Category Archive: News Wire Services
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State agency to begin survey of region’s historic farms
By Don Hopey,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, November 23, 2006Dozens of historic buildings and farms have fallen through the cracks in the southwestern Pennsylvania coalfields, but a planned survey may help the state produce a much-needed safety net.
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has received a $75,000 federal grant from Preserve America to conduct a two-year survey of more than 2,800 farms and other properties in Washington and Greene counties.
While some historic buildings, like the Ernest Thralls House near Spraggs in Greene County, have been damaged by longwall mine subsidence because the state did little to save them, others have been lost because not even the agencies that are supposed to protect them knew they were there, tucked along the back roads in the rolling hills of the mostly rural counties.
Carol Lee, the commission’s National Register of Historic Places coordinator, said the state’s official history agency is limited by staffing and funding, and doesn’t know how many historic properties have been damaged by longwall mining or even how many listed or eligible properties still exist.
“We have listed and eligible historic properties in each county, but we would have to survey or get reports from local groups to know what is happening to them,” Ms. Lee said.
That lack of information can be a problem because the commission is supposed to provide the state Department of Environmental Protection, which issues mining permits, with pre-mining advisory opinions about whether subsidence caused by longwall operations will damage those properties.
The commission lists 92 properties in Washington County on the National Register of Historic Places and another 197 sites eligible for listing, and 41 properties in Greene County, with another 23 judged eligible. But some historians say there are many more.
The commission will plan the historical farm survey this winter and begin field survey work next spring.
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Historic Vandergrift looks to future
By Marjorie Wertz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 19, 2006In 1901, six years after the establishment of Vandergrift, Westmoreland County, Steel Workers Magazine called the town a “working man’s paradise.”
Designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect of New York’s Central Park and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Vandergrift was a planned community founded by George G. McMurtry, president of the Apollo Iron and Steel Co., Apollo. It was named after Captain J.J. Vandergrift, a director of the steel mill.
“McMurtry was one of the first industrialists who gave respect to the working man,” said Ken Blose, a member of the Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historical Society. “He believed that educated, churchgoing men who owned their own homes in their own community would make the best workers. These were radical thoughts at that time.”
McMurtry needed to expand his galvanized steel mill, so he bought a 650-acre farm site several miles downstream on the Kiskiminetas River. Olmstead designed the town so that the streets followed the natural slope of the hills and the curve of the river. The mill was constructed; streets were graded; utilities were installed; trees were planted; and street lights were erected.
“There were 14 main streets in the original design and only one place where two streets crossed,” Blose said. “There are no real corners. Every corner is a sweeping curve.”
Once the town was laid out, lots were sold only to men who worked in the mill. McMurtry established a bank so mill workers could buy homes at rates they could afford.
“For a man working in a mill in 1895, the opportunity to purchase his own home was practically nil,” Blose said.
McMurtry continued his philanthropic actions through the purchase of pipe organs for all the town’s churches. He also donated land for schools and the fire department and bought the fire department’s first equipment. Blose said McMurtry also sold land for $1 to the town for a cemetery.
“And what land that was undeveloped, he allowed the townspeople to use for recreational purposes,” Blose said.
At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Vandergrift won two gold medals for best town design, and, in 1907, the Vandergrift steel mill was the largest rolling mill in the world, producing high-quality silicon steel.
“The steel for the centerpiece of the 1964 New York World’s Fair; the Unisphere, the largest metal sculpture in the world, was finished and polished in Vandergrift. Some of the steel for the St. Louis Arch was produced in Vandergrift, and the hinges for the gates and other parts of the Panama Canal were produced in the Vandergrift Foundry,” Blose said.
McMurtry also was the primary contributor to the construction of the town’s municipal building, which housed the jail, administration offices and a 500-seat theater. That building, the Casino Theatre, is undergoing renovations by a group of volunteers, Casino Theatre Restoration and Management.
“The theatre was being used by the borough for storage,” said Mary Lee Kessler, treasurer of the organization. “The theatre seats, stage curtain and all the decorative items within the theatre had been removed. There were rumors that the theatre was going to be torn down. We couldn’t let that happen.”
Built in 1900 in the Greek revival style, the theatre was a popular venue on the vaudeville circuit. President William H. Taft, boxing champ Bob Fitzsimmons, composer Hoagy Carmichael, Tex Ritter and the Three Stooges visited the Casino.
The Casino was remodeled in 1927 as the area’s largest movie theater, and in the ’50s, it was converted to show wide-screen movies. It closed in 1981.
“The east wing of the building still houses the library, and the west wing has the offices of the borough secretary, the jail and police station,” Kessler said. “The theatre was in great disrepair, but the borough was very open to a responsible group attempting to revive it, so they leased it to us for $1 a year with the understanding that we would apply for grants to renovate it.”
