Category Archive: News Wire Services
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Future of historical buildings precarious
By Craig Smith
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, December 24, 2007The stone house built two centuries ago by John Woods played host to the movers and shakers of its day but stands silent, its windows and doors boarded shut.
Composer Stephen Foster was a frequent visitor to the two-story home in Hazelwood, often entertaining the Woods family and their guests by playing guitar or piano.“They would be the local leaders of the day — judges, mayors, town leaders. The social register of that period,” said Deane Root, a University of Pittsburgh professor and director of the Center for American Music.
“They would read poetry or sing,” Root said. Foster loved to hear Woods’ daughters sing the songs of the day.
As Pittsburgh readies to celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2008, Root is thankful the vacant Woods house is standing because it is one of the oldest, tangible connections to the origins of the city.
“Why don’t we appreciate that? What’s wrong? Why do we always have to live life as if we were the first ones here?” Root said.The home, built in 1792, is among 589 sites in Southwestern Pennsylvania that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and one of three surviving 18th century structures in Pittsburgh.
Some of the buildings have been lovingly restored; others never will be. One building — the oldest structure designed by an architect in Pittsburgh — is for sale.
“Competition for restoration dollars is very keen,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, which did work to stabilize the Woods house in 2003 in conjunction with the Hazelwood Initiative.
Those looking to buy and renovate a historic structure won’t get any help from the state or federal government, said Bill Callahan, community preservation coordinator at the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission’s Bureau for Historic Preservation.
“There are no monies available for owner/occupied structures for preservation purposes,” he said. “I get phone calls every day about that. I wish I could give them a different answer.”
That leaves communities, local history groups or private citizens scrambling to preserve the buildings.
“We’ve got these gems in the community. It’s interesting what they could be,” said Jim Richter, director of the Hazelwood Initiative.
But the price of restoration is high.
The cost of a historical preservation of the Woods home has been estimated at $600,000. Just to make it liveable would cost $200,000, Richter said. A century-old Carnegie library down the street needs $900,000 in repairs.
Woods, the first surveyor of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, was a state senator in 1797 and elected to the 14th Congress in 1815. He died in 1817 at age 55.
The Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh in 2005 included the Woods home among its top 10 historical renovation opportunities.
“It’s a very important house. It needs a sponsor, a chief advocate,” said Dan Holland, who founded the association.
In Westmoreland County, Don and Cordelia Miller of Irwin bought Brush Hill, one of the first “mansion-style” homes constructed west of the Appalachians, 30 years ago and have been carefully restoring it since.
“You have to love it. I basically work on it full time,” Don Miller said about the home that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Brush Hill was built by Col. John Irwin, the town’s namesake, and was the largest of Irwin’s three plantations. Work on the Federal-style, two-story fieldstone home began in 1792, Miller said.
Materials used in its construction came from the area, he said.
“The stone was quarried here, the nails were handmade,” Miller said.
Living in a house this old isn’t for everyone, said Miller, a retired engineer. Homes of the era didn’t come with bathrooms so finding space to include such modern amenities must be included in the planning, he said.
There are other aspects peculiar to the times.
“Every window was a different size,” Cordelia Miller said.
The Millers have demolished a later addition to the house, renovated the kitchen and removed six inches of carpet, concrete and other flooring to reach the original wood floors. Future projects include replacing a slate roof that was added in the 1800s.
—Rich heritage
Southwestern Pennsylvania’s rich heritage is reflected in the number of sites registered as national historic places.Allegheny County — 207
Armstrong County — 18
Beaver County — 20
Butler County — 10
Fayette County — 72
Greene County — 46
Indiana County — 27
Somerset County — 32
Washington County — 104
Westmoreland County — 53
Source: The Pennsylvania History and Museum Commission
Testaments to the past
The region’s oldest buildings include:
• The Fort Pitt Blockhouse, built in 1764. It’s Pittsburgh’s earliest building and the oldest authenticated structure west of the Allegheny Mountains. The five-sided, two-story building constructed by Col. Henry Bouquet is in Point State Park and administered by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
• The Neill Log House was built about 1787 in Schenley Park. The Neills, who owned 262 acres in the northern section of the park, moved in 1795 to what is now Market Square. After their deaths, the log house and property were handed down to different people before being sold to Col. James O’Hara and his granddaughter Mary Schenley, who gave the property to the city in 1889. The Neill house received a City of Pittsburgh historic designation on Feb. 22, 1977.
