Category Archive: Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Art meets architecture in Bellevue
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, November 22, 2007Graphic artist Jesse Hambley found what he was looking for less than five miles from Pittsburgh.
Looking to create a clubhouse where artists and like-minded creative people could gather and work, he found a three-story former department store in Bellevue that fit the bill. The space was ideal: large rooms easily converted to darkrooms and photo studios. High ceilings and plenty of light. An extra bonus was that the property owner was eager to work with Hambley and his vision, which he called Creative TreeHouse.
“I started it because I saw a need for it. The hope was to establish a place for people to get together and collaborate. Especially for people who couldn’t afford to have their own studio,” said Hambley, 24.
Hambley’s vision took off. Today, Creative TreeHouse has 30 members — graphic artists like Hambley, students and photographers — who pay a $25-a-month membership fee. Many members are from the city, and their membership gives them access to facilities to paint, develop photos and enjoy coffee. Hambley hosts one event per month, such as art openings and concerts, and has used viral advertising on Craigslist and MySpace to great advantage.
“It’s just going to keep growing,” Hambley said. “You don’t have to deal with a lot of the issues like you do in the city, like parking. It’s not as busy. It costs me 25 cents to park for 1 1/2 hours.”
Hambley isn’t alone. City dwellers and those from out of state are increasingly seeking and finding old factories, warehouses and row houses to fix up and turn into artist work places. The value comes in cheap rents and preserving the fading architectural grandeur of a region still struggling to define itself after the steel mills closed in the early 1980s, said Braddock Mayor John Fetterman.“There is definitely a market and interest for live-and-work spaces where rents and prices are a consideration. That’s what’s driving the flight to these neighborhoods outside Pittsburgh. The post-industrial ascetic is desirable to people,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman has emerged as a regional champion of preserving former factories and their conversion to artist spaces. Fetterman, armed with a master’s degree from Harvard, bought a former warehouse in 2003 for $2,000 and turned it into his home. The upper floors contain his living spaces while he turned the lower portions into a gallery.
Lured by cheap rents and word of mouth, artists have begun moving to Braddock from Brooklyn, N.Y., Portland, Ore., and other American cities, Fetterman said. There are currently about 40 artist work spaces in his town.
Fetterman says the area’s preoccupation with destroying old buildings could hurt the region long-term. On the upside, he says buildings can be bought and fixed up for a fraction of the prices of other major cities. Preserving the area’s architectural heritage is crucial and helps drive the influx of artists looking for the next new thing.
“The trade-off is you get your own space and get to do your own thing and you can easily get to and from Pittsburgh. Why should the county pay good money to destroy these buildings when you can pay a small sum and create your own live-and-work space? It is the harbinger of all grassroot economic development,” Fetterman says.
Artists are trying to produce the same momentum in Homestead, but believe the Waterfront stores and restaurants detract from their desire to work anonymously, Fetterman said.
Those seeking to create artistic havens need to do their homework. Jane Misutka and her husband purchased an old Franciscan friary on three acres in Ben Avon in 2004 with the idea to attract musicians and artists. Initially, a few musicians showed up, and later, the old friary housed four Hurricane Katrina refugee families. Ultimately, the plan didn’t work out.
“We bought the house as a weekend retreat. I wanted it to be used and not have it torn down,” Misutka said, who has since put the structure on the market.
Collaboration is the key to making the live/work spaces thrive, Hambley said.
“This is very much a group effort. The idea is to keep costs low,” he said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or 412-380-5625.
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Charleroi historic
By Chris Buckley
VALLEY INDEPENDENT
Tuesday, November 20, 2007Charleroi’s historical heritage has been confirmed with its inclusion on the National Register by the National Park Service.
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission approved Charleroi’s application to add much of the Magic City to the National Register of Historic Places at a meeting Sept. 11. The federal agency notified the commission Nov. 9 that it has accepted the nomination.
Bill Callahan, state representative from the commission office in Pittsburgh, previously reviewed the district, and encouraged Charleroi’s application as a historic district.
Terry Necciai, who served as Main Street program manager in Charleroi in the late 1980s, now is an architect working for the historic preservation firm John Milner Associates in its Alexandria, Va., office.
He has submitted 58 nominations for National Register of Historic Places, but said Charleroi’s was the most difficult and time-consuming process.
Inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places is approved for one or more of the following:
* A site associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history.
* A site associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.
* A site that embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction, or that represents the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction.
* A site that yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.
Necciai said most historic properties are a combination of more than one of these criteria.
In the 1980s, the state decided it had enough CDBG grants from such Valley communities as Charleroi, Donora and Monongahela for historic building facade improvements that officials came out and developed maps of the historic regions.
In 1982, Necciai filed with the National Register of Historic Places for Monongahela because he “did not like that so many buildings were being torn down.”