Kessler has been successful in obtaining grants for renovation projects. The organization was able to locate 475 seats for $5,000 and install electrical wiring, lighting and sound. A group of volunteers, affectionately called the Tuesday Night Work Crew, arrive at the theatre Tuesday evenings and “do what needs to be done,” Kessler said.
“We replaced the four wooden ionic columns in the front of the theatre, excavated in the basement, and now there’s a very pretty ladies lounge there. We also reopened the mezzanine level and renovated the front lawn,” she said.
The discovery of two old movie window cards netted the organization about $37,000, which was used to repair the theatre’s roof. A group of Eagle Scouts was cleaning out a portion of the theatre’s upper floor when it located an old desk with an ink blotter. Under the blotter, the group found a perfectly preserved window card for the 1927 science fiction movie “Metropolis,” directed by Fritz Lang.
“One of the volunteers contacted a fellow from Greensburg who was extremely excited because memorabilia from that move is very collectible,” Kessler said. “That window card was auctioned off by Sotheby’s, and we netted $24,000.”
A second window card for the movie that had a small bend in one corner was auctioned several years later and sold for about $13,000.
The Casino Theatre officially reopened its doors in August 1995. Three years ago, Mickey Rooney performed there, and in April, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson gave one of his last performances before dying Aug. 23.
“Every year we do a magic show for children at the end of October, and during the first weekend of December, we self-produce ‘Hometown Christmas.’ This year, it will be a musical revue,” Kessler said.
On Nov. 25, 14 bands will put on a benefit concert at the Casino to help the organization pay the heating bill.
“This is a fun place to be. The people who volunteer here are very enthusiastic,” Kessler added.
The Vandergrift Improvement Program — VIP — is another nonprofit organization comprising local residents, businesses, municipal and state government officials working to protect, preserve and restore the community through the National Trust for Historical Preservations’ Main Street approach.
“We had 15 vacant storefronts out of 100 stores in our town. We didn’t want the town to rot away,” said Wayne Teeple, vice president of the 100-member VIP.
The premise of the town’s Main Street approach is to encourage economic revitalization through a four-pronged system — design, economic restructuring, promotion and organization — to address all of the commercial district’s needs.
The town, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is in the first year of the Main Street program.
“We had to raise $94,000 to obtain funding for a Department of Community and Economic Development Main Street grant,” Teeple said. “Within a three-month period, the residents and Vandergrift government pledged that amount over a five-year period.”
The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, a nonprofit historic preservation group, was hired to manage the Main Street program, said Eugene Matta, director of the foundation’s real estate and special-development programs.
Shaun Yurcaba, of History and Landmarks, is Vandergrift’s Main Street coordinator. She is helping VIP coordinate its efforts.
“The four committees working in design, economic restructuring, promotion and organization fulfill the requirements of the Main Street program,” Yurcaba said.
The design committee is developing guidelines for the protection of historical buildings during changes or renovations. Those on the economic restructuring committee are determining how many businesses are downtown and what types of businesses are in place in order to gauge what improvements are needed.
“The organization committee works on establishing relationships with other community organizations such as the Casino Theatre renovation group and the historical society,” Yurcaba added.
Trying to bring people into town is the work of the promotion committee, which sponsors events such as a summer car cruise and a 2007 pet calendar contest, in which people cast ballots for their favorite pet photos at Vandergrift businesses.
“Once we go into year two of the Main Street project, we become eligible for an $80,000 grant — $30,000 of it will be available to downtown building owners in the form of grants,” Teeple said. “They can apply for a $5,000 matching grant for renovating the facades of their buildings. We already have five building owners interested in this.”
Other groups are working toward Vandergrift’s revitalization, as well.
“Sustainable Pittsburgh is working with us so that Vandergrift becomes a green sustainable development,” Matta said. “And the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative through the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Engineering is also working on quite a project in Vandergrift.”
Sustainable Pittsburgh served as the “matchmaker” between the initiative and Vandergrift, said Eric Beckman, co-director of the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative.
“The goal of MSI is to create the next generation of technology that is cost-effective and sustainable,” Beckman said. “We brought in a team of undergraduate engineering students into Vandergrift and asked them if they could bring energy conservation to the Casino Theatre. The question became ‘How do you lower energy bills without destroying the historic value of the community?’ ”
The shallow, yet swift-flowing Kiski River, which surrounds Vandergrift on three sides, might be able answer, Beckman said. The group submitted a proposal to the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance for a sustainable creative energy grant.
