Category Archive: News Wire Services
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Pitt students trace evolution of historic Bloomfield mansion
By Laura Van Wert
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, August 1, 2008The historic windows of a Bloomfield mansion have a set replacement schedule.It’s one of several results of a 12-week study by a class of University of Pittsburgh students who investigated the architectural history of the Henry J. Lynch House, which is home to the Waldorf School.
The research uncovered the chronological history of the ownership, building additions, subtractions and renovations as the property changed from a private residence to a school.
“It was actually really interesting going into the archives,” said Lauren McConnell, 22, a senior architecture student in the class. “It sounds kind of mundane, but it’s really interesting finding out who did what and when.”
Nine students presented results Thursday on different aspects of the building.The Lynch House has a complicated history, they said. The property was first owned by the Winebiddle Family in the early 1800s. Henry Lynch, who made his living selling dry goods, bought the property and started construction of the mansion in 1868.
The deed passed through several hands before it was bought by the Ursuline Order in 1895 for $33,000. Throughout the 20th century Ursuline Academy served as an exclusive and progressive school for girls.
In 1993, JoEdda Sampson bought the building and renovated parts of it. The property was sold in 2003 and is owned by the Waldorf School of Pittsburgh.
The Waldorf School will seek to place the Lynch House on the National Register of Historic Places.
This is the first Pitt architecture class to offer historical preservation field work to students, said Jeff Slack, the course instructor and architect for Pfaffmann & Associates in Pittsburgh.
The idea came about last year when Brendan Froeschl, facilities manager of the Waldorf School, contacted Drew Armstrong, director of the Architectural Studies program at Pitt, about starting field work on the preservation of the Lynch House, Slack said.
“This is an opportunity for learning, and an opportunity for partnering,” Slack said. “There is such a broad historic classroom outside.”
Three or four more years of research remain for future classes to conduct. Next summer, the class will investigate the property’s chapel.
“There’s really not a limit of what we can do,” Slack said.
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Repairs under way on Schenley fountain
By The Tribune-Review
Wednesday, July 30, 2008Restoration has begun on a landmark fountain in Schenley Plaza, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy said Tuesday.
The fountain sculpture, titled “A Song to Nature,” created by Victor David Brenner, was dedicated 90 years ago to acknowledge Mary Schenley’s gift and later sale of land to become Schenley Park.
Brenner is perhaps best known as the designer of the Lincoln penny. The figures on his bronze fountain — his first large-scale public project — are an allegorical depiction of culture taming nature.
Conservancy president and CEO Meg Cheever said an inspection of the fountain found corrosion, staining and cracks. Its plumbing stopped functioning in spring.
The restoration, expected to be completed by October, will include repairs, cleaning, plumbing, paving and landscaping. A gift from The Benter Foundation will provide lighting for the fountain and plaza.
In addition to The Benter Foundation, money for the restoration is coming from the Allegheny Regional Asset District, the Howard E. and Nell E. Miller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The H. Glenn Sample Jr. MD Memorial Fund through the PNC Charitable Trust Grant Review Committee, and the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation.
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Repairs under way on Schenley fountain
By The Tribune-Review
Wednesday, July 30, 2008Restoration has begun on a landmark fountain in Schenley Plaza, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy said Tuesday.The fountain sculpture, titled “A Song to Nature,” created by Victor David Brenner, was dedicated 90 years ago to acknowledge Mary Schenley’s gift and later sale of land to become Schenley Park.Brenner is perhaps best known as the designer of the Lincoln penny. The figures on his bronze fountain — his first large-scale public project — are an allegorical depiction of culture taming nature.
Conservancy president and CEO Meg Cheever said an inspection of the fountain found corrosion, staining and cracks. Its plumbing stopped functioning in spring.
The restoration, expected to be completed by October, will include repairs, cleaning, plumbing, paving and landscaping. A gift from The Benter Foundation will provide lighting for the fountain and plaza.In addition to The Benter Foundation, money for the restoration is coming from the Allegheny Regional Asset District, the Howard E. and Nell E. Miller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The H. Glenn Sample Jr. MD Memorial Fund through the PNC Charitable Trust Grant Review Committee, and the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation.