The year before Necciai became Charleroi’s Main Street manager in 1987, the state reviewed Charleroi’s downtown area.
State officials believed at the time that Charleroi was already protected under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 because of the architectural character and age of the downtown area.
From that time forward, Charleroi received more consideration for improvement project grants in the downtown area.
When state officials reviewed Charleroi in 1986, it recognized the eligibility for inclusion on National Register of Historic Places a section stretching from the 900 block to the 1300 block of Lincoln Avenue and Railroad Street as well as from First to 13th streets.
When state officials toured Charleroi in 2004, however, they said the boundary should be extended to include 120 blocks of Charleroi, about 80 percent of the Magic City.
Necciai returned to the Valley every weekend for four years developing an inventory for 1,800 buildings in the proposed district. The argument for Charleroi’s inclusion totaled 40 pages. The inventory is about 100 pages.
“In 1986, the state said it was historic, but this expanded the scope of the historic district,” Necciai said. “It proves what was true all along, that it is an historic district.”
The state reviewed Charleroi’s initial nomination, which was revised over several months prior to the commission meeting in September.
In September, the PHMC staff presented Charleroi’s case to the commission board
Once an application is approved at the state level and forwarded to the keeper of the national register – an office of the National Park Service – the federal agency has 90 days to act.
Necciai said the National Register of Historic Places designation will be a great marketing tool for Charleroi.
For example, he pointed to Alexandria, Va., where he lives.
During the first half of the 1960s, many buildings in a two- to three-block section of the city were razed.
But when the National Historic Preservation Act was passed in 1966, Alexandria was among the first cities to file nominations.
Four decades later, Alexandria has become the 11th densest community in the country with a steady stream of tourists, Necciai said.
Necciai pointed to the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Once a torpedo factory during World War II, it is now home to more than 165 artists in every form of media from painting, ceramics, photography and jewelry to stained glass, fiber, printmaking, and sculpture.
It also is home to various studios and workshops.
Federal government offices and political action committees also call Alexandria home, adding greatly to its growth, Necciai noted.
“But a part of the equation is that the community decided to not only value what it had, but do something about it,” Necciai said.
Chris Buckley can be reached at cbuckley@tribweb.com or 724-684-2642.
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$2.5M Aeberli House project to begin
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, November 15, 2007Allegheny General Hospital this month plans to begin a $2.5 million renovation of the Aeberli House, a landmark North Side structure adjacent to the hospital on North Avenue that has been vacant for more than two decades.
Possible new uses for the two-story, 12,000-square-foot structure include additional space for Allegheny General administrative offices as well as possible retail use — for example, a coffee shop, the hospital said Wednesday.
“Renovation of the Aeberli building is an important investment in the future of this community and another tangible expression of AGH’s deep and long-standing commitment to the North Side’s vitality and progress,” said Connie Cibrone, AGH president and chief executive officer.
“We are hopeful that this project will be a major catalyst for the long-discussed revitalization of the North Avenue corridor, encouraging other innovative development plans that will capitalize on its potential as a gateway to the many wonderful assets that the greater North Side affords our region,” Cibrone said.
Located at the corner of North Avenue and Sandusky Street, the nearly 150-year-old building was purchased in 1909 by William Aeberli and served as a funeral home for most of the 20th century. It has been designated as a historic structure by the city of Pittsburgh.
The building sits in close proximity to “Federal North,” another North Side area along Federal Street the city has long targeted for revitalization. Allegheny General already has taken a stake in revitalizing that area.
In 2003, the hospital became the primary tenant in a new three-story medical office building on Federal Street that houses a number of its key clinical services, including its pathology and laboratory medicine department and orthopaedic, gastroenterology and urology programs.
A renovated Aeberli building could further address the need to free up additional space at its main campus to support the hospital’s growing clinical services, Cibrone said.
“This is good timing for this announcement,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
The South Side-based preservationist organization worked with the hospital and a number of North Side community groups to develop plans to restore the building’s facade to its original design.
The foundation also is cooperating with the city and community groups on plans to restore the old Garden Theater, an X-rated movie house in the Federal North area. It was cleared for restoration by a recent court ruling and subsequent sales agreement that settled a decade-long legal battle with the owner.
“We are extremely pleased that the restoration of the Aeberli building is gong to take place and that Allegheny General has shown its commitment to preserve an important North Side asset,” said Joe Lawrence, president of the North Side Leadership Conference.
The first phase project is scheduled to be completed in six to eight months. The contractor is Bridges Construction, with design by architect Ellis Schmidlapp of Landmarks Design Associates.
Part of the original northern section of Allegheny City, the Aeberli building was constructed in the Second Empire Style. Its most prominent feature is a wrap-around porch that extends across the North Avenue facade and continues up Sandusky Street.
