Category Archive: Planned Giving
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Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr. Keynote Address at the 2006 National Preservation Conference
PHLF News
October 31, 2006“Preservation In Pittsburgh” Keynote address of Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr. at the 2006 National Preservation Conference held in Pittsburgh, PA, October 31, 2006
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Interesting items in collection shed light on intellectual appetite of architectural historian
By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When he died in December at age 73, architectural historian Walter Kidney left everything he owned to his longtime employer, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Which comprised what, exactly?
“Not much, generally,” said Jack Miller, Mr. Kidney’s executor and Landmarks’ director of gift planning. “Walter’s estate comprised Walter’s personality more than anything else. Most of his assets were in his books, about 4,000 that he gave us over his life and about 200 still in his apartment” on Mount Washington at the time of his death.
His books will go in a special alcove in Landmarks’ library, along with some of his furniture and artwork. But next Saturday Landmarks is selling at auction 40 lots from Mr. Kidney’s estate, much of which has more sentimental than market value. Many are objects that might be prized by those who knew him or simply admired his work — nine books about Pittsburgh buildings, rivers and bridges, written over more than 20 years.
“You’re not going to find necessarily extraordinary things, but the flavor of a rather interesting collector,” said another colleague, Landmarks historical collections director Al Tannler.
There are small carved boxes from Poland, Islamic brass trays, a South American machete, brass jardinieres from India, porcelain teapots from France, a metal bowl from Korea, a carved oak Ionic column capital and an antique, cast-iron Japanese teapot.
Mr. Tannler said Mr. Kidney used the carved boxes to hold “paper clips and pencils and change and things like that.”
“The machete, we can’t explain,” Mr. Miller said.
Proceeds from the sale will support additions to Landmarks’ library and archives as well as its publication of two posthumous Kidney books — “Life’s Riches: Excerpts on the Pittsburgh Region and Historic Preservation From the Writings of Walter C. Kidney” and a memoir, “Beyond the Surface: Architecture and Being Alive.” Both books will be available Oct. 30.
The Kidney items will be the first 40 lots sold at 10 a.m. next Saturday as part of a 943-lot auction of local estates at the Constantine & Mayer auction house in Cheswick.
The standout piece from the Kidney estate is a cherry Pennsylvania corner cupboard, circa 1840. At least two of its six panes of glass appear to be original. It may have been in Mr. Kidney’s family, Mr. Miller said, as some of the other pieces are thought to have been, including a 17-jewel, silver Waltham pocket watch, circa 1890, and a 14-karat gold, diamond-and-emeralds ring that might have been his mother’s engagement ring. A Chelsea brass ship’s bell clock “tied in with his passion for riverboating,” Mr. Tannler said.
Noteworthy among a small group of two-dimensional artworks is an oil-on-board painting by Pittsburgh artist Harry Scheuch (pronounced shoysh, 1906-78), presumably a Pittsburgh street scene, with some repairable flaking of the paint. There’s also a small woodcut of a bobwhite by Boyd Hanna (1907-1987), a self-taught Pittsburgh wood engraver whose work is in the collection of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation.
Other furniture includes a Victorian side chair, a small Oriental table, an oak and iron ice cream table and a folding, tabletop book stand. The auction house has not assigned pre-sale estimates on any of the items in this sale.
Constantine & Mayer, founded in 2000 by Jeff Constantine and wife Joyce Mayer, held auctions at the West View Firemen’s Banquet Hall, Oakmont Country Club and other locations before moving in January to its own space — a former A&P grocery store in the Cheswick Shopping Center.
“Since we did the University Club auction, we’ve been representing a lot of good things coming out of Pittsburgh. It seems like the floodgates opened with the University Club,” said Mr. Constantine.
The million-dollar auction of 175 lots of art and antiques in November 2004 included five items that reached record-setting prices.
A Cleveland native who moved west with his parents as a child, Mr. Constantine opened his first antiques shop at age 16 in San Diego. He’s been a picker, dealer or auctioneer ever since, moving back east in 1980. Western Pennsylvania was attractive because “there was a lot of older estates, a lot of material available and you could live inexpensively,” he said. By 1994, he was executive director at East End’s Dargate Auction Galleries.
Items of interest in Saturday’s sale from other estates include five 1930s Leica cameras, two blackware bowls from Santa Clara and San Ildefonso pueblos, and a large, bark-and-feather ornament from the prow of a canoe in New Guinea, with a carved, ghostly mask representing a protective ancestral spirit. It was collected in the 1950s by a Dutch magistrate on the Sepik River and sold in Florida for $350 in 1972.
