Category Archive: Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Shedding light on darker days
By Kim Lyons
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, July 17, 2006Sitting at JP’s Cafe on East Carson Street, author and historian Stuart Boehmig paints a picture of the South Side as it was 100 years ago.
“If you sat here in 1906, you would have heard four or five different languages and seen easily that many styles of dress,” Boehmig says, gesturing toward the SouthSide Works. “But the air was so filthy and polluted from the steel mill, you could barely see the sun.”
Photos from Boehmig’s book, “Pittsburgh’s South Side” show smokestacks from the fiery steel mill that dominated the end of East Carson Street, near the Hot Metal Bridge. Its modern-day occupant is SouthSide Works.
During the course of his research, Boehmig found no photographs of mansions or large houses on the South Side. “Virtually all the buildings were the same,” he said. “It was an even playing field, and everyone was equal.”
Anyone who made any money, Boehmig said, moved away.
The first immigrants arrived on the South Side near the turn of the 19th century. They were from Eastern Europe, followed by Irish, Scots and English, Boehmig says. The first of the neighborhood’s industries was glass, then came the J & L steel mill.
“The noise of the blast furnaces was like a rocket taking off,” Boehmig said. “It completely dominated the street. I remember it as a kid. It was unbelievable.”
Eileen Zaidel, 80, has lived on the South Side most of her life and remembers the steel mill — and the noise. Her husband, Stanley, is the son of Polish immigrants, but most of her family was born in Pittsburgh, Zaidel added.
The Zaidels live on 15th Street, right near the high-end South Side Lofts. “They’re very nice,” she says.
But the changes to the South Side haven’t all been good, Zaidel said.
“It’s so, so different now,” she said. “There’s a new generation, of course, and I think they’re spoiling it a little bit — too many bars.”
Steel was an industry that most believed would thrive well into the future, so its rapid decline in the 1970s and ’80s hit the South Side hard, Boehmig said.
He finds it very unusual that a neighborhood that lost its industry did not become a desolate wasteland, as it could have, but retained its vitality.
“It speaks to the values of the people that lived here — they literally built America,” he says. “They respected hard work and worked hard for what they got. I think that attitude still exists here.”
Traces of the South Side’s first residents remain: Sarah, Sidney, Muriel, Josephine and Jane streets are named for relatives of founder John Ormsby.
Cathy McCollom, of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, says one big reason the South Side stayed mostly blue collar was its basic housing stock.
“While the mill was open, workers needed to live nearby,” she said. “When the Flats became too crowded, the inclines made it possible for people to live up on the Slopes. But it was almost all workers.”
But as the steel industry began its downward spiral, the South Side was not considered a particularly desirable place to live, Boehmig and McCollom agreed.
People who lived there stayed after the steel mill closed, Boehmig said. But wealthy people weren’t clamoring to move in and build bigger houses on the South Side. That left the neighborhood’s architecture intact, McCollom said.
“Sometimes, poverty can be a friend of preservation,” she said.
Leaving the Victorian, Italianate, Romanesque and other structures intact gave new developers a foundation on which to build.
One particularly successful renovation, Boehmig says, was Nakama Japanese Steak House at 1611 E. Carson St. The American Renaissance-style building was constructed around 1900. According to Pittsburgh History and Landmarks, the building housed the Lorch Brothers Store, which was destroyed by fire in April 1901.
The four-story building retains much of its original appearance, and the Pittsburgh City Historic Review Commission gave the owners a preservation award in 2005.
A $3 million project is under way on the upper floors of the building, which is planned as a boutique hotel. It’s slated to open in 2007.
Fat Head’s restaurant at 1805-07 E. Carson is another modern-day business in an historic location. German immigrant and “Squire of the South Side” John Henry Sorg constructed the building in 1874. He lived in its upper stories and ran his insurance and real estate business from the storefront.
The restaurant has been in the building since 1992, and its renovation retains many of the Italianate features of the original structure, according to Pittsburgh History and Landmarks.
E. Carson Street boasts the longest contiguous stretch of Victorian buildings in the country, McCollom said. “And for all the changes, the South Side has never lost its neighborhood feel.”
South Side noteworthy
1758: Pittsburgh is founded and named for British Prime Minister William Pitt
1763: King George III gives Major John Ormsby 3,000 acres of land, which later become the South Side.