• The Burke Building, 209 Fourth St., is the oldest building in Pittsburgh designed by an architect. The Greek revival-style, 3-story structure was built in 1836. The building was designed by William Chislett for Robert and Andrew Burke, attorneys active in land development in Pittsburgh. It has been the home of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy for 10 years. The sale of the building is under negotiation.
• Nemacolin Castle was built in Brownsville by stages between 1789 and 1900 by several generations of the Jacob Bowman family. The 22-room castle features a three-story octagonal tower and a squared third-story tower room. Jacob Bowman operated a trading post at the site and was named commissary to government troops during the Whiskey Rebellion. In 1795, he was commissioned justice of the peace and was named Brownsville’s first postmaster by President Washington. The castle, owned by the county and maintained by the Brownsville Historical Society, is a museum.
• The David Bradford House was built in Washington in 1788. Bradford was one of the leading lawyers and politicians of the area, serving as deputy attorney general for Washington County and as a delegate to the Whiskey Rebellion conferences in 1791 and 1792. The home is owned by the state and is a museum.
Craig Smith can be reached at csmith@tribweb.com or 412-380-5646.
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Smaller housing projects dot the city
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, December 23, 2007While large new housing developments draw much of the attention Downtown — among them Piatt Place, the Carlyle, Three PNC Plaza, 151 First Side and the Encore on 7th Street — there’s also a fair number of smaller projects adding to the mix.
An example is a plan by the Urban Evergreen Group to develop 10 to 12 units in two buildings: 333 Boulevard of Allies and 330 Third Ave.
“Pittsburgh is an ideal place for developments and investments,” said Jose Caro of Urban Evergreen, who moved here from New York about two months ago.
This is his first development in Pittsburgh, and Caro wants to do others.
Urban Evergreen paid $495,000 for the two buildings, with plans to develop retail on the first level, offices on the second and residential units on the floors above. Caro says it hasn’t been decided if the units will be offered for sale as condominiums or rented as apartments.
Together, the buildings have about 19,200 square feet. The structures were sold to Urban Evergreen by Human Services of Western Pennsylvania, with Tom Sullivan, a broker with Pennsylvania Commercial Real Estate who handled the deal.
Other projects adding to the residential mix Downtown include Philadelphia developer Solara Ventures’ condominium development at 941 Penn Ave. that is providing 18 units.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is moving forward with its plans to convert three vacant buildings on the edge of Market Square into Market at Fifth, a $2.5 million to $3 million complex that will feature seven upper-floor apartments, a ground-level restaurant and a rooftop garden.
Another smaller development is 5 Lofts, a project that, as the name says, provides five residential units. The complex is being developed in a six-story building at 806 Penn Ave. by Ninth and Liberty Partners LLC, a group that includes investors Sean Luther, Tom Jackson and Patty Burk.
The first floor will be for commercial use, while the floors above each contain one unit with about 1,850 square feet.
Burk is vice president of housing and economic development for the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, an advocacy group.
One of partnership’s goals is to promote conversion of vacant upper floors of older commercial buildings into new housing.
Judging from recent evidence, the idea seems to be catching on.
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North Side library debate at historic dimension
By Bill Zlatos
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, December 19, 2007Supporters of a new Carnegie library on Federal Street say the city can develop the North Side and still preserve a 117-year-old branch that has been closed for 20 months.
Annette Green, 66, of the North Side told City Council on Tuesday evening that redevelopment does not have to wipe out historic preservation.
“The two can live together in peace,” she said at a public hearing on the proposed relocation of the library.
The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh wants to move its Allegheny Regional branch from 5 Allegheny Square to 1210 Federal St. City Council is considering a resolution authorizing the transfer of the Federal Street property from the Urban Redevelopment Authority to the Carnegie Library.
The Allegheny Square site has been closed since April 7, 2006, when lightning struck the clock tower, causing a piece of granite weighing several hundred pounds to fall into the second-floor lecture hall. A 1-ton chunk of rock destroyed the building’s heating and cooling system.
The lightning caused more than $2 million in damage. Insurance covered most of the cost.