“We went in on this proposal with Sustainable Pittsburgh. Whatever we come up with in Vandergrift, we could use in other parts of the state,” Beckman said. “Eventually, we want to create something that will generate electricity and try it out in Vandergrift. The town will be our test bed.”
All the partnerships have helped VIP pick up steam on revitalization projects.
“Other towns are calling us for information. Everyone has a passion for this, and it’s something that’s really taking off,” Teeple said.
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- Carino’s, which closed several years ago, was housed in one of Vandergrift’s signature buildings. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- John Pomfret repainted a turn-of-the-century tin ceiling in his store, Pomfret’s Paint and Variety. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- The Casino Theatre was remodeled in 1927 and again in the ’50s before closing in 1981. It reopened in August 1995 after undergoing extensive work. The building houses a library, municipal offices and a police station. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- Mary Lee Kessler is treasurer of Casino Theatre Restoration and Management, a group of volunteers renovating the theater. — Steven Dietz/For the Tribune-Review
Marjorie Wertz can be reached at .
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Ethel Hagler / Respected community organizer from the North Side: Dec. 17, 1908 – Nov. 11, 2006
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, November 15, 2006Upon learning that Ethel Hagler had died, many who knew her gasped.
Yes, she was mortal, and 97 when she died Saturday. But the North Sider had been indomitable, amassing a lifetime of feats in community building that sometimes seemed as improbable as a Frank Capra movie.
The most tangible of those, Neighborhood Housing Services, she started in 1968 from a trailer on Jacksonia Street. She and two friends lobbied bankers to open the chance of home ownership to low-income neighbors, most of them black, who had never established credit or known how institutional borrowing worked.
Today, Neighborhood Housing Services are established in 250 U.S. cities.
Louann Ross, executive director of the local office, said that when she travels in community development circles and says she is from Pittsburgh, “people gasp and say, ‘That’s where residential community development leadership started!’ ”
“I tell the story all the time,” she said. “These were women without much formal education. They began visiting banks and foundations. They raised $750,000. Think about how much money that was then. It still is. They just kept talking about the importance of this. They must have been mighty powerful words.”
Mrs. Hagler came to Pittsburgh from Dante, Va., with her husband, William Spencer Hagler. They set up housekeeping on Lorraine Street, where she lived her life until her last months in nursing homes. Her earliest and most enduring cause was the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
On her 90th birthday, when the neighborhood and City Council honored her, she told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “You get to know people when you go to church, you know.”
She started a block club, organized neighbors to visit shut-ins and deliver Christmas baskets. She helped found the Central Northside Neighborhood Council. In the 1960s, she partnered with the Garden Club of Allegheny County on beautification projects. One was an annual window box sale to raise money for her church.
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation promoted the window box sales, which lasted 40 years and led neighbors to home improvements, said Arthur Ziegler, president of the foundation.
As a result of their association, the foundation invited Mrs. Hagler onto its board, he said, “because she was so committed and had so much knowledge of how neighborhoods worked and how to lead.”
Eliza Nevin knew Mrs. Hagler from their beautification efforts on the North Side in the 1970s.
“She had the rare ability to love all kinds of people,” said Ms. Nevin. “When some people saw dangers in gentrification, she was out talking to the, quote, gentry, enlisting their help. When people were [lamenting] garbage and drug deals, she was forging these public-private partnerships to plant trees and flowers everywhere, to show people what a nice community can be like.
“She saw injustice and worked on the love part of it. She was different from everybody else.”
Former city Councilman Sala Udin said that when he decided to run for council in that district in 1995, he had to get to know her first.
“I learned very early that she was the absolute single person it was necessary to be in touch with if you had political ambitions on the North Side. She was called the mayor of the North Side,” Mr. Udin said.
Peggy King, who met Mrs. Hagler through the garden club project, said her friend “had that force of personality, that presence.”
“She didn’t shrink from being the star of the show,” she said, “but if someone was sick, she was bringing food and changing beds. She was the best of what the human species has to offer.”
Patricia Sutton described her aunt as “a very strong-willed person who refused to settle for ‘no.’ ”
At the end of her life, so homesick for Lorraine Street, Mrs. Hagler would sit in her nursing home at a display honoring former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis, said Ms. Sutton.
“It said ‘The Bus Stops Here,’ and she sat there waiting for the bus to go home,” she said.
She had lived without her husband for many years, but her niece said that a final instruction, “the last thing I could make out, was, ‘Patricia, make sure Spence knows where I am.’ ”
Visitation will be Friday at Brown Chapel AME Church, 1400 Boyle St., North Side, from 2 to 4 p.m. A memorial tribute will be held there from 7 to 9 p.m. Mrs. Hagler will be buried in Highwood Cemetery.