1811: Ormsby’s son-in-law, Nathaniel Bedford, lays out Birmingham, now the South Side Flats.
1872: The Flats become part of the City of Pittsburgh
1854: Benjamin Franklin Jones and James Laughlin open the American Iron Works, which later becomes J&L Steel. By the 1940s the plant covers 100 acres.
1909: The South Side Branch of the Carnegie Library opens, and 10,000 people visit during the first week.
1968: LTV buys J&L Steel, which still employs 8,000 people.
1986: The LTV plant closes.
Source: Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation
Kim Lyons can be reached at klyons@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7922.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Sign of the times in Pittsburgh
By Andrew Johnson
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 6, 2006Bayer’s neon billboard atop Duquesne Heights is the Charlie Brown of local landmarks.
It’s likeable in a hang-dog sort of way, but not really memorable or exciting. It’s just kind of up there, with little fanfare and a faded paint job that defies almost anyone to make out “P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H,” allegedly written large on the sign.“If you never went to town, you’d never know it was there,” said Frank Voch, 67, who owns the Village Dairy on Shiloh Street in Mt. Washington, on the other side of Coal Hill, a short drive from the Duquesne Heights section where the sign dwells. “I don’t ever associate that with Mt. Washington.”
But surely it must be a civic landmark, much the same way as the Hollywood sign that looks out over Los Angeles, right?
“As far as I’m aware, it’s not,” said Frank Stroker III, staff assistant of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Residents and local historians might not be lining up to take credit for the sign, but this is invariably true: The Bayer sign is the one landmark first-time Pittsburgh visitors are guaranteed to see when they attend the All-Star Game at PNC Park on Tuesday — and that’s because you can’t miss it. It’s 30 1/2 feet high and 226 1/2 feet wide. It’s as reliable as the moon in Pittsburgh at night, flashing a red neon clock, blinking a round Bayer logo and dutifully relaying nonprofits’ messages.
An estimated 250,000 people see the sign each day, according to the sign’s owner, Lamar Advertising.
“I think it’s extremely cool,” said Mark A. Ryan, spokesman for Bayer, which has leased the sign since 1993. The German company has its North American headquarters, with 1,400 employees, straddled between Robinson and North Fayette in the South Hills.
Ryan said the company looked at modernizing the sign, making it display messages during the day, but was told it would require a complete “structural change” — basically replacing the sign.
“It works,” Ryan said. So, there are no plans to change anything.
Mark Stroup, 44, of Friendship, thinks “it could use a coat of paint, or some sprucing up,” but he said there are plenty of reasons for Pittsburghers to be proud of the sign.
Stroup, who founded the Pittsburgh Signs Project, documents local signs as a kind of social record of Pittsburgh’s commercial past. Whenever a sign is so large that whole communities can see it, “it serves a positive function,” he said. The sign helps ground Pittsburgh as a distinctive, permanent place, making Pittsburghers feel at home, Stroup said.
As a bonus, “neon is perennial,” said Stroup, about a kitschy cachet the sign has acquired in old age. And if you don’t like that, the sign’s got major tread on the tires, and “people always admire things that have been there for awhile,” Stroup said.
Ken Freeman, a Lamar account executive, said records place the sign’s origin somewhere around 1928. Lamar acquired the sign in 1999.
Freeman said the sign intermittently would go for years with nobody using it. Those that have leased the billboard, memorably, through the decades: Iron City Beer in the late 1950s, and aluminum giant Alcoa for 25 years, from 1967-92.
Freeman believes it’s one of the largest neon signs in the country. Sino Land Co.’s Hong Kong sign that covers 54,175 square feet is the world’s largest, according to Guinness World Records.
The Pittsburgh sign contains a little more than one mile of neon tubing laid on galvanized steel that got its daytime quilt-like paint job in 1977, Freeman said. The sign used to be all white, but people thought it would look better painted in different colors, he said.
Freeman shrugs off the sign’s aged appearance.
You can still make out “P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H,” if you stare at it long enough, he said.
Andrew Johnson can be reached at ajohnson@tribweb.com or 412-380-5632.
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Carnegie Library repairs pegged at $2M
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, July 3, 2006A lightning bolt that struck the clock tower of the Allegheny Regional branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in April caused at least $2 million in damage to the historic North Side building.
