Category Archive: Preservation News
-
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Awards Grants to Historic Religious Properties
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (Landmarks) announced its 2002 Historic Religious Properties Grants and Technical Assistance Awards at their annual Awards Ceremony and Seminar, October 7 at Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Oakland.
The program, now in its seventh year, assists architecturally significant religious properties that also provide social services to their neighborhoods, have a viable congregation, and are able to match the grant. Grants are to be used for architectural restoration projects on the structure.
Thirty-two applications for grants and technical assistance from historic religious institutions located throughout Allegheny County were reviewed and 24 received either grants or technical assistance. Applicable grants awarded this year included repairing and restoring stained glass, roof repair, and restoration of a church dome. Technical
Assistance is directed to assisting congregations in prioritizing restoration projects and establishing preventative maintenance programs.
The following churches were awarded grants:
-Bellefield Presbyterian Church, Oakland
-Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, North Side
-Calvert Memorial Presbyterian Church, Etna
-Central Presbyterian Church, McKeesport
-Church of the Redeemer, Squirrel Hill
-First Baptist Church of Pittsburgh, Oakland
-First English Lutheran Church of Sharpsburg, Sharpsburg
-First United Methodist Church of Pittsburgh, Shadyside
-First United Methodist Church of Wilmerding, Wilmerding
-Lamb of God Christian Ministries, Homestead
-Monumental Baptist Church, Hill District
-Mulberry Presbyterian Church, Wilkinsburg
-Riverview United Presbyterian Church, North Side
-Rodef Shalom, Oakland
-Round Hill Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth
-St. Benedict the Moor Church, Lower Hill District
-St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church, North Side
-St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, McKees Rocks
-St. Peter & St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox G. C. Church, Carnegie
-St. Paul of the Cross Monastery Church, South Side
-St. Stanislaus, Strip District
-Wesley Center A.M.E. Zion Church, Hill District
-Zion Christian Church, Mt. Oliver
-Zion Hill Baptist Church, Hill DistrictThe grants were awarded at the seminar held at Bellefield Presbyterian Church, 4001 Fifth Avenue in Oakland. The symposium was held from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, featured speakers offered information meeting community needs as a faith-based institution, fund raising, when to turn to an architect, and energy conservation.
Alice Greller, Chairman of the Historic Religious Properties Committee and trustee of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation said, “Our seminars often impart information as valuable as the grants we award. It is a goal of Landmarks to continue to offer grants, technical assistance and the valuable information provided at these seminars.”
The Historic Religious Properties grants program is funded by year-end gifts from Landmarks members and trustees and from general funds budgeted by Landmarks.
Founded in 1964, Landmarks is a nonprofit historic preservation group serving Allegheny County. It is dedicated to identifying a preserving the architectural landmarks, historic neighborhoods, and historic design landscapes of Allegheny County, and to educating people about this region’s architectural heritage and urban and landscape design history.
-
Bill would restrict who is able to nominate churches as historic
Monday, November 25, 2002
By Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
City Councilman Bob O’Connor plans to introduce a measure today that he says would free churches and other religious structures from some of the city’s historic preservation regulations.
His amendment to the city’s historic preservation code would allow only the owners of religious structures to nominate them as historic sites. Currently, any city resident can nominate structures for historic designation.
If a site is designated historic, plans to externally renovate or demolish it have to go before the city’s Historic Review Commission before they can be implemented.
According to O’Connor, the designation makes upkeep of historic buildings too expensive for religious groups. Plus, he doesn’t think just anyone should have nomination power over religious structures.
“I would certainly not appreciate it if someone out of the blue nominated my church simply because they felt they should,” he said in a statement. “I believe that places of worship and their symbols such as altars, stained glass windows and statues, are sacred expressions of religious faith and should be respected.”
Historic nominations now can be forwarded by the mayor; members of City Council, the Historic Review Commission and the city planning commission; building owners, and people who have lived in the city for one year or more. O’Connor’s amendment would allow only the owners of a “church, cathedral, mosque, temple, rectory, convent or similar structure used as a place of religious worship” to nominate it.