Donations may be made to the Sutton-Hagler Scholarship Fund, c/o PNC Bank, P.O. Box 6263, Pittsburgh 15212-0263.
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
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Historic Vandergrift looks to future
By Marjorie Wertz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 19, 2006In 1901, six years after the establishment of Vandergrift, Westmoreland County, Steel Workers Magazine called the town a “working man’s paradise.”
Designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect of New York’s Central Park and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Vandergrift was a planned community founded by George G. McMurtry, president of the Apollo Iron and Steel Co., Apollo. It was named after Captain J.J. Vandergrift, a director of the steel mill.“McMurtry was one of the first industrialists who gave respect to the working man,” said Ken Blose, a member of the Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historical Society. “He believed that educated, churchgoing men who owned their own homes in their own community would make the best workers. These were radical thoughts at that time.”
McMurtry needed to expand his galvanized steel mill, so he bought a 650-acre farm site several miles downstream on the Kiskiminetas River. Olmstead designed the town so that the streets followed the natural slope of the hills and the curve of the river. The mill was constructed; streets were graded; utilities were installed; trees were planted; and street lights were erected.
“There were 14 main streets in the original design and only one place where two streets crossed,” Blose said. “There are no real corners. Every corner is a sweeping curve.”
Once the town was laid out, lots were sold only to men who worked in the mill. McMurtry established a bank so mill workers could buy homes at rates they could afford.
“For a man working in a mill in 1895, the opportunity to purchase his own home was practically nil,” Blose said.
McMurtry continued his philanthropic actions through the purchase of pipe organs for all the town’s churches. He also donated land for schools and the fire department and bought the fire department’s first equipment. Blose said McMurtry also sold land for $1 to the town for a cemetery.
“And what land that was undeveloped, he allowed the townspeople to use for recreational purposes,” Blose said.
At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Vandergrift won two gold medals for best town design, and, in 1907, the Vandergrift steel mill was the largest rolling mill in the world, producing high-quality silicon steel.
“The steel for the centerpiece of the 1964 New York World’s Fair; the Unisphere, the largest metal sculpture in the world, was finished and polished in Vandergrift. Some of the steel for the St. Louis Arch was produced in Vandergrift, and the hinges for the gates and other parts of the Panama Canal were produced in the Vandergrift Foundry,” Blose said.
McMurtry also was the primary contributor to the construction of the town’s municipal building, which housed the jail, administration offices and a 500-seat theater. That building, the Casino Theatre, is undergoing renovations by a group of volunteers, Casino Theatre Restoration and Management.
“The theatre was being used by the borough for storage,” said Mary Lee Kessler, treasurer of the organization. “The theatre seats, stage curtain and all the decorative items within the theatre had been removed. There were rumors that the theatre was going to be torn down. We couldn’t let that happen.”
Built in 1900 in the Greek revival style, the theatre was a popular venue on the vaudeville circuit. President William H. Taft, boxing champ Bob Fitzsimmons, composer Hoagy Carmichael, Tex Ritter and the Three Stooges visited the Casino.
The Casino was remodeled in 1927 as the area’s largest movie theater, and in the ’50s, it was converted to show wide-screen movies. It closed in 1981.
“The east wing of the building still houses the library, and the west wing has the offices of the borough secretary, the jail and police station,” Kessler said. “The theatre was in great disrepair, but the borough was very open to a responsible group attempting to revive it, so they leased it to us for $1 a year with the understanding that we would apply for grants to renovate it.”
Kessler has been successful in obtaining grants for renovation projects. The organization was able to locate 475 seats for $5,000 and install electrical wiring, lighting and sound. A group of volunteers, affectionately called the Tuesday Night Work Crew, arrive at the theatre Tuesday evenings and “do what needs to be done,” Kessler said.
“We replaced the four wooden ionic columns in the front of the theatre, excavated in the basement, and now there’s a very pretty ladies lounge there. We also reopened the mezzanine level and renovated the front lawn,” she said.
The discovery of two old movie window cards netted the organization about $37,000, which was used to repair the theatre’s roof. A group of Eagle Scouts was cleaning out a portion of the theatre’s upper floor when it located an old desk with an ink blotter. Under the blotter, the group found a perfectly preserved window card for the 1927 science fiction movie “Metropolis,” directed by Fritz Lang.
“One of the volunteers contacted a fellow from Greensburg who was extremely excited because memorabilia from that move is very collectible,” Kessler said. “That window card was auctioned off by Sotheby’s, and we netted $24,000.”
A second window card for the movie that had a small bend in one corner was auctioned several years later and sold for about $13,000.
The Casino Theatre officially reopened its doors in August 1995. Three years ago, Mickey Rooney performed there, and in April, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson gave one of his last performances before dying Aug. 23.
