had another 100 rooms added. The new buildings are going in and will open I think in July or August.
There’s going to be a new food court in the shops building and hopefully a direct connection from the shops right to the incline – right from inside the building, up an elevator and across Carson Street into the incline. I think you’re going to see a great revitalization there.
Q: What about Plan C in Downtown at Fifth and Forbes? Are you optimistic that it is going to be done in the right way?
A: I think everyone is together on the plan – the city, the merchants, us. I have heard no dissents from the plan.
Q: Not counting eminent domain?
A: Right. Eminent domain has been put to the side.
Q: Does the plan lack anything?
A: I think the plan is really good.
Q: And it includes residential, retail, keeps the local merchants there?
A: It has all the residential we proposed in our plan (three years ago), both new buildings and loft buildings. It has a market house, which we need Downtown, and new retail and restored retail.
Q: What’s your synopsis of what has gone on over the last three or four years at Fifth and Forbes?
A: I think the winners are all of us, because we now have a plan that all of us believe in. I think the problem was that so often Pittsburgh planning is not grassroots in origin. It tends to be top-down. And here, I think that top-down and grassroots finally came together and we have a good, solid plan.
Q: I’m looking here at an article that says that big malls are dying – super malls, anyway – and that American shoppers are seeking more offbeat, unique shopping options. Have we lucked out. Is Plan C going to appeal to this new trend?
A: I think it’s very timely. People are back looking at downtowns as they have existed in the past. That’s what they seem to want. They’re back to main streets like Carson Street. Carson Street is an enormous success, without any public subsidy and, in fact, without any real planning.
Q: I always say that the places people would want to live in are the places that planners have not touched – South Side, Bloomfield, Squirrel Hill, Shadyside … .
A: That’s right. It’s all the places that are grassroots, that respond to a genuine market … . And they all have residential all around them.
Q: You started out as a grassroots guy. Are you still a grassroots guy? You’re more of a player now.
A: Well, I know that what we try to do is play on behalf of the community. It’s the same with the Civic Arena. What we’re saying is, “Let’s not have the Penguins or Landmarks lead this thing. Let’s have the interests of the Lower Hill lead this, and Downtown interests, and come together on a plan that we all think will work.”
Q: So you are obviously learning from the mistakes of the past.
A: That’s right.
Q: If you could turn the clock back 40 or 50 years, what’s the most important thing you could have done to stop or change some decision that would have kept something around that isn’t here now?
A: I wish we could have started 10 years earlier and stopped the urban renewal plans of the ’50s and ’60s, including the Lower Hill, Allegheny Center, East Liberty.
I think that those demolitions wiped out potentially vital ingredients in the city and did a great deal of permanent harm. They focused on the cores, and removed the hearts of these areas.
I think we’ve got to address — and we have the opportunity with the Lower Hill — how to get them going again. There’s good work going on in East Liberty now to get it back into the physical configuration it once was.
Bill Steigerwald is the Trib’s associate editor. Call him at (412) 320-7983. E-mail him at: bsteigerwald@tribweb.com.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © The Tribune-Review Publishing Co
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Etna landmark receives needed renovations
By Tawnya Panizzi
Staff writer
Thursday, December 6, 2001ETNA: The bright red door at Calvert Memorial Presbyterian Church acts as a welcome sign to residents here.
At least that is the feeling its pastor, the Rev. Cynthia Jackson ,is hoping to create with the paint job and other renovations taking place at the 92-year old church.
The church was granted $3,000 from the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation to restore it’s century-old stonework. But the money, according to Jackson, will help refresh more than gritty stone and chipped paint.
It will help solidify the splendid stone building, constructed in 1909, as one of the borough’s oldest treasures and perhaps attract a larger congregation.
The church is a vital presence in the community, but not solely because of its ministries. The congregation totals about 60 members.
“The building houses the services that are much needed in this community,” Jackson said.
Often, residents don’t relate the church with some of the many services located inside, Jackson said. If the building were to crumble, it would eliminate a home for the Girl Scouts, Homework Helper and an Allegheny County elections polling site. The Bread of Life food pantry, which serves 100 families each month, also is located there.
Representatives from the landmarks foundation granted the maximum allowance of $3,000 because Jackson showed that it is integral to town.