The damage has been repaired, but library officials want the building, which opened in 1890, to stay closed and construct the new branch. The Federal Street site is near the old Garden Theatre, a former X-rated movie house that is being restored as part of a North Side development project
“We believe in the importance of historic preservation,” said North Side resident David McMunn. “We also believe in redevelopment and appreciate a more accessible and updated library.”
Carnegie Library spokeswoman Suzanne Thinnes said the new library would have 15,000 square feet of space, compared to 12,000 feet in the Allegheny Square building. She said it would provide access for the handicapped and parents with strollers, have wireless Internet access, a teen section and more children’s programming.
The new building would house historic collections such as directories, meeting minutes and newspaper clippings of the former Allegheny City, a community that was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907.
But opponents of the move complained that Carnegie Library had decided on relocating before getting public input or considering alternatives.
“I urge you to rethink your abandonment of this building,” said Mary Barbush, 54, of Allegheny West.
Another North Side resident, David Tessitor, expressed concern about the fate of the building. It was named a historic landmark by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in 1970 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
“The No. 1 asset that the North Side has, besides the people who live here, is its historic character,” Tessitor said.
Carnegie Library hopes to break ground for the building in the spring and open it in 2009.
Bill Zlatos can be reached at bzlatos@tribweb.com or 412-320-7828.
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Big plans for city started in 1880s
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteWhen it comes to civic planning in Pittsburgh, Renaissance I has gotten all the glory.
But in the first half of the 20th century, Pittsburgh also was on the cutting edge of progressive planning, Edward K. Muller and John F. Bauman write in their revealing book, “Before Renaissance: Planning in Pittsburgh, 1889-1943” (University of Pittsburgh Press, $60 hardcover; $27.95 paperback).
“I think people, because of the story built up around the Renaissance, don’t appreciate the engagement with planning before the Renaissance,” said Muller, historian and urban geographer at the University of Pittsburgh. “We’ve built this huge story about how the Renaissance stopped decline and built things and ergo, what happened prior to that didn’t have much value, except maybe Oakland. But we found a different story.”
What Muller and Bauman, history professor emeritus at California University of Pennsylvania, found was that Pittsburgh attracted some of the most influential figures in the emerging field of urban planning, men who strove to bring order, efficiency and beauty to a city dominated by heavy industry and plagued by traffic-clogged streets, lethal smoke and substandard housing.
Many Pittsburghers “are shocked to find out today that in the census of 1920 we are the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area in the country. We are one of the big guys, one of the wealthiest cities,” Muller said. “We’re not leading [the city planning movement] but we’re right there at the edge.”
Ultimately, planners here met with only limited success.
“A lot of progressive things never got adopted,” Muller said, “but a lot did.”
The national movement for city planning was fueled in part by social reform and in part by the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, its “White City” and the City Beautiful movement it inspired. In Pittsburgh, its Beaux-Arts principles and Classical styles found a home in Oakland.
“The argument that we put out ultimately for the creation of Oakland as a civic center in the 1890s was a surprise to me,” said Muller, who had embraced the widely held notion that Schenley Farms developer Franklin Nicola was the leading light. But Andrew Carnegie, with his museum and library, and public works director Edward Bigelow with Schenley Park and Grant (now Bigelow) Boulevard leading to it, were there before him, Muller said, and after 1893 they had even bigger ideas.
“I think it’s pretty clear that Bigelow and Carnegie communicated and were inspired by the Chicago World’s Fair and wanted to create something of civic interest below Fifth Avenue.”
But while Oakland was shaped by a vision, it wasn’t born of a plan. As Oakland blossomed, Pittsburgh, like most cities, continued to grow on an ad hoc basis, without benefit of a comprehensive plan. That began to change when Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., whose father had been the “White City’s” site planner, was hired to study Pittsburgh’s Downtown and main thoroughfares. At the time, his assistant discovered, “the city does not even possess reliable ordinary street maps.”
Olmsted Associates’ work in Pittsburgh by now is fairly well known, thanks mainly to Muller and Bauman, whose two articles in Pittsburgh History magazine in 1993-94 detailed Olmsted Associates’ private estates in the East End and Sewickley, the town plan for Vandergrift and other projects, including the 1911 plan for Pittsburgh. It proposed a Downtown civic center and public garden next to the courthouse and made 80 recommendations for street, bridge and tunnel projects, including tree-lined riverfront parkways Downtown that also would accommodate promenades for pedestrians, “where they can watch the water and the [industrial] life upon it.” There was never any question that rivers and waterfronts were primarily for industry: In the Olmsted plan, the City Beautiful was married to the City Practical.