“The strength of this sale is in the small items,” Mr. Constantine said.
Come Nov. 18 and 19, the auction house will pull out the big stuff for its annual “November to Remember” sale, including a Tiffany-style window depicting a formal garden and fountain and a sizable cache of marble and bronze sculptures, antique furniture and architectural artifacts removed 30 years ago from a North Side house demolished during the construction of I-279 and in storage ever since.
Next Saturday’s auction will not include Mr. Kidney’s diverse music collection. His cache of 78-speed records went to Carnegie Library. At Landmarks’ library, a new Walter Kidney alcove will be filled with his books, furniture and the plat maps and artworks he collected. Two Pittsburgh scenes — a 1930s Esther Phillips watercolor and an undated Louise Boyer drawing — will hang on the walls near the refectory table he used at home as a desk. And hanging nearby will be an eclectic assortment of headgear — his caps and his Panama and deerstalker “Sherlock Holmes” hats.
“We couldn’t get rid of those,” Mr. Miller said.
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Down on the Farm
While Landmarks has gained national attention using planned gifts like easements to enable historic buildings to be adapted and reborn, our greatest satisfaction comes from helping people of all demographics support our mission and their families. Consider Clare and Duncan Horner.
Nearly three decades ago, the couple purchased a run-down house in the Mexican War Streets Neighborhood from Landmarks, then gave us a facade easement on the property. They went on to restore the building and acquire four others, now in various stages of restoration.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that when Landmarks recently offered to use Richard Scaife and Laurel Foundation funding to purchase a preservation easement on the Horner’s mid-19th century, 65-acre Greene County farm, the Horners not only agreed, but are using the $25,000 purchase price to restore the farmhouse and are refinancing their mortgage to secure the easement and make a $25,000 gift to endow the costs associated with monitoring it.
The story of the creative way the gift was structured and the Horner’s three-decade relationship with Landmarks will be featured in the next issue of PHLF News. For now, however, Duncan and Clare are just happy knowing that they’ve preserved a home for daughters Anne and Jocelyn.
As for the farm, “it’s a strategically located property on the intersection of two rural roads adjoining Ryerson Station State Park,” says Landmarks President Arthur Ziegler. “The woodframe Victorian farmhouse with carpenter gingerbread posts and wood barn represent the prior use of the property as an active farm.
“The site has both lowland and hilltop, a large pond with earth dam, a wooded area above the pond contiguous to the State Park woodland and there is a wetland with a wide variety of natural growth in the lowland. It’s definitely worth preserving.”
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Architectural historian was true Pittsburgher
By Jerry Vondas
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, December 3, 2005While Walter C. Kidney was renowned as one of the foremost architectural historians in the country, in his adoptive city of Pittsburgh he was known for his philanthropy and humility.
“Walter knew the breadth and range of the history of architecture worldwide,” said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “Walter also knew Pittsburgh’s buildings in great detail and could place their significance against that sweeping backdrop.”
Mr. Kidney, of Mt. Washington, an architectural historian with the foundation, died Thursday, Dec. 1, 2005, at UPMC Presbyterian hospital, Oakland. He was 73.
He had the ability to analyze and summarize buildings in an erudite, yet witty way, Ziegler said.
Jack Miller, director of gift planning for the landmarks foundation, said Mr. Kidney’s expertise touched a broad range of people.
“Walter received a call from a woman who wanted to know what kind of windows she should place in a house that Walter figured had no historical significance.”
Miller recalled how Mr. Kidney, who lived on Mt. Washington, would ride the incline every morning to Station Square to the foundation offices.
“There was nothing pretentious about the man who wrote 20 books that are considered the bibles of historical architecture,” Miller said. “(Probably) very few people on the incline realized who he was.”
The summers he spent at his grandmother’s rooming house in Oakland helped to spark his interest in architecture. Mr. Kidney frequently said that the eclectic architecture of the neighborhood — including Greek Revival (Mellon Institute and the Masonic Temple) and the neo-Gothic (the Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh) — was inspiring.
Born in Johnstown, Cambria County, and raised in Philadelphia, Mr. Kidney was an only child. His father taught both English and Latin.
After graduating with a degree in philosophy from Haverford College in Delaware County, Mr. Kidney worked at Random House in New York City, where he wrote definitions for the Random House Dictionary.
In the early 1950s, James D. Van Trump — who, along with Ziegler, established the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation — observed Mr. Kidney’s diligent research at the Carnegie Library in Oakland.