His bill will be sent to the historic review and planning commissions for comment before a public hearing is held and, finally, a City Council vote is taken. He already has four co-sponsors — council members Twanda Carlisle, Alan Hertzberg, Jim Motznik and Gene Ricciardi — meaning if a vote were taken today, it would pass.
O’Connor has been working with religious leaders for more than a year on the proposal, but today’s timing is significant: It will not come up for a vote until early next year, when City Council’s most experienced and vocal preservationist, Jim Ferlo, will be serving in the state Senate. Ferlo won election to the 38th District seat on Nov. 5.
Ferlo wandered into O’Connor’s office yesterday to complain about the measure, saying it is a “bad bill” that could stand in the way of adaptive re-uses of vacant church buildings, such as for restaurants and apartment buildings.
Referring to a battle O’Connor led years ago to keep St. Paul Cathedral outside the Oakland Historic District, Ferlo asked O’Connor if he was pushing through another “immaculate exception” for the Catholic Church. He also joked that O’Connor has a conflict of interest on church matters since his son, Terry, is a Catholic priest.
An ecumenical church group called Christian Leaders Fellowship is set to endorse O’Connor’s bill today, but the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has long led fights over historic preservation.
The diocesan spokesman, the Rev. Ron Lengwin, has said the church believes in preserving its prominent old buildings but without being forced into it by government. Designation is also a government-mandated drag on finances, he said.
“We believe to force historic designation on a houses of worship carries a real threat of requiring them to divert limited financial resources from schools and social service agencies toward much more costly maintenance of buildings,” Lengwin said.
“It is an unwarranted intrusion in their function and mission.”
Mark DeSantis, chairman of the Historic Review Commission, argued that designations actually help church coffers, not hurt them. Private organizations, such as Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, can help with renovation costs, which city government cannot, and the designations themselves are a helping hand in fund raising, he said.
“Not only has designation not been a burden, but many of [the churches] use that designation as a way of directing funding and renovation efforts toward buildings that would otherwise have trouble attracting those funds,” DeSantis said.
He said he would make the case to City Council that the measure would inappropriately treat classes of building owners differently.
“I can’t imagine there is a worse thing for a community to do than identify two classes of citizens in any community. You either make laws that apply to everyone or make laws that apply to no one. It seems to me patently unfair to other types of property owners,” he said.
DeSantis said he was unaware of O’Connor’s legislation until late last week. He said he was “very disappointed” to hear the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese had been working on the bill, saying he and other preservationists have been working with the diocese at the same time to identify churches that could benefit from historic designation.
Tim McNulty can be reached at tmcnulty@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
-
Neville house, Old Economy give a glimpse of Christmas past
By Gretchen McKay
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Saturday, November 23, 2002With Christmas just weeks away, Woodville, the Virginia plantation-style home that John Neville built in Collier in the late 1700s, stands decorated, ready to receive guests.
Pine branches intertwined with bits of holly and dried flowers wind their way up the staircase in the entry hall. The mantel in the formal dining room is hidden beneath a colorful assortment of fresh fruit, pine cones and branches and bumpy, softball-sized monkey balls, also known as Osage oranges.
There are, however, no brightly wrapped gifts on the Federal-style tables or fragrant balsam wreaths dressing the doors. Conspicuously absent is the most prominent symbol of Christmas in modern American society, a gaily decorated evergreen tree.
That’s because the property, whose annual holiday tour runs today and tomorrow, accurately depicts the way Christmas would have been celebrated in the 1700s. Any holiday decorating in Neville’s time — if people decorated at all — would have been understated and would have consisted of whatever natural materials looked most attractive at this bleak time of year — evergreens, berries, popcorn and forced blossoms.
“People are always surprised it’s so simple,” says Nancy Bishop, president of Neville House Associates, a volunteer group that helps maintain the property as a historic house museum.
At Old Economy Village in Ambridge, a German religious and communal society built in 1824 by the Harmonists, site director Mary Ann Landis is faced with the same challenge: How to faithfully re-create everyday life in the early 19th century when the public expects red-cheeked Santas and woolen stockings hanging over the fireplaces?