The repair cost will be covered by insurance, library spokeswoman Suzanne Thinnes said.Library officials have been working with the city, which owns the building and leases it to Carnegie Library, to come up with specifications for repairs. Officials do not know when work will begin. The library has been closed since the lightning strike.
The lighting, which hit the building at 5 Allegheny Square about 8 p.m. April 7, exploded a pyramid-shaped portion at its top, blasting gaping holes in the roof.
A chunk of granite weighing several hundred pounds ripped into the second-floor lecture hall, imbedding itself — point first — in the floor. A piece of stone weighing about 2,000 pounds had to be pulled out of the attic, where it wiped out the building’s heating and cooling system.
Water lines also were damaged, sending a stream cascading through parts of the building. The building was closed at the time, and nobody was injured.Library patrons, who have been without a facility for nearly three months, soon will have access to the library in the Woods Run section, which has been closed for renovations.
“We don’t have an exact date yet. We should be opening (Woods Run) early in July,” Thinnes said.
Library officials have had no luck finding a temporary replacement for the North Side library, Thinnes said.
“We’ve looked at probably 20 buildings, but none of them was suitable,” she said. The space would not have to be as big as the 42,000 square feet that was lost, but it must be wired for Internet use and be accessible to people with physical disabilities.
The Allegheny Regional branch was the fourth most-visited library in the Carnegie network, Thinnes said. Last year, it circulated 76,000 items and had more than 96,000 visits.The branch has about 100,000 items in its collection.
The building also was used to store historic collections, including directories, meeting minutes, photos and newspaper clippings of Allegheny City, a portion of the North Side that existed as a city separate from Pittsburgh until 1906. A private company has been hired to make sure those rare documents are protected, Thinnes said.
Despite the extensive damage to the building, none of the library’s collection was damaged.
The Romanesque-style building, which opened in 1890, was designated a historic landmark by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in 1970. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7987.
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Drive-through proposal prompts turnout
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, June 29, 2006Opponents of a proposed Walgreens drive-through in Point Breeze blasted developers and urged City Council to reject a request to alter zoning laws that would permit three 100-year-old homes to be demolished for the project.
“We want to see viable, creative development in our neighborhood, not a condescending lesson about what is good or bad for it,” said Bill Anthes, who recently moved to Pittsburgh with his wife to pursue a doctoral degree at Carnegie Mellon University.Protesters packed a meeting Wednesday at the City-County Building, Downtown, waving fluorescent red and green placards that said, “Don’t Re-Zone Park Place.” Resident Joan Rabinowitz handed out freshly baked cookies bearing the same slogan.
Park Place residents said rezoning the site at Penn and South Braddock avenues would drive down property values and hurt the character of the neighborhood, where many homes are 100 years old. Paradise Development Group wants to demolish three houses for a two-lane drive-through developers say will alleviate traffic congestion.
City planners voted to allow the rezoning. Council will decide next week whether to approve it, said Council President Luke Ravenstahl.
Brandon Miles, a project manager in Pittsburgh for the Tampa, Fla.-based Paradise Development Group, said he has tried to accommodate Park Place residents’ concerns and has worked to meet city code requirements for the project. Paradise has signed letters of intent with the three families to sell the homes that would be razed, Miles said.
“We’ve worked to protect the welfare and integrity of the neighborhood,” Miles said.
Asked what might happen if council rejects the rezoning, Miles said he was “reserving judgment until a decision is made.”
Arnold Horovitz, a land-use attorney representing the Greater Park Place Neighborhood Group, said residents don’t necessarily oppose a Walgreens in the neighborhood, just the drive-through.
The demolition, he said, would be “out of character with the neighborhood.”
Arch Pelley, an urban planner who attended the hearing, said the issue comes down to compromise.
“The question is, ‘What is the best way to develop this site?’ ” he said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5625.
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Store plan draws ire
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, June 27, 2006Angered by a developer and the city’s planning process, people fighting a proposed drive-through for a Walgreens drug store in Point Breeze plan to attend a special City Council meeting Wednesday.
Their opposition centers on the fact that the two-lane, 24-hour drive-through for the Penn Avenue store would eliminate three Victorian homes in the neighborhood’s Park Place section.“Number one, the drive-through is not necessary. And two, we fear the loss of the residential properties will be a serious detriment to the neighborhood,” said John Mayberry, president of the Greater Park Place Neighborhood Association.