“We have a smaller congregation, but we are reaching into the community in many ways,” Jackson said.
Just this summer, the church hosted a reading program for 17 children. Sixteen of them received $270 scholarships through the church to participate. Two days each week, an employment specialist visits the food pantry to advise residents on job opportunities. Jackson is trying to arrange for GED classes at the building.
“We provide services for people of all ages,” Jackson said. “We hope to be able to have more soon.”
The renovation work, while costly, may go unnoticed by some of the congregation. The bulk of the work included repointing the stone, a job that works to salvage the structure of a building. The repointing has stopped leaking on the church’s interior. Plaster work is next, Jackson said.
“You may not be able to tell real well, but there aren’t big gaping holes in the mortar anymore,” she said.
Now in its fifth year, the program has distributed more than $65,000 to churches in Allegheny County. The money, given to sites at least 50 years old, was made available through year-end gifts made by Landmarks members and trustees. Eligibility depends on the architectural significance of each building, as well as community outreach.
A panel of historians and the History and Landmarks staff review more than 40 applicants each year, largely to determine if the building is worth saving. Money doled out must be used for construction work, not operating expenses.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Tribune Review
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House by house, North Side renovations go on
Saturday, November 10, 2001
By Bette McDevitt
Pittsburgh Post GazetteRehabbing one house can ruin your life, or your marriage,” says Nick Kyriazi, chairman of the Housing Committee for East Allegheny Community Council.
Now try doing 15, while also building five new homes, and you get an idea of how stressful life can be for Kyriazi and other members of this North Side neighborhood group.
It’s a major undertaking, even for a group accustomed to renovations. In 1993, the council did four new houses, in 1996, seven houses, both new and renovated, and in 1998, four renovations.
This $3.4 million project has been hectic but satisfying, Kyriazi said as he walked the streets of a neighborhood that runs from East Street to Cedar Avenue, and from Dunloe Street, at the foot of Fineview, to Pressley Street.
The 20 new or restored houses are on Cedar, James, Middle, Tripoli, Suismon and Pressley streets. Some are tall and skinny, some short and wide, some with turrets, some twins and one triplet. All but the new houses are about 80 percent finished and two are sold, including the centerpiece of the project, 810 Cedar Ave.
The grand dame of the 20 sits across from the East Allegheny Commons. The community council purchased the house four or five years ago, when it had a gaping hole in its roof and other evidence of neglect.
“People called this one ‘the graffiti house.’ An absentee doctor owned it, and neighbors were constantly painting out the graffiti,” said Ernie Hogan, associate director of the North Side Leadership Conference, the project manager for this development and others in nine North Side neighborhoods.
The inside and outside of the home cried out for major restoration. But a few people, including city Councilwoman Barbara Burns and Mark Masterson, a former employee of the North Side Leadership Conference, saw it as a chance to do even more, to make it a showcase of new technology and environmentally friendly construction techniques and materials known as “green building.”
“We are using recycled products, and the house was refurbished with steel rather than wood studs,” Hogan said. “We are using environmentally safe paints and the kitchen floor is made of recycled tires.”
The group got some help from the Green Building Alliance and Conservation Consultants on the South Side. Dietrich Industries provided the steel framing.
But the real groundbreaker here is the heating and cooling system. Geo Environmental Drilling Co. has gone 300 feet below the ground, seeking water at a constant 55 degrees. The water will be sent through coils to heat and cool the house.
“It’s a heat pump, which I have in my house, except that you use water for heat and cooling instead of outside air,” Kyriazi explained. “You draw the heat out of the water, and transfer it to the air to heat the house. To cool, you reverse the cycle.”
The group originally intended to install the system in several houses, as well as the James Street Tavern and the Old Towne Laundromat. But by the time the package was in place, one of the largest grants had expired, and they were able to afford the system for only one house.
The house, which is nearly finished, is also getting a state-of-the-art electrical system, controlled by a computer and equipped for high-speed Internet, multimedia entertainment and other current technologies. Sargent Electric donated some of the services and supplies.
“You will be able to turn on and off any lights from a phone,” said Hogan. “The house has incorporated everything that would have been grand about this house, and high technology, too.”
The Cedar Avenue home sold for slightly more than its $300,000 price tag because of a few extras the buyer wanted. Most of the homes are priced between $120,000 and $150,000, though one with only the exterior restored is selling for $53,000.