Old Economy, the third (and final) home for the Harmony Society, also celebrates the season with special events, including a “Christmas With Belsnickel,” the German Santa Claus, on Friday and “Christmas at the Village” Dec. 7 and 8.
Like the folks at Woodville, the costumed docents aim to do it as accurately as possible. But while the Harmonists acknowledged Christmas, they celebrated it as a religious holiday, and as such, “there wasn’t a whole lot of decorating,” says Landis.
Letters and diaries, in fact, show that Dec. 25 was no different than any other winter day in this tiny Beaver County community. Members still butchered steers, shod horses and cobbled shoes, though church services and perhaps a musical concert in the Great Hall would have taken precedence.
That said, both historic sites are worth a visit if you’ve ever wondered about early American life or simply appreciate the beauty and unassuming elegance of 18th- and 19th-century furnishings and architecture.
Built between 1775 and 1786, Woodville (or Neville House, as it is also known) is the only surviving 18th-century house and garden in Allegheny County and a National Historic Landmark. The two-story yellow clapboard house originally sat on 400 acres; today, the farm — which remained in the Neville family through marriage until 1973 — comprises less than two acres.
When Gen. Neville, a Revolutionary War hero, built the house, it had just four rooms and a kitchen. Son Presley, who moved into the house when his father relocated to nearby Bower Hill, added two more bedrooms in the rear to accommodate his 14 children. (The father moved back in with his son after Bower Hill was burned by angry farmers during the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. As a revenue collector for southwestern Pennsylvania, the elder Neville was charged with collecting the hated federal tax on whiskey.)
The latticed verandah and Gothic windows in the second-floor dormers were added sometime in the 1800s.
In near ruins when the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation bought it in 1976, the house has been completely restored to its original grandeur and is furnished with period antiques.
The focal point of the green dining room is an elegant cherry table dating from the early 1800s. What appears to be one large piece of furniture is actually two American Federal drop leaf tables pushed together. A silhouette of Gen. Neville — his only known portrait — hangs above the mantel. The anglonaise reverse-painted Federal mirror to the left of the fireplace once graced the Shaw house in Glenshaw. Made in 1800, it features 12 gilded wooden balls.
The Federal tall case clock in the hallway was crafted by Thomas Perkins of Pittsburgh in 1806 with inlaid cherry and mahogany veneer. Just as interesting are the century-old signatures and brief messages scratched by guests into the window panes overlooking Route 50, which during Neville’s time was known as Catfish Trail.
Old Economy, which contains 17 restored historic structures and garden built between 1824 and 1830, is similarly furnished with period antiques, many of which were crafted on site. Having emigrated from Wurttemberg, Germany, the Harmonists were familiar with Christmas trees, and as such, several of the rooms on the holiday tour boast small table-top trees strung with popcorn, cranberries, dried apple and scherrenschnitte — decorations cut from paper. There are also a few Moravian “pyramid” trees wrapped with greens.
In the George Rapp House dining room, red and green streamers tied to a small gold hunting horn hang over a table set with blue-and-white Clews china depicting the landing of Lafayette. A silver-plated epergne in the middle would have held the evening meal of sweet meats, fruit and beef or chicken. Outside in the hall, a three-dimensional Moravian star crafted from paper dangles from the ceiling.
The Reception Room is set up for a holiday concert with 1820 gesangbuchs, or hymnals, laid on the hand-painted wooden benches; a table against the wall holds treats of pretzels, rolls and fruit. There will also be live Harmonist music in the Trustees’ Room, where Bass Otis’ copy of “Christ Healing the Sick” (originally painted by Benjamin West) hangs above two Nunns & Clark square pianos.
WOODVILLE’S “HOLIDAYS AT THE HOUSE” runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and noon to 4 p.m. tomorrow at 1375 Washington Pike, Collier. Cost is $5 per person or $10 per family. Information: 412-221-0348 or www.woodvilleplantation.org.
