Category Archive: News Wire Services
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Duncan House ‘Wright’ fit for Acme park
By Richard Robbins
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, June 15, 2007A house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was unveiled Wednesday in Mt. Pleasant Township, a transplant from Illinois that joins two nearby Wright designs, Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob.
Duncan House, a prefab from Wright’s Usonia period of the 1950s, is typical Wright: a low-slung, linear affair with a spacious interior open to nature.The house, which arrived unassembled in Westmoreland County in three tractor-trailers a year ago, is slated to become a guest house at $385 a night. Its owner and CEO, Thomas Papinchak, of Greensburg, and his sister, Laura Nesmith, of Unity, are opening the house to weekend tours as well.
It is especially hoped Fallingwater visitors, 72 percent of whom need overnight lodging, will rent Duncan House as a way of enhancing their Wright “experience.”
Fallingwater director Lynda Waggoner, who attended yesterday’s ribbon-cutting, said that was an excellent possibility. Waggoner gave Duncan House a thumbs-up, saying the setting, deep in country woods about four miles from Route 31, was perfect.
“I don’t think a better setting could be found,” Waggoner said. “It will be terrific for the 135,000 (annual) visitors to Fallingwater.”Duncan House was originally constructed in a Chicago suburb in 1957 for Donald and Elizabeth Duncan. Wright hoped to create housing for middle-income Americans. It didn’t work out that way, said Tom Schmidt, of the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy in Chicago.
Schmidt, who lives in Pittsburgh, said yesterday that Wright could not control costs and his dream of affordable, durable yet superior housing was never realized.
At the same time, the Duncans dwelled in their Wright-designed house for four decades. With the Duncans dead and the house in decline, it looked as though their home — one of only 11 remaining prefabricated Wright-designed structures in the nation — would fall to the wrecking ball.
It was then that the Conservancy came to the rescue along with Tim Baacke, of Johnstown. But Baacke’s plan to reassemble Duncan House in Johnstown never materialized. Papinchak stepped forward at that point, with financing help from the state and The Progress Fund, a nonprofit lender.
Papinchak said he sank a lot of his own money in Duncan House. A custom-design Greensburg contractor, Papinchak said putting Duncan House back together was no harder than working a jigsaw puzzle.
“It took us a year, I thought it would take six to eight months,” he said yesterday.
Duncan House is the centerpiece of Polymath Park Resort, a 125-acre spread near Acme that contains two Wright-inspired homes by Wright apprentice Peter Berndtson. Berndstson, Papinchak said, laid the groundwork for a 24-house development in the 1960s. Only the Balter and the Blum Houses were built.
More than a few Wright aficionados attended yesterday’s event. One was Karen Rich Douglas of Greensburg.
“I like the clean lines (of the house),” Douglas said. “I like its setting in nature. I like the way it nestles among the trees.”
A friend, Nina Lewis, of Greensburg, said she travels the nation to view Wright designs.
“I like the art deco stuff,” she said by way of explanation, “and the simplicity.”
Richard Robbins can be reached at rrobbins@tribweb.com or (724) 836-5660.
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McKees Rocks photo contest promotes community, history
By Melanie Donahoo
Thursday, June 14, 2007McKees Rocks promoters want everyone to explore the architecture of the borough’s historic buildings with a photo hunt contest sponsored by the McKees Rocks Community Development Corp. and architect John Baverso.
Participants can find a close-up photo of a local building’s architectural feature every other Friday on the Internet at www.mckeesrocks.com. Everyone who correctly identifies the building in an e-mail is entered in a drawing for a Nintendo Wii video game system in October.
Sandy Saban, 55, a lifelong McKees Rocks resident and editor of the community Web site, said she got the idea for the contest when she was taking a walk and noticed the ornate architectural details of some structures.
“I started to look at the buildings, and I started to see all of this brickwork and this fancy stuff,” Saban said. “You just don’t see that anymore.”