“Jamie said that there seemed to be a very interesting person doing research in the art, music and Pennsylvania rooms of the Carnegie,” Ziegler recalled. A subsequent meeting with Mr. Kidney began a long-lasting personal and professional relationship.
“Through the years, Jamie was so impressed with Walter’s expertise that Walter was the only one that Jamie would entrust his manuscripts for editing,” Ziegler said.
The first of Mr. Kidney’s many books was “The Architecture of Choice: Eclecticism in America 1880-1930,” published in 1974.
One of his recent publications, “Hornbostel in Pittsburgh,” documents the more than 70 projects that Henry Hornbostel designed in the Pittsburgh area.
Although Mr. Kidney had been freelancing for the landmarks foundation for a number of years, he decided in 1980 that it was time to join the staff.
In the ensuing years, Mr. Kidney also worked with Pittsburgher Magazine, writing feature articles — primarily on local architecture and geographical city profiles — and editing copy. One of his more provocative articles in Pittsburgher was his “Problems and Possibilities on the South Side.”
“Landmarks became Walter’s family,” Miller said. “He’s donated his annuity to Landmarks. He also made funds available to Haverford College, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Opera and the Architectural Archives of Hunt Library at Carnegie Mellon University.”
Mr. Kidney donated his large collection of classical and operatic records to the music department at Carnegie Library, Miller said.
Among Mr. Kidney’s numerous historical and architectural memberships, he was a member of the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen, a group founded in 1939 to perpetuate the memory of river workers and the preservation of river history.
There will be no visitation. A tentative date of Jan. 22 has been chosen for a memorial service.
Jerry Vondas can be reached at jvondas@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7823.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Not Even A Paycheck
Barbara Drew Hoffstot cofounded Landmarks in 1964. Until her death 30 years later, her pioneering preservation work in Pittsburgh laid the foundation for the Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and brought about the creation of the National Register of Historic Places.
She conceived the ideas of a Historic Plaques Program and a county-wide historic property inventory. She served as a member of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission until 1967 and served three terms as a trustee for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
She even wrote Landmark Architecture of Palm Beach, a trailblazing book now in its third edition.
“She sought anonymity, not fame,” says Landmarks President Arthur Ziegler. “She respected sound thinking, not impulse.
Despite her passing, she remains a part of us.” Barbara Drew Hoffstot never received a Landmarks paycheck, yet her work greatly influenced two prominent cities and led to national preservation policies.
Today, husband Henry and son Phipps carry on her work as Landmarks board members and CFO respectively. What accomplishments! What a Legacy!
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More than a Paycheck
by Jack Miller
Director of Gift PlanningThe first rule of being a fundraiser is to stay behind the scenes. The second rule is to
ignore the first rule when your boss “requests” it.Anyone who knows Landmarks’ president Arthur Ziegler knows that he is mission driven, yet a reserved person. So when I recently sought permission to publicize his estate commitment to
Landmarks, he declined.I argued that it is important for people to know that he not only committed his life to our mission, but created two Named Funds and made Landmarks a beneficiary in his estate plan to ensure that the mission continues.
Arthur responded by telling me that he believes that the commitment of the staff is a more significant endorsement of our mission. He directed me to tell the story from that perspective, and to “start with your own commitment.”
Not being people of means, my wife and I initially could only make Landmarks a beneficiary of a term life insurance policy. Last year, we were able to convey land we obtained through an estate liquidation to create a Named Fund in memory of our parents. It was a way to recognize the most important people in our lives and to thank Landmarks for its role in saving the center of my faith community, St. Boniface Church in the East Street Valley on the North Side.
Architectural Historian Walter Kidney’s relationship with the organization dates back to 1970 when he did freelance work, but he didn’t join the staff until 1987.
“I’ve seen employees come and go,” says Walter, “but it does seem to me that Landmarks and certain people find each other and that the relationship in such cases will last.
“Not only does the relationship last, but it becomes more organic and better integrated than it may in larger and more departmentalized organizations where money and status are the only rewards.
“Thus, it eventually seemed to make sense for me to give my architectural and design history books to help create a betterrounded in-house research facility and give researchers from outside more reason to use our library.” Books weren’t Walter’s only gift.
On his 71st birthday, he made Landmarks the beneficiary of his retirement plan, and last year he established Landmarks’ first flexible deferred gift annuity that will provide him with lifetime income when he retires, and, as he likes to put it, “a gift to Landmarks when I expire.”