“Every year we do a magic show for children at the end of October, and during the first weekend of December, we self-produce ‘Hometown Christmas.’ This year, it will be a musical revue,” Kessler said.
On Nov. 25, 14 bands will put on a benefit concert at the Casino to help the organization pay the heating bill.
“This is a fun place to be. The people who volunteer here are very enthusiastic,” Kessler added.
The Vandergrift Improvement Program — VIP — is another nonprofit organization comprising local residents, businesses, municipal and state government officials working to protect, preserve and restore the community through the National Trust for Historical Preservations’ Main Street approach.
“We had 15 vacant storefronts out of 100 stores in our town. We didn’t want the town to rot away,” said Wayne Teeple, vice president of the 100-member VIP.
The premise of the town’s Main Street approach is to encourage economic revitalization through a four-pronged system — design, economic restructuring, promotion and organization — to address all of the commercial district’s needs.
The town, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is in the first year of the Main Street program.
“We had to raise $94,000 to obtain funding for a Department of Community and Economic Development Main Street grant,” Teeple said. “Within a three-month period, the residents and Vandergrift government pledged that amount over a five-year period.”
The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, a nonprofit historic preservation group, was hired to manage the Main Street program, said Eugene Matta, director of the foundation’s real estate and special-development programs.
Shaun Yurcaba, of History and Landmarks, is Vandergrift’s Main Street coordinator. She is helping VIP coordinate its efforts.
“The four committees working in design, economic restructuring, promotion and organization fulfill the requirements of the Main Street program,” Yurcaba said.
The design committee is developing guidelines for the protection of historical buildings during changes or renovations. Those on the economic restructuring committee are determining how many businesses are downtown and what types of businesses are in place in order to gauge what improvements are needed.
“The organization committee works on establishing relationships with other community organizations such as the Casino Theatre renovation group and the historical society,” Yurcaba added.
Trying to bring people into town is the work of the promotion committee, which sponsors events such as a summer car cruise and a 2007 pet calendar contest, in which people cast ballots for their favorite pet photos at Vandergrift businesses.
“Once we go into year two of the Main Street project, we become eligible for an $80,000 grant — $30,000 of it will be available to downtown building owners in the form of grants,” Teeple said. “They can apply for a $5,000 matching grant for renovating the facades of their buildings. We already have five building owners interested in this.”
Other groups are working toward Vandergrift’s revitalization, as well.
“Sustainable Pittsburgh is working with us so that Vandergrift becomes a green sustainable development,” Matta said. “And the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative through the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Engineering is also working on quite a project in Vandergrift.”
Sustainable Pittsburgh served as the “matchmaker” between the initiative and Vandergrift, said Eric Beckman, co-director of the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative.
“The goal of MSI is to create the next generation of technology that is cost-effective and sustainable,” Beckman said. “We brought in a team of undergraduate engineering students into Vandergrift and asked them if they could bring energy conservation to the Casino Theatre. The question became ‘How do you lower energy bills without destroying the historic value of the community?’ ”
The shallow, yet swift-flowing Kiski River, which surrounds Vandergrift on three sides, might be able answer, Beckman said. The group submitted a proposal to the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance for a sustainable creative energy grant.
“We went in on this proposal with Sustainable Pittsburgh. Whatever we come up with in Vandergrift, we could use in other parts of the state,” Beckman said. “Eventually, we want to create something that will generate electricity and try it out in Vandergrift. The town will be our test bed.”
All the partnerships have helped VIP pick up steam on revitalization projects.
“Other towns are calling us for information. Everyone has a passion for this, and it’s something that’s really taking off,” Teeple said.
Marjorie Wertz can be reached at .
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Building cities, saving history: Pittsburgh’s revival shows how the future of cities depends on preserving their past, says RICHARD MOE, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Sunday, October 29, 2006In 1960, when the National Trust for Historic Preservation last held its annual conference in Pittsburgh, this city was well into its burgeoning transformation from a smoke-shrouded industrial center into an attractive, vibrant community. Forty-six years later, the more than 2,000 people who will gather here this week for the 2006 National Preservation Conference will see a city that has reinvented itself as a world-class metropolis, one that consistently ranks among the nation’s most livable.
The theme of this year’s conference, “Making Preservation Work!,” has particular relevance in Pittsburgh, for it was here that visionaries developed and refined many of the techniques that are now included in every preservationist’s toolkit.