Saban said she was surprised that she had not noticed the features sooner and wanted to give others an incentive to discover it.
“I never saw this stuff. I never paid attention to it,” Saban said. “And it’s been here all this time. What a shame that other people probably were like me and just never looked up at these buildings.”Saban took her idea to Taris Vrcek, the executive director of the community development corporation, and they developed the contest. In addition to the grand prize, the first person to send in a correct answer every two weeks will receive a gift certificate to a local restaurant or business, Vrcek said.
Baverso, the architect for the Sto-Rox Cultural Center being developed in McKees Rocks, donated the prizes.
“One of our greatest assets is our historic architecture,” said Vrcek, of McKees Rocks. “We have such a wealth of it, and a lot of it is undiscovered by people.”
The photos are being posted on Fridays so people have the weekend to walk around and look for the buildings, Vrcek said. They have two weeks to e-mail their answers. The contest is open to everyone, regardless of where they live. The answers to the previous week’s clues will be posted on the site.
Saban said she photographed the decorative features of public and commercial buildings in every part of the community.
“I hope people get a better appreciation of the buildings here and the care and the artistry of the people who built these buildings,” she said.
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Officials looking beyond new housing to rejuvenate Mon Valley communities
Thursday, June 14, 2007
By Karamagi Rujumba,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteFor Mon Valley residents and officials, almost every time Dan Onorato visits their old steel-mill towns these days is a happy occasion.
In May and June alone, Mr. Onorato, a consortium of community groups and certain Pennsylvania departments launched new housing and refurbishment projects in Rankin, Braddock, and North Braddock.
All told, the projects will cost well over $17 million and give more than 150 families in the region a chance to live in new or refurbished houses or apartments.
But while such projects have been received with open arms in these communities, which have been yearning for a face-lift for the last couple of decades, they haven’t yet significantly changed the quality of life, says Bob Grom, president of the Heritage Health Foundation Inc., a nonprofit organization in Braddock.
Mr. Grom would know, because his nonprofit was one of the first groups to build new homes it considered “affordable housing” for low-income residents in Braddock two years ago.
The four homes built by Heritage, all located near UPMC Braddock, were priced between $60,000 and $63,000, and were unoccupied until recently because no one could afford to buy them.
“We were a little naive going into this project,” Mr. Grom said, noting that his organization is now in the process of finalizing the sale of two of the houses.
“We didn’t understand the breadth of what we needed to understand at the time,” he said. “We can build all kinds of houses, but if the people in the community don’t have jobs or health care, how can they afford the houses?”
That, Mr. Grom said, is an elemental question that state, county and community officials ought to have some answer to if they really want to wholly transform communities like Braddock, North Braddock and Rankin.
On his part, Mr. Onorato recognizes this. He is often quick to note that community reinvestment can never be a one-pronged approach.
He regularly talks about how his office wants to see the redevelopment of the Carrie Furnace site complement neighborhood revitalization in Mon Valley communities.
And that, said Mr. Grom is “music to my ears.”
“We now live in an era of huge development opportunities — especially the potential of Carrie Furnace,” he said. “We have to ask ourselves, given all this possible investment, what kind of jobs, education systems, training programs will allow the residents of these communities to participate in this development?”
(Karamagi Rujumba can be reached at krujumba@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1719. )
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Dormont gets grant to fund pool repairs
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Post GazetteDormont has received a $250,000 matching grant from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to use toward pool repairs, said John Maggio, president of Friends of Dormont Pool, a fund-raising group.
He is confident fund-raising efforts will result in matching that $250,000, with $67,000 already raised. Coupled with the $312,000 the borough has set aside for the pool, the town is well on its way to the approximately $800,000 to $1.1 million needed to make all the repairs to the landmark 1920s-era pool.
The pool is open for summer.
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Old Hanna’s Town gets $1 million boost
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
By Judy Laurinatis,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteIt took 30 years of planning and two years of fund raising, but a long-anticipated education center for Old Hanna’s Town historic site in Hempfield may soon be a reality.