Gretchen McKay covers homes and real estate for the Post-Gazette.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
-
Redevelopment in limbo for Homestead’s old business district
By Jim Hosek,
Tri-State Sports & News Service
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Wednesday, November 20, 2002The Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County is prepared to move quickly on a $3 million redevelopment plan for what some refer to as the “forgotten Homestead,” the old business district. But the plan was dealt a severe blow.
After a unanimous council told county officials at a public hearing Thursday that it wanted to exclude eminent-domain takeover of viable businesses that pay taxes, the county’s Lee Mueller told council, “You can’t amend. You have to approve or deny as submitted.”
“We’d have to start the entire process over,” the county’s Mark Patrick said, adding that it took four years to get to this point.
Council, nonetheless, voted 9-0 to table the plan and send a letter to the authority listing the properties it doesn’t want threatened by eminent domain.
That action followed two hours of comments about the plan, which includes 39 properties — 18 structures including businesses and 21 vacant lots — to be taken over. Mueller said $1.7 million would be used for acquiring properties, $220,000 for the relocation of businesses and residents, $430,000 for demolition of buildings and $630,000 for site improvements.
Council President Evan Baker said he and the rest of council wanted to see an amended plan go through quickly. “We’re trying to create an environment to get people to come to this side of the [railroad] tracks. People habitually ignore that area when going to and from The Waterfront.”
Elisa Cavalier, general counsel of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, called the plan “an egregious error.” She said the county should not be taking away viable businesses when “you have no idea what will go into this site.”
Jim Laux said he would lose two businesses and other property on and near Sixth Avenue.
“This is a slap in the face. This doesn’t make sense,” he said, adding that he has waited years for his area to improve. “I just don’t want to be the one to go. You’re throwing out people who have stayed with the borough in bad times.”
“Replace my business with what and when?” asked George DeBolt, president of DeBolt Unlimited Travel Services.
He said his family’s business has been in Homestead for more than 100 years. “Against the odds, we stayed. This is our home. It’s a good place to do business.”
Main Street manager Steve Paul said the executive board of the Homestead area Economic Revitalization Corp. agreed that council should amend the plan to take out eminent domain takeover. Also voicing that sentiment were borough planning commissioners Lloyd Cunningham and Donna Mima.
Business people Larry Levine, Kitty Lesko and David Lewis said they backed the plan, adding that they believed Laux and DeBolt could be accommodated.
“Those properties are not set in stone [for eminent domain takeover],” Patrick said. “I can assure you we will not act arbitrarily. … We’re not trying to take anyone out of business.”
He said county officials would talk with DeBolt and Laux about their properties, but he didn’t guarantee what the results might be. He said although the county would consult with council before using eminent domain on a particular property, the county wouldn’t need council’s approval, if council OK’d the plan as presented.
“I’m not voting on this until I know exactly which businesses will be taken. Take out the viable businesses and those who paid taxes,” Councilwoman Joan DeSimone said, and the rest of council agreed.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
-
Flick of switch starts age of enlightenment for Clemente Bridge – Fireworks, lights create attention span
By Tom Barnes,
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Friday, November 22, 2002Charlie Magnus, a 28-year lineman with Duquesne Light Co., flipped a switch last night that lit up a big blue company logo on the northern end of the Roberto Clemente Bridge
That triggered a 10-minute fireworks extravaganza featuring colored rockets exploding into the nighttime sky and cascading off the bridge deck like a waterfall spilling into the Allegheny River.
The stunning pyrotechnics announced the debut of a $500,000 architectural lighting project on the 78-year-old span, a project paid for by Duquesne Light.
Local officials hope it will persuade other companies to underwrite the lighting of other city bridges, starting with the Ninth Street Bridge just up the river.
The Aztec gold towers of the Clemente Bridge were bathed in bright white light, which will continue to shine each night from dusk to dawn, while the curved upper superstructure of the bridge was accentuated with low-energy blue “light emitting diode” bulbs.
Magnus, who lives in Cecil, Washington County, normally builds and maintains power lines. But since late August he has worked with a crew of seven other Duquesne Light workers to install many of the new fixtures on the bridge.