Executive Director Louise Sturgess made Landmarks a contingent beneficiary in her will. “A person’s will, in effect, is a document to show what they value most in life,” says Louise. “Next to my family, I value the place where I work and the city that has been home to my family for generations.
“By including Landmarks in my will, I am able to express the enthusiasm I have for my job and my passion for this city, since Landmarks’ mission is so closely connected with the health and enduring character of the city.
“It’s encouraging to think that my gift to Landmarks will help fund programs in the future that teach people to appreciate the architectural heritage of this region and value the positive role that historic preservation can play in the life of a city.
“Who knows, perhaps my greatgreat grandchildren someday will walk across the Smithfield Street Bridge on a ‘Downtown Dragons’ tour, or touch the massive stones of the Courthouse wall, or look up at the stained glass skylight of the Union Trust Building.”
CFO H. Phipps Hoffstot II understands that philosophy. His late mother, Barbara, was a founder of Landmarks and his father, Henry, still serves on the Board. Phipps is not only giving back through his service to Landmarks, but he annually makes a Heritage-Society level gift.
“We’re lucky to have a staff that not only believes in our mission,” says Arthur, “but has made provisions to continue it.”
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Slowing urban sprawl
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW REAL ESTATE WRITER
Sunday, December 12, 2004Jack Miller remembers well the day in 2000 when he met Lucille Tooke on her family farm in Pine.
Tooke stopped the tractor she was riding and in the subsequent conversation she eventually told Miller, “I think God sent you to me.”“Talk about pressure,” said Miller, director of gift planning for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
His mission — to find some way the nonprofit preservationist organization could help Tooke preserve her farm, and save it from ending up as part of either another new housing development or a commercial project in the fast-growing suburban North Hills.
Starting with Tooke’s farm, the Landmarks Foundation has used novel financing strategies as part of its Historic Farm Preservation Program to save five historic farms in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, encompassing some 1,300 acres of property and 10 different farm structures.
It did so with the help of a $500,000 grant from Richard King Mellon Foundation, which the foundation matched with an additional $600,000.
Using bargain sales and sometimes complicated gift strategies, the Landmarks Foundation has been able to leverage that $1.1 million to protect structures and land with an estimated value of about $6 million, said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., head of the organization since its inception 40 years ago.
“Farms are disappearing at a very rapid clip in Allegheny County and Southwestern Pennsylvania and urban sprawl is gaining even though we have a declining population,” Ziegler said. “Our program has been important both in terms of slowing sprawl and preserving farms and farm buildings and that way of life.”
“Some of these historic farms that can show how people lived 100 or 200 years ago need to be preserved,” Miller said.
That doesn’t mean economic development has be stopped in the process.
“They can be developed around rather than developed on,” Miller said.
One problem is that the program now is out of funds. And the foundation has identified at least 10 more farms it says are “architecturally significant.”
Nine are in Allegheny County and one is in Washington County. In addition, it has had inquiries about other farms in Butler, Fayette and Westmoreland counties.
If the organization had another $1 million, it could save another 2,000 acres and five of those properties, Miller believes.
Landmarks has approached other foundations in hopes of raising more funds, Ziegler said. In addition, Miller said the foundation is hoping to work with others dedicated to preserving farm properties, including the Allegheny County Agricultural Land Preservation Program, in an effort to attract more private support.
The farm preservation program got its start when Tooke donated her 64-acre Hidden Valley Farm on Old State Road. It features a farmhouse built in 1835 that was awarded an historic landmark plaque in 1979.
“She (Tooke) wanted to see if there was a way she should get the funds she needed to retire without having to prostitute the farm,” Miller said.
At his suggestion, Tooke agreed to establish what is known as a charitable remainder unitrust, or CRUT.
With this form of gift, a donor transfers cash, securities or other properties to the trust, and in the process avoids capital gains tax, receives a federal income tax deduction, and a percentage of the trust’s value in income annually over a set period.
Because federal tax laws required the trustee to entertain bids to assure the highest price for the assets, Tooke could not just give the farm to the foundation outright. But she was legally permitted to specify that any organization willing to preserve the property would have the right to match the highest offer.
Thus, Landmarks ended up as the highest bidder, paying about $580,000 to purchase the property. The foundation then placed preservation easement on the farmhouse and the land to prevent any nonagricultural development.
Tooke was able to retire in Chambersburg, Franklin County, with a revenue stream that will last a total of 20 years. Her three daughters will receive the payouts if she dies before that period expires.
Landmarks Foundation’s objective was not to own the property, only to preserve it, Miller said. “So we had to find someone to buy it who would honor the terms of the easement.”