Legacies of the Olmsted plan include the Parkway, Liberty Bridge and Tunnel, Schenley Plaza, Washington Boulevard and removal of the Grant Street “Hump,” all suggested or endorsed in it. But the civic center idea never took off.
“It’s too visionary for our practical-minded civic leaders,” Muller said.
“Before Renaissance” also investigates the work of architect Frederick Bigger, the city’s first professional planner, who shepherded the Citizens Committee on the City Plan and helped prepare its first comprehensive plan of 1923. He was part detail-obsessed bureaucrat, part visionary who understood the need to work with conservative civic leaders.
“We had no idea that Frederick Bigger was as prominent as he was outside the city in the world of urban planning,” a profession he helped to shape, Muller said. “He was a quiet, shy man who did not seek the limelight but he was very thoughtful and wrote some important articles.” The book gives voice, character and motivation to him and to many of the city’s civic leaders, men who have long been only names on a page.
In 1939, the city turned to New York City highway and parks czar Robert Moses, who recommended removing trolleys and most of the train lines and stations from Downtown and backed Olmsted’s plan for an elevated Fort Duquesne Boulevard.
In part, Muller sees the book as a corrective to the way planners, whom Moses often maligned, are depicted in the late historian Roy Lubove’s two-volume “Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh.”
“If you read Roy, they’re a bunch of bumbling idiots, but just because things don’t get built right away doesn’t mean they’re not embedding the notion of civic planning in the city” and laying the foundation for the Renaissance, Muller said. “One of the reasons more didn’t get done on a design level is that Pittsburgh had to retrofit itself to the automobile,” something with which it still struggles.
Lessons for today? “One is to have a broad-scale vision periodically as a city, even though that’s not a blueprint, in order to have a public conversation,” Muller said. Another is that “it takes vision and leadership. Without the leadership it’s very hard to get things done.”
Here’s hoping that “Before Renaissance” lands in lots of Christmas stockings on and off Grant Street.
Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.
First published on December 19, 2007 at 12:00 am -
Library’s plan to build anew on North Side meets strong opposition
Monday, December 17, 2007
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteWhen Carnegie Library officials decided last year not to reopen the Allegheny Regional branch — the second Carnegie Library in the country and one that had been damaged in April 2006 by lightning — traditionalists and preservationists were livid.
After heated public meetings, most North Siders accepted plans for new construction at the site at Federal and Parkhurst streets, even some persnickety advocates of preservation.
The hoped-for groundbreaking this fall is now set back to spring, but there could be another delay.
Two weeks ago, in the wake of City Council’s draft of a resolution to approve transfer of land for the new library, it received a petition for a public hearing, from people who want to reopen the old branch. The hearing will be tomorrow at 5 p.m. in the New Hazlett Theater in Allegheny Center. (To speak before council, register in advance by calling the city clerk’s office at 412-255-2138.)
The library’s administration has been unequivocal about the need to leave the current location, but one petitioner, Glenn Walsh of Mt. Lebanon, wrote in an e-mail, “Carnegie Library is not a private club that can do as they please. Carnegie Library is a public trust, funded by the taxpayers! They operate out of buildings owned by the taxpayers. This is all intentional, the specific will of Andrew Carnegie.”
Of 58 petitioners, 16 live outside the North Side but in Allegheny County. Two live near Harrisburg.
Most are residents of Allegheny West, whose civic council in November 2006 opposed the relocation in its minutes, said Gloria Rayman, the civic council president.
“We also support opening Federal and East Ohio streets [cutting through a traffic circle] to make the existing library building more viable,” she said.
The site of the new construction at 1210 Federal St. in the Central North Side, was approved unanimously by that neighborhood council in September 2006, said Claudia Keyes, president of the board.
The Manchester Citizens Corp. and East Allegheny Community Council have not taken positions.
Of 19 library branches to be updated, six have been completed, either by renovation or new building, said library spokeswoman Suzanne Thinnes. The Allegheny branch jumped to the front in priority after the lightning hit. While subsequent repairs cost $2 million, library officials had already determined that the cost of adapting the building for energy efficiency, accessibility and technological upgrades could not be justified against the needs of the other branches. There has been no service at the library for the past 18 months.