Over the next few months, environmental and educational groups will be allowed to tour 810 Cedar. Before the owner moves in, the community council also hopes to hold an open house to show off its many features to the public. In addition to gee-whiz technology, it is a fine example of a modified restoration.
“Plumbing, heating and wiring are easy. It’s the restoration that’s difficult — all the woodwork, the mantels, the balusters on the staircases,” said Kyriazi.
Architect Yoko Tai had one big advantage — the house’s twin next door. Martha Pasula’s house, whose interior is in the original state, served as a mirror for restorers. Tai duplicated some of the twin’s features in the blueprints, and Kyriazi and other volunteers helped to match balusters, doors and mantels from the cache of items they have been collecting from demolished houses for 25 years. Team Construction is the general contractor.
Sam Cammarata, a retired brick layer who lives in the neighborhood and regularly visited the houses being restored, was particularly taken with the work of master carpenter Jim Graczik.
“That guy is an artist,” he said.
Graczik’s handiwork is evident in the newel posts and spindles of the staircases at 810 Cedar.
The house’s old slate mantels were in as many as 20 pieces and had to be reassembled. They are painted to look like marble and have gold incising as decoration. Kyriazi thinks the slate pieces may have been dipped, like an Easter egg, in a solution with color floating on the top.
“When I look at these, I think they are too intricate to have been painted by hand,” he said.
It is the kind of question he ponders as he visits houses built in the same period on tours around the city, the country, and recently, a trip to Spain.
“You observe and learn, and soon you begin to speak Victorian,” he said.
The house’s first floor has been opened up to create a large living room with a dining area. A powder room has been added and the kitchen overlooks a shared courtyard and a renovated four-room apartment above a garage.
On the second floor is a master bedroom, a bath with a Jacuzzi, a laundry room and a dressing room or study. The third floor has three bedrooms and a full bath.
Funding for the project came from grants, donated labor and loans. Money came from the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, Buhl Foundation, the Community Design Center, Allegheny County, North Side Bank, National City Bank, and National City’s Community Development Project.
For Kyriazi and others on the council, the project’s greatest success is creating more single-family, owner-occupied residences.
“We want properly restored, well-maintained houses, not absentee landlords, multifamily dwellings or remuddled, derelict buildings,” he said.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Competition draws out ideas for public spaces
Tuesday, October 09, 2001
By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette Architecture Critic
Little by little, piece by piece, the sides of Lawrenceville’s Doughboy Square have fallen away.
The demolition of historic but deteriorated commercial buildings in recent years has left the square — really a triangle — looking and feeling like little more than the tired and uneventful coming together of Butler Street and Penn Avenue, the neighborhood’s two main thoroughfares.
The 1902 beaux arts former Pennsylvania National Bank building within the crotch of the Y — capably restored in the early 1990s by its owner/occupant, the architectural firm Charles L. Desmone and Associates — and the Doughboy himself give the square character and a sense of place, but they cannot handle the whole job by themselves. Urban public spaces are defined by their perimeter walls, and big chunks of Doughboy Square’s walls have gone missing.
Architects Christine Brill and Jonathan Kline, who live just up the street, would like to change that.
“We want it to be a place of celebration,” said Brill, who with Kline entered Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s recent competition for the design of public spaces and squares, open to architects, landscape architects, planners and artists under the age of 35. They were invited to come up with ideas for making eight historic public spaces in the city more attractive and more usable.
The eight spaces ranged from large public plazas, such as Market Square, Downtown, and the sunken plaza at Allegheny Center on the North Side, to tiny Lyndhurst Green in Point Breeze and the area formed by the convergence of three streets in Troy Hill.
Although 24 individuals or teams initially expressed interest, in the end PHLF received only seven entries — a disappointingly tiny fraction of the young designers working here. The seven ideas, detailed in models and presentations boards, are on view through Oct. 21 at the Mattress Factory, 500 Sampsonia Way, Manchester.
The Brill/Kline entry for Doughboy Square, which didn’t win a prize, nevertheless was the most ambitious, professional, detailed and carefully thought out scheme. It is, as they put it, “an attempt to set the stage for Doughboy Square to be filled with life again.”