“It was different from anything we’ve done before,” he said. “It was all new to everybody. It was good to have the employees involved.”
On hand for last night’s festivities was Gov.-elect Ed Rendell, who said he’d had some experience himself in lighting bridges.
He worked with PECO, a power company in Philadelphia, to light five bridges in Downtown Philadelphia on “millennium eve,” Dec. 31, 1999.
“It was one of my last acts as mayor,” he said. “I had persuaded PECO, our energy company, to light the five bridges over the Schuylkill River. We flicked the switch at 6 p.m. and bingo — all five bridges lit up.
“People have loved it. I am a great believer that when cities are done right, no one can compete with them. They have a vitality– a special feeling — a dynamism — of their own.”
Morgan K. O’Brien, chief executive officer of DQE, Duquesne Light’s parent company, quipped, “I told the governor tonight how excited we are to light up the Clemente Bridge and he told me that PECO had lit five bridges in Philadelphia.”
The bridge lighting fireworks display as seen from the Sixth Street Garage. (Joyce Mendelsohn, Post-Gazette)O’Brien called the Clemente Bridge “a shining symbol of our commitment to the region and an important addition to the ongoing initiative to create one of the most striking urban waterfronts in the country.”
Rendell also let slip that he’d helped find some of the financing for the Philadelphia bridge lighting project, leading Arthur Ziegler of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation to wish aloud that maybe, as governor, Rendell could help find funding for some additional Pittsburgh bridges.
Ziegler, who worked as a project manager and adviser on the Clemente project, said he’d like to see the Ninth Street Bridge lit next because it’s so close to the new convention center.
History & Landmarks lit the first bridge in Pittsburgh — putting white “necklace” lighting atop the Smithfield Street Bridge — back in 1983.
Another person heavily involved in the bridge lighting project was City Councilman Sala Udin.
“I went up to Mount Washington one night after being elected and all our beautiful bridges seemed to disappear at night,” he said, deciding to do something about it.
Referring to Duquesne Light’s investment in the Clemente Bridge lighting, he leaned over the microphone and boomed, “Will anybody else step forward with $500,000 to light another bridge?”
Also pushing the lighting project has been the Riverlife Task Force, a 3-year-old, privately funded group trying to improve the appearance and vitality of city riverfronts.
Rendell, like the rest of the several hundred onlookers gathered in a Duquesne Light tent outside PNC Park to watch the fireworks, said lighting bridges will improve Pittsburgh’s already impressive skyline.
He said that as an outsider, he perhaps appreciates the city’s beauty more than some longtime residents.
“I think this is an awesome city,” he said. “It’s a city that’s got a lot going for it. The old theory about Pittsburgh being a dead place — that theory’s gone. The city has tremendous potential.”
The new lighting includes four “portal” light fixtures atop piers at both ends of the bridge, 32 white globes atop fixtures stretching down both sides of the bridge, floodlights illuminating the gold towers and the piers under the bridge, and smaller blue lights along the top of the span.
“The blue pinpoints of light will add sparkle and excitement to this grand old bridge connecting Downtown to the new ballparks,” said Paula Garret, senior vice president of Forum Lighting of Pittsburgh, which designed the blue lights.
Tom Barnes can be reached at tbarnes@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
-
Bill would limit historic status designation
By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, November 25, 2002The public would no longer be able to nominate houses of worship for historic designation status in Pittsburgh under legislation Councilman Bob O’Connor plans to introduce today.
Only the owner could seek such status, removing a significant hurdle the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and others face when they seek to close or raze a church.
Parishioners and community groups have been able to delay or thwart such closings by nominating churches for city historic status.
Once a building has been nominated, the owner cannot make significant changes to its exterior until the city’s Historic Review Commission reviews the application. If a building is designated as an historic landmark, the commission has jurisdiction over all proposed new construction, demolition and exterior work to the structure.
O’Connor’s legislation has the support of four co-sponsors: President Gene Ricciardi, James Motznik, Twanda Carlisle and Alan Hertzberg.