Council will hold a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. and will vote next month whether to approve zoning that would allow the store to be built. The Planning Commission has recommended the rezoning.
Opponents also are riled about planning commissioner Todd E. Reidbord’s role in the process.
Reidbord is president of Walnut Capital, a Shadyside investment company that previously developed a property that had Walgreens as its anchor tenant, raising concerns about conflict of interest, said Arnold Horovitz, an attorney representing Mayberry’s civic group. Reidbord did not disclose his previous affiliation with the drug-store chain when the Planning Commission considered the plan, and he shouted down and cut short residents when they tried to voice their opposition, said Horovitz and others who attended the meeting. Reidbord voted to recommend rezoning April 4, when the commission backed the move 7-1.
“Our real problem was his attitude at the previous meeting when he tried to stop opponents from speaking,” Horovitz said. “It was an aggressive effort to control the meeting because opponents couldn’t make their case.”
Reidbord did not return calls for comment.
City Planning Director Patrick Ford deemed the concerns regarding Reidbord valid.
“The community is correct. (Reidbord) should have recused himself and disclosed the conflict,” Ford said, referring to Reidbord’s company.
Ford said the conflict-of-interest issue would be discussed at Wednesday’s hearing and that “a number of residents” complained about Reidbord’s behavior in the meeting.
City planning staffers recommended approving the zoning change to the Planning Commission, Ford said.
Park Place resident Jim Hart said the integrity of the neighborhood would be affected if the three antique homes are torn down.
“We have to take a stand now, before it’s too late,” Hart said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5625.
Back to headlines
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Building to be converted into office condominiums
By The Tribune-Review
Sunday, June 18, 2006The owner of the six-story building at 610 Wood St., Downtown, plans to convert the building into office condominiums, said Loretta Taylor, an agent with Beynon & Co., who will market the building. At this time, no price has been set and potential buyers are being offered an opportunity to lease space in the building prior to purchase. Rittenhouse Commons of Philadelphia, the owner, will make improvements to the structure, such as the exterior facade and the elevator, and have a model unit available within four to six weeks. CVS Pharmacy, which occupies the ground level, will remain.
• The former Pitt-DesMoines site on Neville Island has been purchased by Frank Bryan Inc. for $1.2 million in what the company said is an expansion of the firm’s concrete operation currently on Pittsburgh’s South Side. Thomas J. Bryan III, identified as a Bryan shareholder on a deed filed in the office of Allegheny County recorder of deeds, would not disclose what type of expansion is planned nor what affect the new site would have on the Pittsburgh operation. The 16.2-acre site, located off Neville Road and along the Ohio River, was sold by CB&J Co., a Texas-based firm. Bryan has been at the South Side location since it purchased the former Dravo Corp. plant there in 1980.
• Matrix Solutions has relocated its headquarters from Ross to 901 Pennsylvania Ave., North Shore. The firm, which provides sales strategy management software for the media industry, currently has 30 business and technology professionals and has the ability to add 25 additional staff at the new office, a 15,000-square foot warehouse-style building, formerly a valve manufacturing facility.
• Burns & Scalo Real Estate Services Inc. acquired a 3.85-acre site in Starpointe Industrial Park for Miller Plastic Products Inc., and will build the 40,000 to 50,000-square-foot manufacturing and office space in the Hanover Township, Washington County complex. Construction will begin this summer.
• The 30-year transformation of East Carson Street, South Side, was the topic at the recent 2006 National Main Streets Conference in New Orleans and featured three local residents as speakers. The discussion, “Transforming a Local Neighborhood into a Regional Destination,” was by John A. Martine of Strada architectural firm, Cathy McCullom of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, and Tom Hardy, formerly with the South Side Local Development Corp.
• Old School Partners, LP, headed by Alfred E. Thomson IV, has purchased a warehouse at 10 Allegheny River Blvd., Penn Hills, for $900,000 from Fagen’s Inc., according to a deed filed in the office of Allegheny County recorder of deeds. A small portion of the property is located in Verona. Plans are to demolish the structure and build a state-of-the-art 65,000-square-foot Atlas Self-Storage facility. Two other Atlas self-storage facilities are located on Saltsburg Road, Penn Hills, and in the North Hills.