Two years ago, the 20-something architects bought a house on Penn Avenue, a little more than two blocks up from the square. Brill passes through the square every morning on her walk Downtown, where she works at Pfaffmann + Associates.
“Aside from the bank building, it’s the least memorable space in the walk,” Brill said. “There’s so much potential that’s unrealized.”
The Brill/Kline plan calls for wider, brick sidewalks around the Doughboy and elsewhere along the square, which would accommodate new trees and seating for outdoor cafes.
For infill buildings, Kline and Brill wrote urban design guidelines regulating height, massing, use and parking in a manner consistent with the existing neighborhood. But the guidelines don’t dictate style, inviting a variety of architectural expression.
The plan also shifts the focus of the square to the west, creating new public space and a new monument, at the corner of Penn Avenue and 34th Street, which serves as a terminus to Butler Street. Part observation tower and part Victorian folly, the 60-foot steel-and-copper monument celebrates Lawrenceville’s industrial heritage, with winding interior stairs providing close-up views of a collage of salvaged architectural fragments. Kline and Brill see it not as dwarfing and dominating the Doughboy but as having a dialogue with it.
Relocated traffic lights ensure that vehicles stop before they enter the square, to create a safer pedestrian zone and to signify arrival.
But Kline and Brill, who are among the co-founders of the activist group Ground Zero, didn’t stop there. They see the square’s redevelopment as a catalyst for broader neighborhood revitalization, with streetscape improvements on 33rd and 35th streets, a new street connecting 33rd and 35th streets and a new riverfront park. They also would transform the railroad trestle above 33rd Street into a gateway, with a linear light sculpture leading to the river.
There are, to be sure, other worthy entries, including that of the $5,000 first-place winner, architect Nathan Hart of Oakland, who rightly recognized that Oakland Square needs only to be tweaked, not overhauled. Hart believes improvements there would encourage home-ownership on the square and keep it from suffering the absentee-landlord fate of other parts of Oakland.
The square — a tree-filled rectangle surrounded by middle-class houses off Dawson Street — gets a modest tree-thinning, new curbs and new planting beds, but is otherwise unchanged. Enhancements include an arbor gateway leading to a terraced garden at the east end of the square, stepping down the hillside into Panther Hollow.
Hart proposes an assisted living facility and child-care center for the west end of the square, as well as solutions for pedestrian and vehicular issues. And Hart, too, extends his reach beyond the square, suggesting locations for a community deli, elementary school and supermarket, in the hope of attracting more families to his neighborhood.
The $2,000, second-place award went to Nick Tobier and Rebekah Modra, who came up with the competition’s most poetic and fanciful, if not the most practical, solution — a balloon launch area for Troy Hill’s main intersection.
The $1,000, third-place prize was presented to a team comprising artist Carin Mincemoyer and four staff members of the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum — Thad Bobula, Keny Marshall, Laura Shaffalo and Chris Seifert — for turning Allegheny Center’s plaza into a naturalistic pond.
In the spring, PHLF will launch another public space competition for young designers, one that will allow them to generate ideas for “orphaned public spaces.”
“They’re the leftover spaces, perhaps full of weeds or trash, where there’s been a building or a highway put in, and nobody wanted this space,” said Barry Hannegan, PHLF’s director of historic design programs. “They’re negative elements that do nothing to improve the image of the city, where an intelligent design intervention would immeasurably enhance the city’s appearance.”
There’s a $10,000 purse that will be awarded any way the jury sees fit, so it’s possible a single entry could claim the entire prize — a strong incentive that should encourage more designers to take the challenge.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Building suppliers are key players in resurrection of historic homes
09/07/2001
By Bob Karlovits – TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Argine Carter sees herself as something of a detective.
Mike Gable looks at his work as a form of conservation.
Eric Younkins says he often is simply a sharp set of eyes.
Whether they’re dealing with woodwork, wallpaper or bricks, they’re all trying to help owners of historic homes in what can be a task amounting to thousands of dollars.
They become key players in the tricky attempt to turn battered, old buildings into landmarks from another era.
“You’re dealing with a certain type of person,” says Younkins, a counter manager at a Masterwork Paint & Decorating store in East Liberty. “I have 1,800 different colors and sometimes none of them is just the right thing.”