“I don’t think anyone has the right to put an undue burden on” the owners of houses of worship, said O’Connor, whose son is a Catholic priest and whose office has a picture of his son with the pope.
“I have always been on the side of churches,” O’Connor said. “I believe it really is a hardship on them.”
When St. Nicholas Church on the city’s North Side was designated an historic structure by City Council last year, it affected the diocese’s plans to sell the church to PennDOT ? and the transportation department’s Route 28 expansion project.
The Christian Leaders Fellowship, an organization representing 10 local bishops and denominational executives, supports the legislation, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, the Catholic Diocese spokesman who also works with the leaders fellowship.
“The position of the church is to preserve our churches,” Lengwin said. “We are absolutely for preservation, but the crux of the matter is if it comes down to maintaining the exterior of the church or providing funds to educate children in the faith or assist people with needs, we’re going to follow our ministry.”
While the proposed changes would afford religious groups a greater say over how their property is used, it also takes away public initiative to preserve historic structures for the greater good, said Cathy McCollom, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
“In preservation, the designation of a building is the only safeguard there is,” McCollom said. “Any cathedral could come down.”
O’Connor’s bill seeks to make two changes to the city code. It would define religious structures as a “church, cathedral, mosque, temple, rectory, convent or similar structure used as a place of worship.” He also would add language saying the “nomination of a religious structure (for historic status) shall only be made by the owner(s) of record of the religious structure.”
The city’s Historic Review Commission and Planning Commission will have 30 days to review the legislation and report back to City Council. O’Connor then plans to hold a public hearing on the proposal before council votes on it.
Andrew Conte can be reached at aconte@tribweb.com or (412) 765-2312.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © The Tribune-Review Publishing Co
-
Pittsburgh’s Dynamic Nightime Skyline Gets A New Addition – Duquesne Light Turns On Clemente Bridge Architectural Lighing System
Pittsburgh- Duquesne Light Provided a luminous new addition to Pittsburgh’s Dynamic nighttime skyline this evening when the company officially turned on an architectural lighting system for the Roberto Clemente Bridge.
“This project serves as a shining symbol of our commitment to the region and is an important addition to the ongoing initiative to create one of the most striking urban waterfronts in the country,” said Morgan K. O’Brien, Chief Executive Officer of DQE, Inc., Duquesne Light’s parent company. “The employees of Duquesne Light are proud to be involved in such an exciting project.”
At 6:45 p.m., senior line worker Charlie Magnus – who helped install the lighting system – flipped a switch that illuminated a 22-by-20 foot Duquesne Light logo. The lighting of the logo marked the beginning of a unique fireworks show, which included pyrotechnics that created a cascading waterfall effect. When the smoke cleared nine minutes later, an illuminated Clemente Bridge, framed by blue and white lights, appeared.
Joining O’brien at the lighting ceremony, held along the Riverwalk at PNC Park, were about 450 business and community leaders, including the Duquesne Light crew that installed the architectural lighting system. among those who delivered remarks were Governor-elect Ed Rendell, Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddy; Pittsburgh deputy Mayor Tom Cox; Pittsburgh City Councilman Sala Udin; Pittsburgh History & Landmarks President Arthur Ziegler; and Riverlife Task Force Co-Chairman John Craig.“This project involved the cooperation of numerous organizations throughout Pittsburgh,” said O’Brien. “It is the cooperative spirit among a variety of organizations, including the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, that enabled this project to be completed.”
O’brien also thanked other stakeholders involved in the year-ling project, including the Riverlife Task Force, as well as the City and County, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the U.S. Coast Guard.“We are pleased by the magnificent gift of Duquesne Light, as well as the vision of designers Ray Grenald, Courtney Sarge, and Hal Hilbish, which enabled us to illuminate this popular bridge, which won an award in 1928 as the most handsome steel bridge in the United States,’ said History & Landmarks President Arthur Ziegler.
In November 2001, Duquesne Light announced that it would provide the necessary financial support to permanently illuminate the bridge. Duquesne Light crews began installing the lighting system on August 26th. A subcontractor assisted Duquesne Light crews by installing lights on the underside of the bridge and outside of the railing abutting the sidewalks.