• Construction is under way on Pinehurst Village, a new carriage home community located within the Seven Oaks Country Club complex in Beaver County. There will be 39 units on 15 acres, developed by TDS Group, a carriage home specialist, said Darlene Hunter, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services New Homes South/West manager, who is marketing the units. Four models are available, starting at $198,900.
• Centria, based in Moon Township, recently received the Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence for saving $800,000 in energy costs at its Ambridge plant. Centria installed an oven system that features state-of-the-art heat exchangers to rapidly dry painted steel coils. The system made it possible to capture emissions of volatile organic compounds produced by drying paint and pump them into an incinerator to produce fuel.
Contributor: Sam Spatter
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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A giant forged
By David M. Brown
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, June 11, 2006A century ago, Western Pennsylvania’s sister cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny were locked in a bitter battle that would profoundly alter the region’s future.
After decades of pushing to grow beyond its boundaries between the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, Pittsburgh — the state’s second-largest city after Philadelphia — saw a chance to expand into a metropolis near the top rung of great American cities.
Allegheny — the third-largest municipality, situated north of Pittsburgh on the banks of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers — found itself in an outright struggle for survival. At stake: identity and autonomy after nearly a century of growth and development on its own.
On June 12, 1906, Pittsburgh won, swallowing Allegheny in a forced annexation.
Today, traces of resentment linger in the city’s North Side neighborhoods that once belonged to Allegheny City.
Mary Wohleber, 89, of Troy Hill, longs to carry old Allegheny City’s flag across Clemente Bridge to announce secession — should that day ever arrive.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s still Allegheny. I’m an Alleghenian,” says Wohleber, whose parents and grandparents opposed annexation.
“We could not possibly have won, because it was stacked. It could not be done today. It would be illegal,” she said. “Many people felt very, very bad about it.”
Unquestionably, the 1906 election was set up to favor annexation.
But a younger generation of North Side natives, such as Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, 45, of Brighton Heights, say the action, in the long run, strengthened the region.
Now that its population has shrunk — from 534,000 in 1910 to 322,000 in 2004 — and Pittsburgh is still combatting economic decline from the downfall of the steel industry, the city’s diverse neighborhoods need each other more than ever, Onorato said.
“The good news is that here we are in 2006, and the North Side is becoming an extension of Downtown — new development, new business buildings, (and) Federal Street is rebounding,” Onorato said.
A Greater Pittsburgh
The Allegheny City Society and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation are planning programs for next year to recognize the 100th anniversary of the merger, which officially took place in 1907.
It was one of the most controversial annexations in U.S. history. Voters flocked to polling places that June day in 1906 — many wearing pins proclaiming “Yes” or buttons defiantly answering “No” — and when it was over, Pittsburgh’s national ranking among cities jumped from 12th place to 7th. Allegheny City disappeared.
Annexation fever also was gripping other cities, including New York and Boston, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered part of a progressive movement to bring reforms to urban life. Allegheny, too, was annexing its smaller neighbors.
“In the minds of the people that supported the annexation, it wasn’t that they wanted to doom Allegheny City. They wanted to make a bigger and better city,” said John Canning, a North Side resident and retired Mt. Lebanon High School history teacher. Canning is a director of the Allegheny City Society, a group that works to preserve the history and landmarks of old Allegheny.
In 1906, debate on both sides of the river was passionate and loud.
H.J. Heinz, the food-processing tycoon whose plant was located in Allegheny City, spoke out in favor of consolidation at a rally attended by an estimated 4,000 people. “Let us stand before the world as we are, a great municipality, instead of an aggregation of villages,” Heinz said in news accounts of the time.
“The desire of Pittsburgh for its annexation was now a mania,” wrote local historian Charles W. Dahlinger, who witnessed the political battle, in his 1918 history, “Old Allegheny.”
“Newspapers which formerly had been lukewarm in their advocacy of annexation, came out strongly in its favor. The politicians in power in the state were also favorable,” Dahlinger wrote.
On the other hand, “Allegheny was proud of her existence, and her death struggles were severe. The consolidation savored strongly of force which the people resented,” he wrote.
Pittsburgh had been trying to annex Allegheny City, along with neighborhoods in the South Side and East End, for nearly 70 years.