Last week, Lisa Hayes, executive director of the Westmoreland County Historical Society, accepted a check for $1 million from county commissioners to help fund the new center, to be built on the grounds of what was once Westmoreland’s county seat. Ground-breaking is set for next spring.
The historical society has been raising funds for several years and is near its $7.5 million goal.
“Right now we have a lot of stuff in storage with no place to exhibit it,” Ms. Hayes told commissioners.
The center, expected to cost $5 million with an additional $2.5 million endowment to keep it going, will house classrooms, offices, artifacts dug at the site which are now stored all over the county and an archeological lab.
Historical societies throughout Westmoreland County will be invited to provide changing exhibits.
Ms. Hayes said Hanna’s Town was important to the development of Western Pennsylvania and the country because it was one of the earliest settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains.
It was founded in 1773, named for founder Robert Hanna and housed the first English court on the western frontier.
In 1782, the town was attacked and burned in one of the final battles of the Revolutionary War.
The county seat was then moved three miles south, to Greensburg.
The center will be built on what Ms. Hayes described as an “empty” plot of ground. The area has been studied for any archaeologically important artifacts and none has been found, she said.
She said the entire Hanna’s Town site was farmland for 130 years. so 20th-century historians found a wealth of items on the site, from intact pottery and china to toys and tools.
The village tourists can visit today consists of a reconstructed Hanna Tavern and Courthouse, three reconstructed 18th-century log houses and a Revolutionary War era fort as well as a blockhouse and wagon shed.
The new center will have massive glass panels which overlook the main historic site to its rear.
It is being designed by the Lettrich Group of Greensburg.
(Judy Laurinatis can be reached at jlaurinatis@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1228. )
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Artists bring flourish to Penn Avenue
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteNine years ago, two nonprofits designated a 12-block stretch of Penn Avenue through Bloomfield, Garfield and Friendship as a destination for artists. Some local residents ridiculed the idea. The corridor was pestilent.
Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. and Friendship Development Associates teamed up to pitch empty storefronts to artists. They attached big colorful banners over doorways between Mathilda Street and Negley Avenue in a 16-building strategy. Vandals and several seasons of weather had their way with the banners for a few years.
Fast forward to the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater at 5941 Penn Ave., where at 6 p.m. tomorrow, the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative will throw a release party for its new 20-minute video that documents the turn of events since 2001. The event, celebrating “Electric Avenue,” is free and open to the public and will include live music, refreshments and art for sale.
Despite many ills remaining, the nonprofits feel vindicated. Nearly a dozen arts groups have clustered along the corridor in the past six years, many of whom perform and offer classes, including the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Dance Alloy and Attack Theatre. More than a dozen arts-related businesses and individual artists who live upstairs and work downstairs also have invested in the corridor, as did two architecture studios, Edge Architects in 2003 and Loysen + Kreuthmeier in 2005. Some of the artists and arts groups offer workshops and classes to all age groups.
Garfield Artworks was the lone gallery, and Dance Alloy had just moved into the neighborhood when artist Jeffrey Dorsey began volunteering with the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative. It started in 1998 as a joint project of Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. and Friendship Development Associates. Both are nonprofits that provide neighborhood services and develop real estate. They compiled a database of more than 400 artists in three immediate ZIP codes.
Mr. Dorsey served on the steering committee to get the initiative on its feet, then was hired the next year to run it. He was instrumental in establishing the Unblurred event that draws the public to artist spaces the first Friday evening of every month and is now executive director of FDA.
“Artists were interested” in the corridor early on, he said, but it took a few years for momentum to build. “We would have an artist ready to buy, and then there would be trouble with financing, or a contractor and the artist at the last minute decided not to buy.” On two buildings in particular, “the banners were up way too long, but we got a lot of response.”