As part of its gift, Duquesne Light also created a special endowment that will be used for energy costs and ongoing maintenance and repair of the bridge lights. More than 2000 energy-efficient lights were installed. Most of the visible fixtures were selected for their historical accuracy, while others were chosen for their ability to illuminate the bridge’s more notable architectural features. The installation process was designed to protect the structural integrity of the bridge.
Ray Grenald, a nationally recognized architectural lighting designer, who also designed the lighting scheme for the Smithfield Street Bridge, lead the team that developed the lighting design.
Efforts to illuminate Pittsburgh’s bridges date back to 1929 when Duquesne Light strung Allegheny County’s three “Sister Bridges” – the Sixth Street, Seventh Street, and Ninth Street bridges – and others i the Golden Triangle, with garlands of lights in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the electric light bulb. The most recent effort dates back to 1997, when the Fort Pitt, Fort Duquesne, and West End bridges were lit in conjunction with the Three Rivers Regatta.
-
New book assesses Henry Hornbostel’s influence on Pittsburgh
By Patricia Lowry,
Post-Gazette Architecture Critic
Tuesday, November 19, 2002Walter Kidney begins his new book on the work of Henry Hornbostel not with the buildings but with the man himself.
The hardback book, published by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and Roberts Rinehart Publishers, costs $49.95 and is available through PHLF (412-471-5808) and local bookstores.
A wise decision, not because the buildings are lacking, but because the man was larger than life even before he was fully a man. By 17 he had ridden some 400 miles from his native Brooklyn to Niagara Falls on a bicycle — the kind with a big, 6-foot wheel in the front. By his senior year at Columbia University, he was the champion one-mile racer of the United States. By his 70s, after a long, fruitful and varied career, Hornbostel, a friend recalled, still could “out-dance, out-drink and out-eat anyone 40 years old.”
And by page 2, the reader is hooked.
Then there are the buildings. Hornbostel was of that heroic, city-building generation of architects born just after the Civil War, whose careers began with Classical training at Paris’ Ecole des Beaux-Arts and ended as modernism was dawning. They shaped the urban American landscape with orderly plans and monumental buildings that communicated power, stability and faith in God and government.
What would Pittsburgh be today without HH? Imagine the city without Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture, which he founded, and without the City-County Building, Smithfield United Church and its lacy aluminum spire, Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Rodef Shalom synagogue, all of which he designed.
He was architect, too, of the original CMU and Pitt campuses, the Grant Building, B’Nai Israel synagogue, Westinghouse Memorial in Schenley Park and many structures in North and South parks — including the South Park Golf Clubhouse, with its exotic, Yucatan-inspired entrance and motifs in bas-relief red brick.
But Pittsburgh wasn’t his only canvas, and architecture wasn’t his only career. Hornbostel’s buildings and bridges can be found in New York, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa and California, where he designed the Oakland city hall. And in the 1930s, when the Depression caused a nationwide building slump, Hornbostel became a well-known and colorful public figure as Allegheny County’s director of parks.
For years Hornbostel personified architecture in Pittsburgh, and the human face he gave to the profession was, as one writer described him in 1954, “lovable, unpredictable, flamboyant.” A prankster and a character, Hornbostel had a Vandyke beard, wore red silk bow ties and carried a cane, probably more out of affectation than need. His friends knew him as “Horny,” but he also answered to Major, a title he earned in the Army during World War I.
For decades Hornbostel has been a book waiting to happen. Kidney, architectural historian with Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, took him up in 1991 and, with contributions from architectural historian Charles Rosenblum and architect David Vater, gives the man his due in “Henry Hornbostel: An Architect’s Master Touch,” a revealing and generously illustrated monograph.
While it includes an overview of Hornbostel’s work around the country — competition entries, college campuses, public buildings and homes — much of the book is devoted to a catalog or survey of the Pittsburgh work.