That turned out to be William Versaw, of Fox Chapel, who is also interested in preservation.
“I have five children and wanted to find a place we could use and enjoy close to home,” said Versaw, who has restored the historic farmhouse and enjoys gathering apples on the property for apple pies.
“It also had an appeal to it because it can never be developed, so it can be passed on to future generations,” he said. “I’m not opposed to development, but if we can save some green space in this area, it makes for a good balance.”
Versaw purchased the property for about $400,000, and he gave the foundation an additional $10,000 to endow the preservation easement. The funds cover Landmarks’ expense in monitoring the property annually.
“We lost about $200,000 on the deal, but we should get that back from the funds that remain in the trust at the end of the 20-year period,” Miller said. That is because Tooke made the foundation the irrevocable beneficiary of her trust.
The foundation found other methods to preserve other farm properties.
One example is the O-Shea-Hausen farm in Donegal, Westmoreland County, a property owned by two priests, Jeremiah O’Shea and C. William Hausen, which traces its roots back to the early 1800s.
Landmarks helped the owners pay off a mortgage (about $50,000) on the 62-acre site, generate some additional income for their retirement through a charitable gift annuity and provide $10,000 to endow the monitoring costs for a preservation easement.
The foundation will get back the gift portion of the annuity when the donors die.
O’Shea said he and Hausen purchased the Geary farm in 1992. It contained a barn that dated back to the 1890s, which was built by the Geary family, and a log cabin, which dates to the mid-1800s.
O’Shea said he contacted Landmarks after getting information about its program from American Farmland Trust.
In another case, Landmarks assumed a mortgage on a farmhouse owned by James and Dorothy Wycoff, descendants of the original owners of the Van Kirk Farm in Elizabeth in order to obtain a preservation easement. Horses used in the Lewis & Clark Expedition once were boarded on the 71-acre farm property.
It also saved two other properties in Elizabeth, one a 214-acre farm off Park Avenue owned by the estate of Helen R. Wycoff by negotiating a preservation easement.
The other property was an adjoining 54-acre parcel off Rothey Drive. The organization purchased the property at fair market value and conveyed it to owner of the Wycoff farm, who accepted the land as payment for an easement.
“Every situation is different,” said Miller. “It depends on the owner’s life situation, their family situation. But I think it’s important for people’s personal advisers to help them recognize that sometimes they can help them achieve their goals by showing them how they can give away their assets rather than keeping them.”
In the case of preserving an historic farm property, “You don’t have to give it away and lose it; you can give it away and keep it,” he said.
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
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Merging Preservation and Planned Giving
Preservation Easement Program
Land Trust Alliance, Exchange Article – Volume 23, No. 1, Winter 2004The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (“Landmarks”) in Pennsylvania merged preservation and planned giving in one innovative transaction that began in 2001 with the creation of a charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) that named Landmarks as its sole, irrevocable beneficiary.
Lucille Tooke, a longtime Landmarks member, owned the historic property that was given to the CRUT. Hidden Valley Farm in Pine Township, Pennsylvania, was built in 1835 by Lewis Ross and his wife, Temperance. Now most of the land surrounding the farm has been developed. Tooke told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the thought of her farm one day becoming part of the suburbs “made me shudder.”
Tooke and her husband, Jack, had bought the 64 acre farm in 1954. After her three daughters moved away and her husband died, it became increasingly difficult for Tooke to care for the farm, so she approached Landmarks to see if they knew of anyone interested in buying and preserving the property. Landmarks helped Tooke work out a plan wherein she gave the farm to a CRUT, received a charitable deduction for a portion of the property’s value, and now receives a percentage of the trust’s value each year until 2021.
When the trust put the farm up for sale, Landmarks was able to match the highest bid and buy the farm, creating the cash needed to generate Tooke’s income payments. Landmarks added deed restrictions that require future owners to get prior approval from the organization before altering the house’s exterior. They also stipulated that the land cannot be subdivided or used for non-agricultural commercial purposes. They then sold it with the security of knowing it will be protected in perpetuity.
The arrangement provided Tooke with needed retirement income and when her payments end in 2021, Landmarks receives the trust balance as a gift to its endowment program.
Jack Miller, director of planned giving at Landmarks, said that during the process, Landmarks had to figure out how to keep all of its roles straight, being both beneficiary and buyer. “In the end we accomplished what both we and Mrs. Tooke wanted: to preserve this beautiful farm in the midst of rapid development.”