On the new video, the second the arts initiative has made to document its progress, Mr. Dorsey said artists were the target to jump-start revitalization “because artists are connectors.”
A revival of Penn Avenue is radiating to some of its troubled side streets. Recently, two new homeowners relocated here from other cities, one a young family, the other a young couple, and bought blighted, abandoned homes to renovate and live in north of Penn, said Becky Mingo, real estate specialist for Friendship Development.
Aggie Brose, deputy director of Bloomfield-Garfield, said BGC has sold 22 of 23 new single-family homes of a 50-house plan that will occupy a four-by-four block area. Eight more are being built now, and 19 will be started next summer, she said.
The BGC also owns seven homes being rehabbed this and next year on North Fairmount.
The arts initiative has had “minimal impact on the sale of new houses in Garfield,” she said, “but I’m hoping that unconsciously, all the excitement on Penn Avenue in general fed into buyers’ decisions.”
She said the BGC and FDA “labored for years” to fill small storefronts that continued to lie dormant until the groups met with Artists in Cities, an organization that was finishing construction of the Spinning Plate Artists Lofts and Galleries on Friendship Avenue in 1998.
“They had a waiting list,” said Ms. Brose. “So Rob Stephany, [commercial real estate specialist for East Liberty Development, who was then on the BGC staff] jumped in and said, ‘We have places on Penn Avenue. Let me take you on a tour.’ That’s how the Arts Initiative was born, and a movement started.”
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Duncan House ready for visitors
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteA ribbon-cutting ceremony tomorrow will mark the end of one era and the beginning of another for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Duncan House, which began its life in a Chicago suburb and now is the star of Polymath Park, a new 125-acre resort in the Laurel Highlands.
Nearly a year after ground was broken in a Western Pennsylvania woodland, the prefab Usonian house will open to the public this weekend for tours and overnight accommodations.
Built in a Lisle, Ill., in 1957 for Donald and Elizabeth Duncan, the Duncan House was deconstructed in 2004 and reassembled over the past 12 months near Acme in Westmoreland County as part of Polymath Park Resort. The retreat also includes two homes by Wright apprentice Peter Berndtson — the Balter House and the Blum House, both built in the 1960s for Pittsburgh businessmen.
Thomas D. Papinchak, a Westmoreland County home builder, had been renting the Balter and Blum houses on an annual basis from their most recent previous owner, who named the grounds Polymath Park.
Now the resort’s owner and CEO, Mr. Papinchak, who declined comment before the opening, has established the Usonian Preservation Corp., with a five-member board, as the nonprofit entity that will direct the proceeds from rentals toward maintaining the houses and telling their stories through educational and civic programs. The for-profit arm of the business will draw its income from corporate and private events.
Located near Wright’s Fallingwater (15 miles away) and Kentuck Knob (30 miles), the Duncan House is one of only four Wright buildings in the country that accommodate overnight visitors.
Lodging is available in the Duncan House and Balter House, with the Blum House eventually serving as the visitor center, cafe, spa and gift shop. There’s a two-night minimum for sleepovers, priced at $325 per night for the Duncan House, which has three bedrooms and sleeps six; and $265 per night for the Balter House, which has four bedrooms and sleeps six. Those prices are for three guests; for four to six people, add $50 per person.
Hours for the Blum House Visitor Center, which is not expected to open until August, are noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday through Aug. 31. Call ahead for spa and cafe reservations.
The Boulder Room, in the lower level of the Duncan House, features a stone fireplace, Cherokee red concrete floor, patio and wall of windows to the outdoors. It’s equipped for electronic presentations, music and seminars for corporate or private use, with a 120-seat capacity.
Mr. Berndtson’s 1962 master plan for the site, which he named Treetops and Mountain Circles, called for 24 houses, each set within a 300-foot circular clearing in the woods, which today are laced with about five miles of hiking trails. The land between the houses was to have held community facilities such as tennis courts, a baseball diamond, swimming ponds and orchards.