In his preface, Rosenblum, who is writing his Yale dissertation on Hornbostel, puts the work in the broader context of American and European architectural history. He begins by asking if HH was truly a Pittsburgh architect, given that he was Brooklyn-born and educated at Columbia and the Ecole and had maintained a New York residence for more than 50 years.
The answer, Rosenblum concludes, is yes, partly because he designed more projects here than anywhere — 110 of 228 total. But more importantly, Hornbostel “captured and enhanced the essential character of the place in truly individual fashion,” with “a talent for deriving architectural poetry from the otherwise inconveniently sloping sites of which the city has so many.”
Two such buildings spring to mind, both associated with CMU’s first president, Arthur Hamershlag: “Ledge House,” his rubble-walled home of about 1909 on a prominent corner in Schenley Farms, and Hamershlag Hall, a sort of classical, institutional version of the vernacular South Side Slopes house, which takes advantage of the hillside to create a much bigger building than is apparent from the facade.
Rosenblum also separates Hornbostel from many of his Beaux-Arts contemporaries, establishing his interest in its problem-solving approach rather than its mimicking of historical styles. As at CMU, Hornbostel’s college campus plans, which include Emory University and the Evanston campus of Northwestern, are formal and symmetrical, with long, axial views and buildings grouped around quadrangles.
In 1908, Hornbostel adapted Beaux-Arts rationality to a steep, irregular site in his competition-winning design for the Pitt campus — an acropolis of Classical buildings that stepped down the hillside. Unfortunately, only five were built, and only two of those remain.
Rosenblum suggests that American Beaux-Arts architects “could be at least reasonably progressive,” working in a more abstract style known then and now as the “Modern French.”
But as both Rosenblum and Kidney underscore, Hornbostel’s imagination didn’t allow him to limit himself to a single mode of expression. He was an eclectic who “used his schooling and acquaintance with historic architecture in a creative, innovative and bold manner,” Kidney writes.
That claim is borne out by the inventiveness of the work. William Rydberg’s color photographs take us inside private buildings and allow Pittsburghers to see the public ones with fresh eyes.
And what an eyeful. Here we see up close the sensational painted ceiling of CMU’s College of Fine Arts building, one of the wonders of the Pittsburgh architectural world. As medieval stained glass was a bible for the illiterate, Hornbostel must have seen the murals of his vaulted ceiling, painted on canvas by James Hewlett, as an introduction to the pantheon of the arts. Among the world’s great buildings, Hornbostel, a man with no small ego, wasn’t shy about including his Hell Gate Bridge, completed in 1917 in New York — a pair of triumphal, granite arches framing what was then the world’s largest steel-arch span.
Hornbostel could transform an earthly material like clay into something extraordinary and spectacular. He designed much of his own terra cotta ornament, layering it with great decorative effect, and his use of Guastavino tile in the winding staircase of CMU’s Baker Hall is magical, considering it uses almost no structural steel.
Hornbostel gave East Liberty one of its major landmarks, the late, lamented Liberty Theatre with white, glazed terra cotta tiles framing an American flag composed of red, white and blue light bulbs. In its day, it was a vibrant gateway to the Penn Avenue commercial district.
As head of CMU’s school of architecture and its most prominent and beloved teacher, Hornbostel was held in high esteem by “his boys.” The book touches only lightly on this legacy and on Hornbostel’s influence on at least one generation of Pittsburgh architects.
And some of the building descriptions are too thin: Hornbostel’s last work here, a fortress-like stone house of 1939, is kissed off in three sentences. Certainly the book captures the astonishing breadth, if not always the depth, of Hornbostel’s work and presents it in a smart, inviting design.
Vater has compiled the list of all known works, built and unbuilt, beginning with an 1891 student drawing in Paris. Twenty-two are on the National Register of Historic Places.
At the end, HH, who had been born in 1867 and seen almost a century of change and evolution, was ready to start all over again in a modern vocabulary. He told a friend at his 88th birthday that if he were 25, “these young fellows of today, who think they’re so progressive, would look like stuffy conservatives.”
After reading “Henry Hornbostel,” it’s hard to disagree.
Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