The proposed new building would be 15,000 square feet and include a children’s room and program space, a separate area for teens, a meeting room and a room for Allegheny City history materials.
Tomorrow’s hearing prompted a rash of chat on North Side Web sites, most in favor of the move.
The branch in Allegheny Center, with its Richardsonian Romanesque style, is protected from demolition by historic status.
Denise Mahone, a young mother on the Central North Side, credits the Carnegie’s decision to build on a stretch that, for years, has not been child friendly or socially well integrated.
She said the Federal Street location was “site specific in the best sense of the term.”
“Preservation and new spaces are not mutually exclusive,” she said. “In this neighborhood, the emphasis will always be to marry the historic with places that reflect the present.”
David Shlapak, a Central North Sider, said the fight against a new library “is a classic case of people knowing how to spend other people’s money.”
“We can continue to fight until we get a perfect solution no one can pay for, or we can say, ‘This is a positive step, let’s go forward.’
“The Federal-North corridor is the heart of the North Side, and revitalizing that area should be a high priority,” he said.
Petitioners, however, say the best way to preserve Carnegie Library buildings is to use them as libraries.
David Tessitor, an Allegheny West resident who spearheaded the petition drive with Mr. Walsh, said the new construction “is a way to support under-performing real estate speculation projects” at Federal-North while the best chance for success on Federal is to build north from Allegheny Center by first unblocking its arteries.
“There’s a strong sense among neighborhood residents of seeing Ohio Street opened through and Federal reconnected” by getting rid of Allegheny Center’s traffic circle,” Mr. Tessitor said.
“With the library gone, there’s less impetus for that to happen. When we build new, we undermine the history that’s there.”
Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or412-263-1626.
First published on December 17, 2007 at 12:00 am -
State situation with farmland takes on ‘sense of urgency’
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, December 16, 2007The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s latest newsletter provides an insight into the organization’s efforts to protect and enhance historic farms.
The situation with such farms in the state “is taking on a sense of urgency,” according to the December edition of PHLF News, which identifies urban sprawl as the culprit.
“Urban sprawl is occurring at a higher rate in Pennsylvania than in almost any other state in the nation,” Landmarks says.
Slowing down that encroachment is a goal of the foundation’s Historic Farm Preservation Program, said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., the organization’s president.
The program was established in 2002 with a $500,000 lead grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and augmented by additional grants of $100,000 from Richard M. Scaife, owner of the Tribune-Review Publishing Co. and a trustee of Landmarks, and $50,000 from the Laurel Foundation.
Since then, the organization has moved to protect some 1,300 acres and 35 historic farm buildings with a collective value of $6.4 million through easements, acquisitions and gift planning strategies.
“This is important, because we are losing farms at a rapid clip,” Ziegler said.
As reported recently by the Valley News Dispatch, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has classified 7.65 million acres in Pennsylvania as farmland.
Figures from the American Farmland Trust show about 150,000 acres in the state have been developed in the past 10 years.
In order to get a better handle on where the foundation can help, the organization is involved in a survey of about 1,150 farms and farm buildings in Washington and Greene counties. (Ziegler said an error occurred in the headline of the newsletter and in one part of the text, which identified Westmoreland, not Washington, as one of the two counties in the survey.)
Working with the Historic Pennsylvania Agriculture Project, Landmarks has joined with the federal Preserve America program and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to help fund and manage the survey, which began in July.
Total project cost is $109,942, with Landmarks responsible for raising $44,942.
Ziegler said work on the project is probably “about half done” at this time.
It’s being carried out by project teams who are photographing buildings and landscapes, sketching site plans of farmsteads and documenting special features that may be unique to the region’s agriculture.
In the meantime, a group of consultants is visiting historical societies and libraries to gather data, historic maps and photographs.
“The purpose of the survey is to document the agricultural history and resources of these two counties and create a comprehensive database that will support a statewide effort to preserve working farms, boost the agricultural economy, develop heritage education and tourism, and raise awareness about the importance of Pennsylvania’s agricultural history,” the newsletter says.
When the survey is completed in August, the data will be accessible online, along with a collection of oral histories from Pennsylvania farmers and archival materials, including federal and state agricultural census manuscripts for 1850, 1880 and 1927.