But only two houses were built: the Balter house in 1964 for James and Frances Balter and the Blum house in 1965. Harry Blum, along with brothers Max and Louis, helped build their father’s metalworking business into Blumcraft, an international company still based in Oakland. He died in 1998.
This weekend, Polymath Park will be open for tours, but as always, by reservation only. Hours are noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tours of all three buildings, admission is $22. For the Duncan House only, admission is $16. Children under 12 are admitted free but must be closely supervised by an adult. Public tours also will be offered on some Sundays and weekdays; call for information and reservations: 1-877-833-STAY (7829) or visit www.polymathpark.com.
The other Wright-designed houses available for sleepovers are the Bernard Schwartz House in Two Rivers, Wis. (1939); the Louis Penfield House in Willoughby, Ohio (1955); and the Seth Peterson Cottage on Mirror Lake in Wisconsin (1958). The rental rates at all three are in line with the Duncan House rates.
The Duncan House’s first overnight guest, on June 18, hails from Louisiana. Other future guests live in Maryland, Illinois, England and Ireland; visitors from Pittsburgh, Detroit and Australia have stayed in the Balter House, open since November.
“A lot of the people are coming to see Fallingwater and staying with us, which we suspected would be the case,” said resort spokeswoman Laura Nesmith.
Polymath Park is five miles from the Donegal exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
(Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590. )
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East Liberty development would create public plaza
By Sam Spatter
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, June 13, 2007A proposed $40 million development would bring a second new hotel, another ethnic-style restaurant and other amenities to the city’s rebounding East Liberty neighborhood.
Montrose Exchange, a mixed-use project proposed by Morgan Development Group, will be centered on a new public plaza called Kirkwood Square at North Highland Avenue and Broad Street, according to plans presented to the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority last week.
“We will be seeking about $12 million in funding through the URA, both in low-interest loans and grants,” said Nigel Parkinson, managing partner at Morgan, a firm with offices in Washington and Pittsburgh.
He hopes to begin construction early next year on the project, which will be located in an area bounded by Highland Avenue and Broad, Kirkwood and Whitfield streets.
The Montrose project comprises new construction and renovation of nine properties on three blocks along Broad and Highland. All properties are owned by his firm, Parkinson said.
Designed by architect Andrew Moss, of Moss Architects in East Liberty, the development will build on other projects already under way and planned in the East Liberty neighborhood.
It will tie into three blocks on Broad being improved with new sidewalks, street trees, pedestrian lighting and parking.
The 135-room hotel, named Hotel Indigo, is planned at a site at 129-131 N. Highland. Two vacant buildings there are to be demolished, Parkinson said.
The restaurant, Latin Concepts, would be across the street from the hotel, at the site of the former American Legion Post building.
Hotel Indigo will include a lobby that will tie into the 126 N. Whitfield building and the historic Kirkwood (Governor’s) Hotel building that is to be renovated. Hotel Indigo will incorporate a garden area that will provide a semi-public green space for outdoor dining and special events, Moss said.
Latin Concepts will bring three new establishments to East Liberty. They are the Chi Cha Lounge, offering Modern Andean Cuisine; Agua, with items originating from Peru and Ecuador’s Andean grains, fruits and seafood; and Menta, a planned dance destination.
“If the Montrose development comes to fruition, it will have a tremendous impact on revitalizing the community and serve as the heartbeat of East Liberty,” said Paul Brecht, executive director of East Liberty Quarter Chamber of Commerce.
Already planned for East Liberty is a $20 million Marriott SpringHill Suites to be developed by Kratsa Properties of Harmar at the corner of Highland and Centre avenues. That proposed hotel is adjacent to the Highland Building, which the Pittsburgh-based Zambrano Corp. plans to retrofit into residential units, either condominiums or apartments.
Sam Spatter can be reached at sspatter@tribweb.com or 412-320-7843.