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Pittsburgh council OKs historic status for Malta Temple
By Jeremy Boren
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, July 30, 2008In a preliminary vote today, Pittsburgh City Council dubbed the 81-year-old Malta Temple building on the North Side a historic structure.The historic status prevents the Salvation Army, the owner, from demolishing the building without the Historic Review Commission’s consent. The nonprofit religious organization had planned to raze it and build a $5 million social services center in its place.Councilman Ricky Burgess was the sole voice of dissent in the 8-1 vote in favor of historic status. He said the building qualifies as a church and shouldn’t have the historic designation forced upon it.
The Mexican War Streets Society, a neighborhood group, nominated the building for historic protection to preserve the neighborhood’s historic appeal.
Jeremy Boren can be reached at jboren@tribweb.comor 412-765-2312.
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Face-lift planned for Hill landmark
By Bonnie Pfister
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, July 29, 2008The Hill District’s long-vacant New Granada Theater turned 80 in March and looks every minute of it.Its facade of green, gold and blue is crumbling. Its fourth floor and parts of its roof have collapsed. Front entrances are bricked up and painted over.
The Hill Community Development Corp., which purchased 80-year-old New Granada Theater in 1995, expects to receive a $500,000 grant from the state's Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program to rehabilitate the building. It will be paired with a $250,000 grant received from The Heinz Endowments in May 2007. - Andrew Russell/Tribune Review
Light bulbs and tangled wires hang loose from the now-skeletal marquees at Centre Avenue and Devilliers Street, which once proclaimed the appearance of such jazz legends as Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie.
The Hill Community Development Corp., which purchased the building in 1995, expects to receive a $500,000 grant from the state’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program. It will be paired with a $250,000 grant received from The Heinz Endowments in May 2007.
Development corporation chair Marimba Milliones said initial preservation work will begin later this year, although another estimated $1.25 million to complete stabilization is needed.”We need to secure the roof, and work on bracing the left side of the structure,” Milliones said. Community input — and more fundraising — would precede redevelopment of the building.
“Given its history, we’d like to see . . . a percentage of that space used to celebrate the cultural legacy of the Hill District,” Milliones said. “But it’s a huge building. Our opportunity for redevelopment is very versatile.”
Designed by black architect Louis A.S. Bellinger, the building was originally a lodge for the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal order of black construction workers, according to the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. A second-floor ballroom began hosting prominent black musicians, with Duke Ellington crowned the “King of Jazz” in a 1932 concert, part of a pioneering national radio broadcast.
In 1938, it became a commercial theater, renamed the New Granada with a polychromatic Art Moderne facade — the more horizontal-oriented successor to Art Deco, known for its curved walls and canopies.
It was designated a city historic landmark in 2004, nominated by the Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh. With two grocers vying to build a supermarket nearby, association CEO Dan Holland said the neighborhood could become increasingly viable for would-be New Granada investors.
“It’s probably the most important building in the Hill District — partly due to location, but also as a symbol,” Holland said. “It would be symbolic for the Hill’s renaissance to see that building restored.”
Bonnie Pfister can be reached at bpfister@tribweb.comor 412-320-7886.
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East Liberty High-Rise Reduced To Rubble
Courtesy of KDKA
(Click play button to view video)
A local high rise has now been reduced to a pile of rubble.
The Auburn Terrace high rise in East Liberty was imploded around 9:30 a.m.
The building was located in the 6200 block of Auburn Street.
The Housing Authority received a grant from the federal government to pay for the project.
It is trying to get rid of outdated buildings and put residents in better housing.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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PNC Announces Low Income Neighborhood Investment
Video courtesy of KDKA Pittsburgh
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Historical Society wants to rebuild oldest structure in South Fayette
Thursday, July 24, 2008That hardly sounds new in 2008, but Mr. Cardillo was a boy in the 1930s, so the house was only about 60 years old. It was connected to the old house — a 1780s structure built of hand-squared timbers that served the Cardillo family as a kitchen.