With other materials, other issues come into play. For instance, Jim Dattilo, one of the owners of Pittsburgh Structural Clay Products in Oakland, says his company is asked to match bricks from older homes. Sometimes workers can match the size – but the real problem is the color.
That’s because the Environmental Protection Agency has disallowed the use of some chemicals that create those colors because they are dangerous.
“Still, we can match about 90 percent of the bricks people ask us to,” he says.
Homeowners often are directed to suppliers through agencies such as the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. Every year, the foundation has an Old House Fair that is a gathering place for dealers in historically rooted supplies and contractors for such jobs.
Cathy McCollom, the group’s director of operations and marketing, says the event attracts about 1,000 people, but generates so many inquiries afterward the foundation has begun “overprinting” the program with information on the dealers.
“We don’t recommend people, though,” McCollom says. “We just supply the names.” She says the event helps provide links to dealers and contractors, and also creates some networking among homeowners. “You know how Pittsburgh is,” she says. “It is a great word-of-mouth city.
Renovators also can contact enthusiasts such as Fred Mannion, president of the Manchester Historic Society, who is renovating his home and says he is eager to see other people doing the same.
“We can send you places like the Architecture Emporium in Canonsburg, and we also know people who are so dedicated to repairs they will come in the middle of the night,” he says.
Or they might deal with an architect such as Shelley Clement from Sewickley who says she does 90 percent of her work in renovation of historic homes. She says she knows of supply dealers who are good to deal with because they are mentally attuned to renovation.
Ron Mistick, purchasing director for Allegheny Millwork, for example, has about 150 to 200 profiles of baseboards and pieces of quarter-round trim at the South Side lumber yard. Fifteen percent to 20 percent of the yard’s business is in replacing those pieces for renovations.
When workers see a sample four or five times, they add it to the design files so future buyers might be able to find the style they need.
“People can then see it in the catalog and order it without paying for any setup time,” Mistick says.
Similarly, Allegheny Moulding on the North Side has pattern books that can help staffers produce woodwork that fits older homes, says Mark Shar, the company’s technical supervisor. The books allow them to create pieces even when they don’t have samples to guide them.
Mike Gable, executive director of Construction Junction in Lawrenceville, says he is looking for a way to help people save money – and to promote conservation as well. He describes his company as “sort of a used Home Depot.”
The company gets all sorts of supplies – from cornices to lumber – then offers them to builders and renovators. Because the firm is centered on matters other than renovation, he says, its historic items amount to 15 percent to 20 percent of its supply at any one time.
“But if you want to whip up the paint stripper or fire up the steel wool, we could be the place,” he says.
Firms of these sorts sometimes can get customers from all over the country. Argine Carter of Carter & Co. of Vallejo, Calif., has made a career out of creating historically correct wallpaper. Those efforts have taken her from doing the paper for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” in South Dakota to President James Garfield’s residence in Ohio.
She says there is “a lot of detective work” in what she and her staff do because they have to work from an assortment of clues rather than a good sample of the object they are duplicating. That often means trying to find out what colors might have been used and reproducing a pattern from a quarter-inch image from a battered photograph.
About 30 percent of the work she does is initiated by individual homeowners and the other 70 percent by parks organizations or civic renovators. Most often, she adds designs they have made to the firm’s catalog. Then they can be used by other home renovators who, like Mistick’s customers, get a break in the price for items in the book.
She doesn’t add all the designs, though.
“Bad taste back then was just as bad as it is now,” she says.
While reproducing paper can be difficult, paint generally is not as big of an issue in historical renovations. While some commercial housing developments have agreements – known as covenants – that govern what colors can be used on the exterior of homes, there are no real restrictions in historical projects.
The “Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Preservation & Guidelines for Preserving Historic Buildings” suggests only to use colors that “are historically appropriate to the building and district.”
The City of Pittsburgh’s Historic Review Commission’s guidelines insist on the rights to review all paint jobs “to avoid odd or extreme color schemes.” The guidelines, however, set “no requirements to use any particular type or color of paint.”
Sharon Park from the National Park Service says that agency makes no color demands in its governance of the National Register of Historic Places.
She says she’s more concerned with whether a paint does the job on its surface. For instance, it is more important to use a waterproof paint on an exterior than to be concerned with a historically “correct” color, she says.