The foundation says it also hopes to raise funds to conduct a market analysis for special agricultural purposes based on the survey data.
It wants to define and implement a rural tourism program based on the region’s historic resources, and access the potential for developing a farm preservation easement program for the two counties.
The state Department of Agriculture says there are more than 100 farms in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler and Westmoreland counties that are protected by the state’s program. Officials said more than 370,000 acres are preserved in the state, representing about 5 percent of the state’s farmland.
“Pennsylvania leads the nation in farmland preservation,” said Doug Wolfgang, director for the agriculture department’s Bureau of Farmland Preservation.
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Banking executive makes impact through charitable work
By Thomas Olson
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, December 16, 2007When Pittsburgh banker/lawyer James “Jay” Ferguson III was a teenager, his parents set up a family foundation that gave to local health and education causes.
Now, he and wife Ranny are following in his late parents’ footsteps, forming their own foundation so their three children can learn similar lessons about life, community and the spirit of giving.“It provides a venue for the family to get together, to be selfish about it,” Jay Ferguson says with a grin.
“But really, it’s to inspire the kids — as it did me when I was young — to research where the foundation income should go and to participate in the communities they live in,” Ferguson says during a recent interview in Gulf Tower, Downtown. There, he is Pittsburgh president of Fifth Third Bank — which, in the three years since entering this market, has made its presence felt, too.
The Fergusons’ own footsteps are something to follow. Jay and Ranny, both Pittsburgh-area natives, are a dashing couple — both in appearance and in meeting their busy schedules. The pair are practically ubiquitous in Pittsburgh’s social and philanthropic circles, and their influence is felt widely, say friends and leaders of various organizations.
“Jay and Ranny practice what they preach and help just about anybody that needs it,” says Carol Mitchell, president of the Verland Foundation, Sewickley. Jay served a decade on the board of the Sewickley group, which serves the severely mentally retarded. “A lot of people say they’ll do things, but Jay does them.”
“Charity work comes natural to Jay. He doesn’t do all those rubber-chicken dinners because it’s good for business,” says veteran banker A. William “Bill” Schenck III, who has known Ferguson for 45 years, including their many years at PNC Bank. “He does it because it’s what he thinks he’s supposed to do in life: be part of the community.”
Variety of causes
The Fergusons divide their time and effort between board service at organizations devoted to children’s health, education and welfare, as well as public parks and the visual arts.
They also are regulars at benefits and fundraisers for groups such as the Arthritis Foundation, Gilda’s (cancer-care) Club Western Pennsylvania, the American Heart Association and the Ladies Hospital Aid Society. For instance, the couple gave more than $2,500 in 2006 to the Children’s Home of Pittsburgh/Lemieux Family Center, one of their favorite causes.
“Four years ago, we needed to expand because we were out of space in Oakland, and Ranny chaired the committee,” says William Wycoff, a Downtown attorney and former Children’s Home board president.
Result: In March, the organization moved into a $20 million, 63,000-square-foot facility in Pittsburgh’s Friendship neighborhood. It contains 28 beds to care for children and infants with acute and special needs, plus day care for 60 kids and adoption services.
Three months later, Ranny Ferguson succeeded Wycoff as board president.
“Ranny really does get into it wholeheartedly,” Wycoff says of her decades-long Children’s Home involvement. “She’s always there when you need her.”
The compulsion to serve Pittsburgh communities “started with our parents, who were role models,” says Jay, 64.
Who would not be inspired by a surgeon father and pediatrician mother who each provided free clinics, as Ranny’s parents did? Or influenced by a Harvard Law-grad father and Chatham University-prof mother, as Jay’s parents were?
Ranny’s late father had been an obstetrician and gynecological surgeon whose practice included treatment of female inmates at a work house in Fox Chapel. Her mother served as a pediatrician at the Children’s Home when Ranny was a girl.
“I used to go and rock the babies there when I was about 14,” says Ranny, 60. She also remembers her mother conducting free clinics in Homewood, including escorted trips to the distressed neighborhood during the 1969 race riots.
“If we don’t give youth across all racial and economic lines value and a sense of purpose, it’s going to be devastating not only to Pittsburgh, but our entire country,” Ranny says.