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
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Garden Theatre on North Side heads toward landmark status
By The Tribune-Review
Thursday, November 8, 2007The Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to designate the Garden Theatre in the North Side a historic landmark.
The designation now must go before the city planning commission for a vote. If approved, City Council will conduct a public hearing and then vote on whether the designation should receive final approval.
A historic designation would require developers to preserve the 92-year-old building’s beaux arts terra cotta exterior. Historic status does not regulate what can be done to the interior.
The theater showed X-rated films from the 1970s until the city bought and closed it earlier this year. The city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority is reviewing proposals from several developers on how to utilize the theater.
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Grant will allow IUP to complete preservation project
By Bill Zlatos
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, November 7, 2007Beverly Chiarulli and a team of students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania are preserving a slice of state history dug up during highway projects.
Chiarulli, director of IUP’s archaeological services, will get as much as $850,000 during the next five years from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. A big part of the grant will pay for preparing and cataloging more than 250,000 artifacts for the State Museum in Harrisburg.
“These (highway) projects represent the history of everyone in Pennsylvania,” Chiarulli said. “They represent people that aren’t the famous people in history books and aren’t the people who left written records.”
The most common artifacts from the “Legacy Collection” project are pieces of glass and ceramics that tell scientists how people lived as far back as the late 17th century.
“The more English ceramics you have, the wealthier you were,” Chiarulli said.
The collection includes many bottles, especially medicine bottles from the 18th and 19th centuries. The bottles give clues to the health, diet and wealth of early Pennsylvanians.Some of the bottles, for example, contained worm medicine.
“People were eating meat that wasn’t always cured that well,” Chiarulli explained.
Other artifacts include pottery, arrowheads and other points from American Indians who lived as long as 10,000 years ago.
IUP junior Carrie Glessner, 21, of Somerset is one of 12 students working on the project this semester. She admires pottery wrapped with cords or decorated with designs drawn by sticks.
“It’s interesting what they were able to do with primitive technology,” she said.
PennDOT began doing archaeological investigations on federally funded road projects in the 1970s. By 2003, when IUP became involved in the project, the state had amassed more than 500,000 items.
The university is about half done with the project. The new agreement will pay for the two or three years of work to finish the job.
Ira Beckerman, group leader of cultural resources for PennDOT, said IUP was chosen because it’s a state university with an archaeology program that has labs, faculty, a supervisor and a stream of students.
“There are very few state institutions that can do this, and this is one of them,” he said.
Susan Lukowski, 22, an IUP senior from Avis in Clinton County, has worked three years on the project. She wants to become an archaeologist specializing in animal bones.
“Bones to me are a puzzle,” she said. “You have the pieces, and you can figure out what people were eating. It’s a way to connect to the past.”
Bill Zlatos can be reached at bzlatos@tribweb.com or 412-320-7828.
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Wilkinsburg restoration crosses threshold
By Christina Praskovich
POINT PARK NEWS SERVICE
Wednesday, November 7, 2007After two years of searching, Jack Schmitt and his wife were about to give up looking for a house to buy when they stumbled upon a turn-of-the-century, stick-style house being restored by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
It’s one of several homes the group wants to bring back to life in Wilkinsburg.“It had a ton of character,” said Schmitt, 38. “We liked it as soon as we walked in. We held out for two years, and it was to our benefit.”
The house is one of several buildings being restored in Wilkinsburg. During the past few years, Wilkinsburg has taken steps to restore its historic homes and once-booming business district, something under way in other communities around Pittsburgh, as well.
“Every community is unique, and part of what creates that uniqueness is how the community looks,” said Bill Callahan, the Western Pennsylvania community preservation coordinator for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. “Historic preservation helps to maintain a sense of place.”
Although renovating historic homes and buildings, instead of tearing them down, is not new, Callahan said preservation has accelerated within the past 5 to 10 years. More people are seeing the social and environmental value of “recycling” older buildings and are appreciating the architecture and significance of these structures, he said.
In Wilkinsburg, Mayor John Thompson said, “We want to rebuild the community. We want to attract people to come and stay in the community. That’s the purpose of doing the revitalization, as well as building a revenue base. There’s room for us to come back.”
Wilkinsburg once had more than 31,000 residents and a thriving business district. But since the 1960s, many buildings have become vacant, homes have been neglected and crime has increased.
Although a 2004 inventory found that 38 percent of Wilkinsburg’s buildings were vacant, nearly half were historically significant and two-thirds of those historic buildings could be restored.
Tom Keffer, property and construction manager at the History & Landmarks Foundation, said the foundation found particularly strong potential for restoration in the Hamnett Place district, at Jeanette and Holland avenues.
After receiving two grants of $500,000 each from the Allegheny County Department of Economic Development and the Sarah Scaife Foundation, History & Landmarks hired Eagle Construction & Remediation to restore the houses.