Paints for historic homes, therefore, have become a rather simple issue. Technicians at dealers such as Masterwork, Home Depot and even smaller firms have “color eyes” that can duplicate nearly any color, Younkins reports.
Most often, he and other dealers say, the historic color lines produced by manufactures such as PPG, Pratt and Lambert or Behr fit the bill.
With paint or other items, determination is the key, Younkins suggests.
“How deep the project goes depends on the tenacity of the person who wants it done,” he says
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Tribune Review
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These old houses – Restoration projects take dedication, hard work
09/07/2001
By Bob Karlovits, TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Renovation of historic homes is an avocation that never seems to falter, but its popularity at any moment can be hard to judge.
Director of operations and marketing for the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, says increasing interest is reflected in the growing number of people at the group’s Old House Fair ever year.
“When I see the addresses of people and see Friendship or the South Side, I can see we’re dealing with the old housing stock,” she says.
Mark Shar, technical supervisor of Allegheny Mouldings on the North Side, a company that produces woodwork for home projects, sees involvement with older homes as a steady fascination. He says 60 percent to 70 percent of his company’s work is in such jobs.
“Interest in redoing older homes has been strong since the early ’70s,” he says. “It’s no flash in the pan.”
Others in the industry say they see something of a decline. Ron Mistick, director of the South Side lumber yard for Allegheny Millworks, says there are fewer renovators seeking specialty wood than there were in the mid-’80s.
“People are just putting in what they want to,” he says.
Eric Younkins, a paint counter manager in the East Liberty Masterwork Paint & Decorating store, says he gets deeply involved in finding “historically correct” paint about 10 times a year.
When people get involved in renovation, the tasks can be addictive, according to Michael Santmeyer and Christopher Kerr of Manchester. They spent about $80,000 and 14 months renovating a Gothic Revival home – and now have it up for sale. That’s because they want to move on to their next North Side revival project, which will be their third.
“I know I’m never going to live in another house like this one,” Santmeyer says. “But it’s time to move on.”
Fred Mannion, president of the Manchester Historic Society, has spent 11 years redoing a 12-room home from 1890. And the work is nearly done.
“A lot of people are doing this because they want to turn a buck,” he says, “but most people just get caught up in making the homes look they way they could.”
Jeff and Shannon Mulholland got caught up in renovations when they bought a Queen Anne home in Edgeworth two years ago. They started doing some home improvements and decided to try to make it as faithful to the period as possible.
“For instance, we redid one of the bathrooms and took out the ’80s vanity,” she says. “It took a while to find the kind of sink that we wanted, but you can’t get too frustrated.”
That sort of dedication emerged when they began looking into an addition. They hired architect Shelley Clement, co-author of a book on historic homes in the Sewickley Valley. Mulholland says Clement paid attention to subtle things such as the size and shape of the bricks and the gentle sloping of the exterior walls.
It’s important to pay that sort of attention to the exterior of buildings, but generally not the interiors private homes, say local and federal officials. Private homes may get totally modern interiors and not lose any historic status, according to Sharon Park, chief of technical preservation from the National Park Service.
Manchester’s Mannion, for instance, added a totally modern apartment behind the 1890s exterior of the carriage house of his home while keeping the main house entirely historic. Both still fit into Manchester Historic District guidelines.
Similarly, the Fitzsimmons Square project being developed along Allegheny Avenue will have entirely new interiors, but still will meet district guidelines, says Mario Costanzo from Howard Hanna Real Estate.
Interest in renovation also, obviously, demands a supply of older housing stock. The Historic Review Commission for the city of Pittsburgh, the Historical Architecture Review Board for Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall, for example, help point out and develop that stock.
“Establishing a district as historic tends to stabilize a neighborhood,” says Angelique Bamberg of the city’s Historic Review Commission.
“A renewal is a win-win situation,” says Dennis Freeland is executive director of the Perry Hilltop Association for Successful Enterprise, a group that guides or initiates renewal. “When you have an crumbling house, nobody benefits. Nobody’s living there. They city is getting no tax money. The neighborhood suffers.”
But renewal can lead to the manifestation of an architectural style.
“You have to be able to see what a house can be and not concentrate on what it isn’t,” Santmeyer says.
– Bob Karlovits can be reached at (412) 320-7852 or bkarlovits@tribweb.com.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Tribune Review
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