Jay, a career trust attorney and wealth-management executive, has provided financial advice and fundraising expertise to two groups dedicated to blacks: the Neighborhood Academy, a charter school in East Liberty; and NEED, or Negro Educational Emergency Drive, Downtown, where he chairs the fundraising committee.
“There are threads that move you in one direction or another,” Jay says. For instance, a severely retarded trust client of his while at PNC Financial Services Group moved him to associate with Verland.
Deep local roots
Born and raised on 14 acres in Churchill, Jay gained a thirst for knowledge from his estimable parents and, perhaps, from further down the family line. His great-grandfather, Robert Gracey Ferguson, served from 1884 to 1906 as one of the first presidents of Westminster College, the liberal arts school in New Wilmington, Lawrence County.
Jay’s late mother was a Yale University graduate who taught speech and drama for about 20 years at Chatham University in Shadyside. His late father was a graduate of Westminster and then Harvard Law School before going on to become a partner of Tucker Arensberg & Ferguson.
Jay followed his father’s path into law, graduating from Dickinson School of Law, in Carlisle, in 1969. He then joined his father’s Downtown law firm, concentrating in trusts and estates. With most of his trust work being for PNC, Jay wound up joining the bank full-time.
He remained at the bank for almost 30 years, eventually rising to managing executive of PNC Advisors, the corporation’s wealth-management business. But he left PNC abruptly in late 2003 “because PNC had moved to more of a consultant orientation,” he says. “They looked more to outside consultants than employees for their strategies and business models.”
“He came home one day and said, ‘I’m going to walk, and there’s no umbrella,’ ” Ranny recalls. “I just said, ‘Absolutely,’ even though there was nothing out there at that point. Jay and I are a team.”
Meantime, Jay also had been chairing PNC’s charitable endowment. “So, I learned lots about different organizations,” he says.
Jay often takes philanthropic direction from colleagues. For instance, the late Mabon Childs, former vice chairman of the regional brokerage firm Parker/Hunter (now Janney Montgomery Scott), steered Ferguson to the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children. Childs headed the investment committee; now, Ferguson does.
“Jay has done a superb job managing the endowment and investments of the school,” says board member and former Mellon executive Sandra McLaughlin of the $100 million-plus fund. “The school does not come up wanting, that’s for sure.”
As the head of Fifth Third’s Western Pennsylvania market, Jay also determines where the bank’s charitable donations go. This year, the bank has contributed more than $150,000 to at least 20 local organizations “where we can have an impact,” he says.
The Cincinnati-based bank got its peculiar name from the 1908 merger of Third National and Fifth National banks. (Minding the temperance movement of the day, the founders deliberately avoided calling the bank “Third Fifth,” Ferguson says.)
Local organizations sharing Fifth Third’s largesse include Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Women’s Shelter of Pittsburgh, Boy Scouts of America, Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania, City Theatre and Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.
The Parks Conservancy is a favorite nonprofit of Ranny, who has chaired the annual hat luncheon to raise money for the preservationist group for the past five years.
“We take for granted our green space in Pittsburgh,” she says. “The parks are for everyone, open to everyone and are free.”
She is particularly drawn to the Carnegie Museum, whose women’s committee she has chaired since June 2006. Ranny says she is “enthralled” by museum programs such as the recent holiday party for special-needs children.
“That’s what Andrew Carnegie originally envisioned, a place where all doors are open,” she says.
Faith and family
Part of what moves Jay to give back is his religious faith. He and Ranny attend services at Calvary Episcopal Church in East Liberty. “I’m not a ‘wear-it-on-my-sleeve’ type. But it’s part of your responsibility to give back to the community.”
The Fergusons began as a mixed couple — she, a Catholic, and he, a Presbyterian. “So, we met in the middle, and became Episcopalian,” Jay says with a laugh. They met on a blind date in Sewickley and got married about three years later, in June 1968, two weeks after Ranny graduated from Manhattanville College, Purchase, N.Y.
She returned, with Jay, to Pittsburgh and later taught advanced math to girls at Ellis School in Shadyside and calculus to students at Shady Side Academy and engineering students at the University of Pittsburgh.
The couple have three children, all in their 30s, plus three grandchildren.
• Daughter Melissa, 36, an investment banker in Chicago, works for Kraft in mergers and acquisitions. (She won’t even tell her father what she’s working on, he says.)