The family tore the old house down in 1950 to make way for a more convenient, modern kitchen.
That’s hard to imagine now, when preservation is such a hot topic, but “that’s just the way it was then,” Mr. Cardillo said. “It was considered ‘progress.'”
The Cardillos’ old house was saved by a retired colonel who lived nearby. He wanted to rebuild the house on his own property, so the Cardillos gave him the timbers.
The colonel never got to his rebuilding project, however, and when he died about 10 years later, Mr. Cardillo — by then married and raising a family in a home of his own nearby — carted the timbers to his own barn and stored them. That was almost 50 years ago and the timbers are still there.
The South Fayette Township Historical Society would like to change that, however. It is asking the township to donate a site so it can re-erect the two-story, 16-by-26-foot structure and use it to educate the public about the lives of early settlers.
The society had Roger Weaver, a historical architect who works extensively in Old Economy Village and in earlier Harmonist settlements in Butler County, authenticate the timbers. He said the builders were German, and the date was between 1780 and 1820.
The historical society is touting the house as the oldest structure in South Fayette.
Mr. Cardillo, now 82, is all for getting it reassembled.
“We would have put it up ourselves, but no one would have lived in it,” he said. “This way it would be for the public, on public land, so people could see how it was in the old days.”
Mr. Cardillo said he has a number of antiques — a washtub stand, a 1900 forge, a shingle horse, a coal cook stove and others — that could go in the house.
Restoring it to its original form, though, will take a bit more work.
“The original door was only about five feet high,” he said, and the windows were more like gun ports, square openings the size of the ends of the timbers.
The door and windows were made larger and an extra door cut later, he said, making it more livable in the late 19th and 20th centuries. He’s been on the lookout for some old timbers that could be used in restoration, he said, but new ones might have to be cut, hand-hewn and blended in.
Mr. Cardillo also has in storage the timbers from another building, a small mortise-and-tenon barn dating from about 1900, that could also be erected for historical use. The barn was part of the Boys’ Industrial Home of Western Pennsylvania and was torn down a couple of years after the Boys’ Home closed in 1972.
The Boys’ Home, which opened in 1901 to care for orphaned and troubled boys, had about 312 acres of land, including the ridge looking down over the Cardillo holdings. The township bought the property in 1987, sold about 100 acres for development and is in the process of protecting 167 acres as permanent farm land — half of which is farmed by the Cardillos.
The rest of the property — about 50 acres — will be park land, devoted mostly to trails and other low-impact uses.
That park land is one potential site for the log house. That would give it a permanent place and would keep it near its original location.
The historical society, however, has other ideas.
“People never go by the Boys’ Home and won’t even see it,” President Emily Williamson-Brady said at a commissioners’ meeting July 14. The society wants to put it up along Miller’s Run Road, in front of the township building.
Township officials, however, were wary of putting something so permanent on that site. The township needs more space and may want to use that land for something else.
“We don’t know yet what we’re doing here,” Commissioner Sue Caffrey said. “I don’t know that we want to put it there and then need that land for expansion.”
Other society members backed Ms. Willliamson-Brady, insisting on the Miller’s Run Road site, and after some comments were exchanged, township Manager Mike Hoy said he would come up with a list of potential sites for consideration.
Ms. Caffrey helped found the society in 2003, served as its first president, and was the first to talk with Mr. Cardillo about getting the log house as a donation.
The society wants to have the question settled so it can start raising funds for the work.
As for Mr. Cardillo, he said he can see both sides — he likes the idea of the house being at the Boys’ Home park, near its original site and in an authentic farm setting, but also likes the idea of maximizing the number of visitors. The Miller’s Run Road site is near Morgan Park, a busy, high-intensity recreational site.
“I want it to stay in South Fayette,” he said. Beyond that, he doesn’t much care, “as long as I get it out of the barn.”
Freelance writer Greg Suriano contributed to this article. Brian David can be reached atbdavid@post-gazette.com or 412-722-0086.First published on July 24, 2008 at 6:12 am