At 524 Jeanette St. — a three-story, late-Victorian/Queen Anne house with a classic turret, arched windows and mansard roof — the company restored architectural features while rebuilding and updating the interior.
The Schmitts’ house at 811 Holland Ave. includes original wooden pocket doors, clapboard siding and intricate woodwork on the front porch.
“You couldn’t replicate these houses today,” said Dwight Quarles Sr., president of Eagle Construction. “They’re very excellent structures. There’s a warm personality to them, and a lot of solid woodwork.”
Keffer, 52, of Brighton Heights said he hopes the work done on the homes, priced between $75,000 and $95,000, will encourage others to maintain properties.
“It opens the community’s eye to what can be done,” Keffer said.
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‘Historic’ tag likely for North Side Garden Theatre
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, November 7, 2007The city’s Historic Review Commission is likely to designate the Garden Theatre on the North Side as a historic landmark today.
If historic designation is granted, developers would be required to preserve the 92-year-old building’s beaux arts terra cotta exterior by requiring that any alterations be approved by the commission.
The West North Avenue building features a vertical neon sign built in the 1930s and a canopied marquee installed in 1958, after the original marquee fell to the street from a heavy snowstorm. Much of the original interior ornamentation remains.
The once grand movie house showed X-rated films from the 1970s until the city bought and closed it earlier this year. It has since deteriorated because of a lack of maintenance, said David McMunn, president of the Mexican War Streets Society, which is seeking the historic designation.
“There’s some water damage to the plaster, and a lot of the ornate features on the interior have been painted over,” McMunn said. “But for the most part, the building is intact and most definitely can be restored.”
The interior has its original chandeliers, ornate wall sconces and wrought-iron archways leading to the main seating area.
A historic designation would not prevent a developer from removing or altering the theater’s interior features.
McMunn said North Side neighborhood groups support the historic designation and want the theater used for entertainment and the arts.
In September, the seven-member Historic Review Commission agreed that the building meets the requirements to be considered for historic designation.
After a decade-long battle to acquire the building through eminent domain, the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority bought it this year for $1.1 million.
McMunn said he is “fairly confident” the commission will grant the historic designation.
“There’s been nothing to indicate otherwise,” he said.
Paul Tellers, vice chairman of the Historic Review Commission, said Tuesday that he is “not aware of any commission members being opposed to the designation.”
If the commission grants historic designation, it would have to be approved by the city planning commission and City Council.
The URA is reviewing development proposals for the theater as part of its Federal North redevelopment project.
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com or 412-320-7987.
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ARC building avoids wrecking ball
By Craig Smith
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 4, 2007Two community groups have saved a North Side building from the wrecking ball by asking a city commission to decide if the structure qualifies as historically significant.
The Historic Review Commission of Pittsburgh will hold a hearing Wednesday on whether the former Alcohol Recovery Center House at 800 East Ohio St. should be protected as a historical structure.
“We’re interested in saving the building,” said Mike Coleman, president of the Allegheny City Society, which made the request along with the East Allegheny Community Council.
The request puts plans to raze the structure on hold — at least temporarily. Members of the community groups acknowledge this is a last-ditch effort.
“Right now, we’re reacting. We had to. Once the (demolition) permit is issued, it’s gone,” Coleman said.
Developer Lou Lamana’s company, Bentley Commercial Inc., bought the building for $266,000 earlier this month at a sheriff’s sale. The company planned to demolish it to make way for a $5 million retail development.
Lamana has constructed stores at Pittsburgh Mills mall in Frazer and Center Pointe and Stone Quarry Commons, in Center in Beaver County. He did not return calls seeking comment. He had hoped to begin demolition within four to six months.
To be designated historically significant by the commission, the building must meet at least one of 10 criteria, such as being the site of a historic event or connected with someone who had an impact on the city, state or U.S. history, said Katherine Molnar, historic preservation planner for the city.
The ARC building was built in 1901 to house the Workingman’s Savings Bank & Trust Co., according to the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. Mellon Bank operated a branch office there until selling the building to the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, according to documents at Carnegie Library.
The diocese sold the brick building to Charles Cain for $1 in 1987. Cain operated the alcohol recovery program that at one point housed more than 100 inmates on work release. In its heyday, the ARC House held about 150 prisoners assigned there by county judges.
The application for the historical designation — filed nine days after the sheriff’s sale — states that a 1920 addition to the building was worked on by an engineer and architect from the office of D.H. Burnham. An architect and urban planner, Burnham designed the Frick and Oliver buildings in Pittsburgh, the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C.
The process to determine if the building is historically significant could take up to eight months. If the historic commission approves the structure as historically significant, approval also would be needed from the city Planning Commission and City Council, Molnar said.
During that time, no demolition work can occur, she said.
Craig Smith can be reached at csmith@tribweb.com or 412-380-5646.