In the 1960s, historic neighborhoods such as Manchester were laboratories for the use of revolving funds to spark community revitalization. Later, East Carson Street was one of the first big-city neighborhood business districts to participate in the National Trust’s Main Street program, which was originally developed for use in small towns. Adaptive-use projects, such as the rebirth of Station Square as a major retail and entertainment center and the conversion of Loew’s Penn Theater into the spectacular Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, have been models for communities across the country. And the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has for four decades shown everyone how a top-notch preservation organization can make a real difference in a community’s appearance and quality of life.
What’s happened in Pittsburgh is a compelling illustration of how far we’ve come in our understanding of what revitalization really means. In most American cities during the 1950s and ’60s, including in Pittsburgh, the crash of the wrecking ball was part of the soundtrack of daily life. It was the heyday of Urban Renewal, and older buildings fell like dominos as cities sought to encourage revitalization by clearing “blighted” areas and creating vacant land for new development.
This orgy of demolition robbed us of many great buildings and viable neighborhoods, while the promised redevelopment was often slow in coming. In many cities — again including Pittsburgh, especially in areas such as the Hill District and East Liberty — the scars were painfully visible for a very long time.
We’ve learned a lot since then, and it’s no exaggeration to say that much of what we know about revitalization today, we learned from Pittsburgh.
When the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation used its revolving fund to purchase and renovate deteriorated older houses and then make them available to low- and moderate-income families, community activists everywhere learned that it wasn’t necessary to destroy a historic neighborhood in order to save it. When the foundation completed the nation’s first countywide landmarks survey, preservationists elsewhere got busy surveying their own counties. And when East Carson Street thrived after property owners and merchants decided to capitalize on the historic buildings that give the area its unique appeal instead of turning it into a soulless urban version of a suburban strip mall, business and government leaders from coast to coast got the message that preservation is good for the pocketbook as well as the soul.
There have been missteps, of course. To cite one recent example: A misguided proposal to flatten a big chunk of the city’s historic Downtown under the guise of “revitalization” landed the Fifth and Forbes retail corridor on the National Trust’s list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2000. We are glad preservationists, property owners, merchants and citizens banded together and defeated this plan.
For the most part, however, Pittsburgh has embraced the notion that revitalization doesn’t mean carting the past off to the landfill; it means using the best of the past to help build a better future. That’s good news for everyone who cares about preserving America’s heritage and allowing it to play a meaningful role in contemporary life.
Many National Preservation Conference attendees will be visiting Pittsburgh for the first time, and I have no doubt they’ll be impressed by what they see. They’ll take walking tours of Downtown, the North Side, Homewood and other neighborhoods. They’ll hear from experts such as Arthur Ziegler, who in 1993 received the Crowninshield Award, preservation’s highest accolade, for his work here in Pittsburgh. They’ll marvel at historic places such as the Allegheny County Courthouse and the Cathedral of Learning as well as more recent landmarks such as the Children’s Museum and the Mattress Factory. Everywhere they go, they’ll be reminded that the future of American cities lies in maintaining their sense of place and in strengthening their economic competitive edge by preserving and capitalizing on the historic treasures of their past.
In short, they’ll see how this city has made preservation work. And when they go back home, thousands of communities will benefit from the lessons they learned in Pittsburgh.
(The National Preservation Conference runs from Tuesday through Sunday at various venues and is based at the Hilton, Omni William Penn and Renaissance hotels Downtown. For more information, go to www.nationaltrust.org. )
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Plans for Walgreens store get council’s OK
Staff and wire reports
Thursday, October 26, 2006Pittsburgh City Council unanimously approved plans Wednesday for a controversial Walgreens drug store in Point Breeze.
Construction could begin as early as April, once the city Planning Department approves a site plan.Neighbors of the proposed 14,550-square-foot store at the corner of Penn and Braddock avenues for months have objected to Paradise Development Group’s plan to raze three Victorian houses to make way for a two-lane drive-through window attached to the store.
In a compromise reached in September and OK’d yesterday, Paradise agreed to knock down only one home, which Paradise will purchase.
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National preservation confab focuses on sustainable design
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, October 25, 2006Pittsburgh will be turning green next week, but it won’t be with envy. We’re the lucky ones, after all: the National Trust for Historic Preservation is rolling into town for a week of workshops, meetings and tours, some centered on green design.
The Trust’s conference, which annually attracts about 2,000 people from across the country, is an opportunity for the host city to show off its historic buildings and neighborhoods and what it does best in preserving them.
Since Pittsburgh last hosted the Trust conference in 1960, the city has built a national reputation as a leader in green design, including the rehabilitation of older buildings with sustainable materials and technologies. Field and education sessions throughout the conference will focus on green renovations, including the Pittsburgh Glass Center and the Children’s Museum.
Pittsburgh was chosen for its “rich history and impressive record of preserving and revitalizing important places in the city,” said Richard Moe, president of the nonprofit education and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. It’s “an ideal location in which to explore the leading issues in preservation.”