Allegheny City’s eight square miles of space was particularly appealing to Pittsburgh, which needed room for industrial expansions and more residential neighborhoods. Allegheny also contained a sprawling park, room for other parks, and key railroad and water transportation links.
Alleghenians, though, placed importance on independence, and many feared a consolidation would result in higher taxes. In 1867, voters rejected the idea of a merger, and several later attempts also failed.
But in early 1906, the rules changed. State legislators quietly hurried a consolidation bill through, with the blessings of Gov. Samuel W. Pennypacker, a reform advocate.
Before, Allegheny City’s fate was tied to what a majority of its residents wanted. The Greater Pittsburgh Act of 1906 authorized a referendum that would count the total votes for and against annexation in both Pittsburgh and Allegheny as a whole, with an overall majority settling the issue.
Allegheny City, with half Pittsburgh’s population, essentially lost the day Pennypacker signed the bill. The referendum carried even though nearly two out of three Allegheny residents opposed it.
They continued the battle with court challenges, until the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 18, 1907, upheld the Greater Pittsburgh Act as a legal annexation.
Allegheny City receded into history.
A lingering, prosperous city
“When I was a kid,” recalls 81-year-old North Side native Don Graham, now of McCandless, “people thought of the North Side as part of Pittsburgh.”
In the 1930s, an aura of Allegheny City lingered in historic landmarks, Graham said — such as the ornate Allegheny Post Office at the corner of West Ohio and North Diamond streets; the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, a gift of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who got his start in Allegheny City; and the famous Market House, where ladies from Millionaires’ Row on Ridge Avenue once mingled with housewives from other sections of the city to buy fresh vegetables, poultry and other goods.
Although many Alleghenians crossed bridges daily to jobs in Pittsburgh, Allegheny City was not just a bedroom community or suburb, historians say. It was a distinct city with its own colorful history.
“It had a very strong sense of place,” said Edward K. Muller, a University of Pittsburgh professor and authority on urban history.
North Side resident Lisa Miles, a member of the Allegheny City Society, is writing a history of Allegheny City to be published in connection with the annexation’s centennial. The book, titled “Resurrecting Allegheny City: The Land, Structures & People of Pittsburgh’s North Side,” is sponsored by the History & Landmarks Foundation and paid for by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission and the Buhl Foundation.
“Here we have twin cities, the second- and third-largest cities in the state, sitting right next to each other,” Miles said. “One was no lesser to the other, in terms of all the impressive statistics that make for a strong city — the output for business and industry and the accumulated wealth — except Pittsburgh was bigger.”
A coffee-table style book published in 1904, “In and About Allegheny,” for J.G. McCrory & Co., a five-and-dime store chain that had an outlet in Allegheny City, described the city as “beautiful and prosperous.”
“The enviable position of the city at the junction of the great rivers and near the immense fuel supply of Pennsylvania has given a wonderful impetus to the development of manufacturing enterprises,” the writer boasted. “Allegheny is one of those municipalities where progress in culture and refinement has accompanied prosperity. This is made manifest by her fine churches, schools, public library, hospitals, and benevolent institutions.”
Incorporated as a borough with about 1,000 residents in 1828, the population climbed to 10,000 by 1840, when Allegheny was designated a city, and shot to nearly 150,000 before it was annexed by Pittsburgh.
Allegheny City was the location of two institutions of higher learning, the Allegheny Theological Seminary and Western University of Pennsylvania, the forerunner of the University of Pittsburgh. It had prominent scientists, writers and musicians, including composer Stephen Foster, whose father was an Allegheny mayor.
A paid fire department and police force kept the community safe. A diversified base of manufacturers and thriving business community produced goods and services. For recreation, people flocked to Exposition Park, home of baseball’s first World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston American League Baseball Club — now the Red Sox — in 1903. The city also had the original Phipps Conservatory, a gift of Henry Phipps, Andrew Carnegie’s partner.
Harold Haney, 83, of McCandless, grew up near Allegheny General Hospital, a landmark that remains.
“In my time, the North Side was Pittsburgh,” Haney said. “Old Allegheny faded during my dad’s time. My dad was born in 1889.”
David M. Brown can be reached at dbrown@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5614.
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Silence far from golden at Two Mellon Center
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, June 1, 2006Paulo Costa doesn’t want to move his tailor shop from its first-floor location in the Union Trust building, Downtown.