• Son Rob, 34, works in Pittsburgh as a principal at Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, a global firm based in Chicago, while his wife is an anaesthesiologist with UPMC.
• Son Bill, 30, works near Los Angeles as manager of youth national team administration for the U.S. Soccer Federation, developing youngsters age 13 to 19 for World Cup competition.
Soccer has legs in the Ferguson family. Jay was a soccer player in college and coached his two sons, he says. Jay also has season tickets to Steelers, Pirates and Penguins games.
He’s also a confessed car nut, having raced cars during his days at Duke. These days, he drives a Toyota Land Cruiser for commuting and a Porsche 923 GTS for fun.
In addition, he hopes to restore a 1958 Rolls Royce he inherited.
“One of the things I’ve toyed with doing in retirement is racing vintage cars,” he says, adding, with a grin, “I like cars that go fast.”
Thomas Olson can be reached at tolson@tribweb.com or 412-320-7854.
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City’s historic buildings have passionate advocate
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, December 16, 2007Dan Holland has come a long way since he set out to save Pittsburgh’s historic buildings with $500 in his pocket.
“It hasn’t been easy. It’s been a volunteer effort on my part. I’ve had to scrape, borrow and steal,” Holland said, chuckling.
Holland, 38, is director of the Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh, a one-man operation he launched in 2002 from an office inside his 1894 Victorian home in Friendship. Before setting his mind to locating, researching and protecting buildings of significant historical note, Holland spent years working for others to learn the intricacies of preservation.
“He has found his mission in life,” said Stanley Lowe, a friend and a vice president with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington D.C. The two men worked together at the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in the early 1990’s.
“For Dan, its not about money. He does whatever is necessary to galvanize people around him to help Pittsburgh understand what it takes to cherish and maintain its architectural heritage. And he doesn’t take the easy road to do it,” Lowe said.
The Young Preservationists Association has an annual budget of $57,000 and now counts 350 members in 19 states. Holland travels frequently, talking preservation with Baltimore’s mayor or speaking with urban preservationists from Portland, Ore. to Miami. Running the association is a full-time gig, yet Holland earns money from consulting projects he does on the side.
He has racked up an impressive set of accomplishments with the group, people who have worked with him say. He was instrumental in saving the Centre Avenue YMCA and the New Grenada Theater in the Hill District from demolition. He helped obtain a historical designation for playwright August Wilson’s childhood home in the Hill District, sparing it from the wrecking ball.
His current project is saving a Lincoln-Lemington mansion that once housed the National Negro Opera Co. Roberto Clemente, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington and jazz great Ahmad Jamal were frequent visitors to the now-dilapidated structure.
The YPA distinguishes itself from similar groups by making the concept of saving old buildings attractive to children and young adults, Holland’s colleagues say.
“Oftentimes, others regard the topic of historic preservation as a grown-ups activity. One of the things about YPA under Dan’s leadership is he’s been good at making a connection to young people,” said Ann Fortescue, the director of education and visitor services at the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Holland and Fortescue are collaborating on the Pittsburgh Regional Youth Heritage Festival set for next summer as part of the city’s 250th birthday celebrations.
Holland’s work is time-consuming. He spent several months photographing and compiling histories for more than 100 vacant buildings in Manchester slated for demolition, Lowe recalled. On Dec. 10, Holland organized the Youth Main Street Advisors Project at Pittsburgh Filmmaker’s in Oakland where 100 kids created video documentaries with their visions of how to revitalize communities.
“He can’t take no for an answer. One of the best things is our children. Sometimes when we’re driving and the kids see a house being torn down they’ll say ‘Oh, no, Mommy and Daddy, they’re demolishing a building,'” said Holland’s wife, Kasia, a physician.
The couple met in high school, dated, and then went their own ways while she studied in Washington D.C. and later obtained a medical degree from Penn State. Holland went to Carnegie Mellon University, where he obtained a degree in history and a master’s degree in public policy. Holland grew up in Squirrel Hill, the son of an artist father who taught at CMU. The couple have two children, Konrad, 4, and Adela, 2.
Holland is convinced he’s making a difference.
“Our biggest achievement is that we’ve survived at all. No other organization has done what we’re doing. We’re speaking directly to young people on a regional scale. That’s our core mission,” Holland said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or 412-380-5625.