Titled “Making Preservation Work!,” the 60th annual conference kicks off Tuesday after a daylong, preconference, charrette-style national summit on green design on Monday at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, where participants will develop goals and guidelines for greening historic properties. Public input will be solicited through a town meeting immediately after the charrette, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the history center. Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, the Trust’s principal planning partner for the conference, and the Green Building Alliance will co-host the summit and produce a report that will be shared with U.S. Green Building Council members at their Greenbuild conference next month.
While most of the conference’s educational sessions will be held at its three host hotels — the Hilton, Omni William Penn and Renaissance — the entire region will be its classroom for more than 30 field sessions. There will be daylong trips to Allegheny and Homewood cemeteries, the Strip District, Sewickley, Oakmont, Old Economy and Ambridge, Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, Homestead and Braddock, Chatham College and Woodland Road houses, and Schenley, Highland and Riverview parks. In and around Pittsburgh, conference sessions will tour Downtown, the Hill District, Lawrenceville, Garfield, East Liberty, Shadyside, Homewood, Highland Park, the North Side, Mount Washington, Mt. Lebanon and Carnegie.
Another daylong session, on “Conducting a Historic Landscape Assessment,” will have participants exploring Point State Park and making recommendations for its use, treatment and interpretation.
The conference, which runs through Nov. 5, also will take on a host of challenging issues and opportunities facing communities, such as school reuse, property rights, eminent domain, keeping affordable housing in gentrified neighborhoods, the impact of wind farms, teardowns and McMansions and Katrina recovery in Mississippi and New Orleans. It also will explore the preservation of Carnegie libraries, modernist buildings, battlefields, rural landscapes, the remains of the World Trade Center and buildings on military bases facing closure. The emphasis is on sharing the best case studies and approaches from across the country.
Premiering at the conference will be filmmaker Kenneth Love’s “Saving Fallingwater,” documenting the recent restoration that saved its cantilevered terraces from falling into Bear Run. Mr. Love will speak at a screening at 1:45 p.m. Nov. 4 at the Hilton, one of several free conference events open to the public.
Author David McCullough and Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild founder and CEO Bill Strickland, both Pittsburgh natives, will give keynote addresses at the opening plenary session next Wednesday afternoon at the Benedum Center. Other conference speakers include architect Sarah Susanka, author of the “Not So Big House”; Ruth Abram, founder and president of Manhattan’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum; Charles Landry, founder of Comedia, Europe’s leading cultural planning consultancy; and WQED producer Rick Sebak.
The conference’s social events will be held at many other locations, including the Mattress Factory, Carnegie Music Hall foyer, Allegheny County Courthouse lobby, 1902 Tavern, Bossa Nova, First Lutheran Church and Regional Enterprise Tower (former Alcoa Building).
For those interested in attending the conference, on-site registration is available at the Hilton; the cost for all education sessions is $500, or $175 for students. There is an extra fee for field trips, some of which are sold out. Daily rates also are available at $175 for Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and $225 for Wednesday (which includes the keynote speeches). A conference program can be downloaded from the Trust’s Web site, www.nthp.org. Additional information is available at Landmarks’ Web site, www.phlf.org.
Preservation presentations
These events are open to the public during the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference:
* “National Summit Town Meeting on the Greening of Historic Properties,” soliciting public input on goals and guidelines for LEED certification. 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Monday, Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, Strip District.
* “The Story of Preservation in the Pittsburgh Region,” lecture by Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Byham Theater; pick up pass at the theater box office immediately before lecture, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
* The National Trust’s Exhibit Hall, including the History & Landmarks Foundation 11th Annual Old House Fair, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. next Wednesday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 2; noon to 6 p.m. Nov. 3; Grand Ballroom, Hilton. Pick up a pass on the second floor of the Hilton.
* “Saving Fallingwater,” documentary film by Kenneth Love, 1:45 to 3:30 p.m. Nov. 4; Grand Ballroom, Hilton. Pick up a pass on the second floor of the Hilton from Oct. 31 up to time of screening.
Two additional events are open to members of History & Landmarks Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation:
* National Preservation Awards 2006, 5:45 to 6:45 p.m. Nov. 2, Carnegie Music Hall. Pick up a pass at the music hall just before the event.
* Lecture by Sarah Susanka, author of the “Not So Big House,” 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Nov. 3, Omni William Penn.
— Patricia Lowry
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Present-day Market Square ‘just a big joke’
By Bonnie Pfister
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, October 22, 2006New plans are afoot for sprucing up Market Square, the more than 220-year-old acre of public space that has been home, variously, to Pittsburgh City Hall, the first Allegheny County courthouse and — up until the early 1960s — a produce market house.