Not only has the store been his livelihood for 15 years, Costa said, the ornate building — designed in Flemish Gothic style by noted Pittsburgh architect F.J. Osterling — also reminds him of the Galleria, an architectural landmark in his native Milan, Italy.
“Look, there was a tailor shop right there,” he said Wednesday, pointing to a picture of the Milan building in a book that he has in the store.
Despite Costa’s fondness for the 11-story building — also known as Two Mellon Center — he fears he soon may join the ranks of the ever-dwindling number of tenants in the nearly empty structure at 501 Grant St.
Most tenants face an uncertain future because of what they say has been an almost total lack of communication with the building’s owner — Florida-based DeBartolo Property Group LLC.
“We have heard nothing,” said Costa, adding that he plans to remain until told to leave but doesn’t know when that will be.“We have not heard a peep, (from DeBartolo),” said Rick Conley, owner of Oliver Flowers, who already has decided to move his store by July 1 from the building to the 300 Sixth Avenue Building, Downtown.
Conley said he wanted to stay at Union Trust but gave up awaiting the building’s fate — which has been unclear since the major tenant, Mellon Financial Corp., announced last year that it was leaving the building.
Mellon’s last day as the master lease holder for the building was yesterday. Having occupied about 70 percent of the rentable space under the master lease, Mellon has moved all its people to its three other buildings Downtown — One Mellon Center, 325 William Penn Place and the Mellon Client Services Center.
DeBartolo officials could not be reached for comment in recent days. In September, a company official denied the building would be taken to foreclosure or put up for sheriff’s sale.
“There have been different stories bandied about what could happen, including that it could be going back to the lenders,” said Pat Sentner, of NAI Pittsburgh Commercial, a Downtown-based commercial real estate firm.
Tenants interviewed yesterday said they continue to hear speculation that the building’s mortgage holder — Philadelphia-based health-insurance firm Cigna Corp. — may seek to foreclose on the building or that Cigna or DeBartolo may be soliciting buyers.
A Cigna spokeswoman declined to comment yesterday.
“People said we would be contacted by the new owners, but no one from DeBartolo ever contacted us,” said Randy Sams, manager of A-New-U Avon products store, which closed yesterday. Sams, who said he’s not sure if the company-owned store would reopen elsewhere Downtown, heard reports last year that the structure would be turned into a condominium complex, but nothing ever came of that plan.
Others said they had heard the building might to turned into a multi-use complex that would include a hotel.
“I’m optimistic about the building,” said Tom Michael, president of Larrimor’s, the upscale clothier that occupies a prime corner at Grant Street and Fifth Avenue.
Unlike most tenants, who operated their businesses under sub-leases with Mellon Financial, Michael has a separate, longer-term lease for his store that doesn’t expire until 2010.
“We’re happy to be in the building, and I think this is going to be resolved,” he said.
The building’s owner is Pittsburgh DeBartolo Historic Associates, and the structure’s estimated market value is $30.7 million, according to Allegheny County’s real estate Web site.
The site also shows that about $144,000 in county real estate taxes are unpaid for 2006. County Treasurer John Weinstein said that those taxes, along with about $8,600 in penalty and interest, are delinquent.
“We have fully satisfied our 2006 real estate-tax obligations for Two Mellon Center for both the city and the Pittsburgh School District,” Mellon spokesman Ronald Gruendl said. “We will make our payment to the county, once the ultimate owner for the building is determined and is set to pay the remainder of the county obligation.”
As of yesterday, fewer than 20 retail tenants, either in the first-floor arcade area or the first-sub-basement level, remained in the building, along with a few fourth-floor office tenants.
Outside, signs on some of the store windows told of pending moves to new locations, including that of the Nettleton Shop of Pittsburgh upscale shoe store, which plans to move to One Oxford Centre. Others, such as Betsy Ann Chocolates, gave no indication of plans to close or relocate.
Still other windows reveal vacant store areas inside.
Mellon’s Gruendl said that it his understanding that office tenants will be allowed to remain until the end of June under a temporary lease extension.
As of today those arrangements will be in the hands of DeBartolo, he said.
“Our master lease for the building ends today (Wednesday), so as of Thursday, DeBartolo becomes the landlord for all of the remaining leases,” he said.
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.