Although proposals for adding temporary art and activities, including those geared toward children, are among the improvements being mulled, there are fixtures that local merchants say are impeding positive public use.La Gondola Pizzeria owner Sergio Muto calls them “the statues of Market Square.”
“When I come in the morning, they’re here,” Muto said. “When I go home at night, they’re still here.”
They are the dozen or so people — mostly middle-aged men — who locals say spend most of the day and evening perched on the low marble walls around the southeastern quadrants of green space. With St. Mary of Mercy Church’s Red Door program around the corner handing out bagged lunches six days a week, Market Square long has been a place where the homeless can pass time.
Although merchants such as Muto and Dan Konieczny, manager at Jenny Lee Bakery, which has been Downtown since 1938, expressed empathy for the destitute, they say the panhandling and other behavior by some keep would-be patrons from lingering in the area, particularly at night.
“Too many of the regulars are doing drug deals or asking people for money,” Konieczny said. “The garbage, the language. You can make all the changes and redesigns you want. You’ve got to get rid of the bums,” he said. “Market Square is just a big joke.”
“It’s kind of shady,” said Heather Bitar, who works at nearby Point Park University.
Patronizing a farmer’s market stand in the square last Thursday during a spate of warm weather, Bitar said she avoids the area at night and on weekends. Even during the daylight, she said she has seen people arrested and recently a woman “throwing a fit, emptying her purse out on the ground and screaming that someone stole her drugs.
“But what are you going to do, post ‘No Loitering’ signs? It’s a public park,” she said.
And therein lies the challenge that has bedeviled Pittsburghers for much of the four decades. How do you tell people with nowhere else to go not to go to Market Square, with its legacy as a public space?
Since the 1963 demolition of the Diamond Market house — an elevated building straddling Forbes Avenue that featured a second-floor roller rink — Market Square has gone through several reconfigurations and even more proposals, said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
In the mid-1970s, Ziegler said then-Mayor Pete Flaherty tapped into federal funds to hire students to replace the square’s asphalt roads with Belgian brick cobblestones in an effort to restore a Colonial atmosphere and encourage many of the same outdoor activities, such as sidewalk dining and art exhibits, that remain elusive today.
“Once the market-house demolition occurred, it became a place that didn’t quite know what to do with itself,” Ziegler said. “It’s gone through a number of revisions, none of which have been fully successful.”
It has played host to Steelers pep rallies, anti-war protests and rallies featuring national political figures. On April 15, 1985, a woman wearing a flesh-colored bodysuit and long, strategically draped hair rode through the square on a horse to protest taxation.
But today such public exhibitions tend to be less deliberative. A naked woman arrested in the square in June was merely fleeing after trying to shoplift a bag of peanuts from a Smithfield Street vendor, police said.
Although reported assaults were down from 11 in 2001 to three so far this year, and Pittsburgh police Cmdr. Cheryl Doubt said officers have managed to drive out the open-air drug activity of the past, more resources are needed. Since budget cuts in the early 1990s, only a single daytime beat officer monitors Market Square; he was not replaced during a recent four-month leave.
Michael Edwards, president of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, which commissioned the recent study by New York-based Project for Public Spaces, said enhanced police presence, at least initially, would be key to revitalization.
“We can’t be successful without stepped-up police enforcement of the rules,” Edwards said. “The way we’ll take back the square is through recognizing the need to manage it, and we’ll need the city’s resources.”
Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said last week that the city will consider making some financial commitment to better management of the square, but he also expects “leadership from the business and foundation community.”
Edwards said the partnership has a $100,000 grant from the Colcom Foundation and hopes to land a similar one from the Heinz Foundation to begin planning events that will draw more people to Market Square — perhaps around Light Up Night on Nov. 17, or for extended outdoor dining in the spring.
“One of the things we heard loud and clear is, we’re done designing,” Edwards said. “The community is pretty tired of that.”
A redesign contest that was discussed earlier this year has been put aside in favor of smaller tweaks to the existing square, such as experimenting with temporary art and event programming. If these steps are successful, Edwards said, a more structured management plan could be forthcoming in several years, as could a redesign.
Not everyone is happy about the smaller-scale approach, however.
Ron Gargani, owner of Buon Giorno, said he is disappointed that a new redesign now — particularly one that reroutes buses as late Mayor Bob O’Connor had suggested, or adds parking spaces — would not be forthcoming.
“It’s just a Band-Aid on the problem,” said Gargani, who opened for business six years ago and purchased his building in 2004. “Who wants to bring their children here when you have cars and buses continuously flying by? This square needs completely redone.”
Bonnie Pfister can be reached at bpfister@tribweb.com.