Category Archive: Preservation News
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Larimer bakery tax plan advances
Thursday, September 06, 2007
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteAllegheny County Council’s economic development committee has advanced the proposed tax breaks for redeveloping the old Nabisco site on Penn Avenue in Larimer, but without giving the plan its blessing.
Council has been asked by the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority to approve $10 million in tax increment financing for Walnut Capital Development Inc.’s Bakery Square project.
That money, which uses future tax proceeds to pay off development bonds, includes $5 million toward making roads around Penn Circle two-way and installing new traffic signals, and $5 million for development of an 849-space parking garage.
Robert Rubinstein, URA director of economic development, said the bonds will be backed with tax revenue from the site on which Walnut Capital Development plans to build office and retail space in addition to the garage and another 350 parking spaces. The tax increment financing does not apply to a 120-room hotel planned for a site next to the former bakery.
The committee, while sending the plan to council for a vote, did so without recommending that the council pass it. Councilman Bill Robinson, D-Hill District, said he was concerned about statements by the developers that he believes have not been documented.
Mr. Robinson wanted details of a $50,000 promise that Walnut Capital made to the community. Mr. Rubinstein said $35,000 would be used for job training and $15,000 will be used to spruce up part of Larimer Avenue.
Mr. Robinson said he wanted to know which community groups the developer had agreements with and what those agreements were.
Maurice Strul, a business development specialist from the Allegheny County Department of Economic Development, said he had not had time to get answers since Mr. Robinson first raised the issue last week.
“If he represents the district and he has concerns, he has a right to those concerns,” Councilwoman Jan Rea, R-McCandless, said.
Mr. Rubinstein said after the meeting that the money going to the community for job training and neighborhood improvements was being paid by the developers and not from public money.
The overall project is estimated to cost $105 million to $125 million and is planned for property where the Nabisco bakery stood for 80 years before it closed in 1998. It was taken over by Atlantic Baking Group in 1999 and cookies were again baked there, but in 2004 the company that had become Bake-Line filed for bankruptcy and closed the bakery for good.
The tax increment financing plan has been placed on council’s agenda for Tuesday.
First published on September 6, 2007 at 12:00 am
Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699. -
Historic Brentwood restaurant to be razed
By Genea Webb
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, September 6, 2007The borough of Brentwood will be losing a vital piece of its history this fall.
The Point View Restaurant, formerly the Point View Hotel, on Brownsville Road, will be razed to make way for a three-story medical building to be occupied by Brentwood Medical Group.According to former Brentwood Councilman Ed Haney, the building, which originally was an inn built in 1832, served as a stop for former Presidents Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and James Buchanan. The Point View was a stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves escaping to Canada.
“The floor of the basement was dirt. There was a tunnel that led under Brownsville Road,” said Lions Club Secretary, Mary Cavataio.
Dr. Dushan Majkic, one of the partners of Brentwood Medical Group, said the newly built facility would help the group of doctors serve the community better.
“It’ll be a positive thing for Brentwood. We have lots of positive things to offer to the community and we’re very excited to offer full medical services to the community,” Majkic said.Council Vice President Jay Lieb agreed.
“I think any new construction is good for the community and the location for the medical building is ideal,” Lieb said.
Majkic and his partners plan to sale the existing medical building at 3028 Brownsville Road.
A plaque signifying the importance of the Point View will be erected somewhere on the site of the new medical building. Demolition of the Point View will occur some time this fall. Construction of the medical building is expected to take six to eight months.
The group held its meetings in the Point View until it closed last year.
“We were very happy there and everyone felt comfortable there,” said Cavataio, whose group held its meetings at the Point View until it closed last year. “We used to have our annual Mother’s Day breakfast there.”
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Neighbors pressing for historic designation for former North Side porn theater
Thursday, September 06, 2007
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThe city’s Historic Review Commission yesterday heard a Central North Side preservationist’s case for designating the Garden Theatre a city landmark, ahead of any action a developer might take to alter it.
The theater, which had shown porn movies for more than 30 years, closed in February. It is now in the hands of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which is considering proposals from developers for the Garden and a score of blighted buildings along the intersecting corridors of North Avenue and Federal Street.
“It’s the last of the nickelodeon-style movie theaters left in the city” with its interior intact, said David McMunn, president of the Mexican War Streets Society. The Mexican War Streets is a historic district that stops shy of including the Garden and the rest of Federal-North.
Mr. McMunn handed commission Chairman Michael Stern a stack of letters in support of his proposal and said, “All the neighborhoods would agree that it’s something we want to save for the next generations.”
After the meeting, he said, “Our neighborhood understands it’s a precious piece, but there are people who think, ‘Adult movie theater, take it away.’ That would be like tearing down Ford’s Theater because Lincoln was shot there.”
The public will have the opportunity to weigh in on the merits of the building’s historic status at a 1 p.m. Oct. 3 hearing in the Robin Building on Ross Street, Downtown. The commission voted to give the Garden preliminary determination status to protect it until a final decision is made. City Council has the final word.
Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, said he backs the proposal.
“Oh yes,” he said, “it’s the anchor of that corridor, and it will become a major ingredient in the North Side’s collection of nationally significant cultural institutions.”
Built in 1915, the Garden is a mix of styles, with a classical exterior of terra cotta detailing, a 1930s-era vertical neon sign and a 1950s-era marquee and canopy. The original canopy was copper. Inside, wall sconces and chandeliers remain intact, and the rewind room, the splicing room and the 1950s-era projectors are all in place, Mr. McMunn said. “It’s like a time capsule.”
The building suffered extensive water damage from a leaky roof, but the Quantum Theater started the cleanup, preparing the theater for its June production of “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.”
The Garden shares a block with an even older Masonic Hall, one of the first built, and an apartment building designed by Frederick Osterling, the illustrious late-1800s/early-1900s architect who also designed the Armstrong Cork factory in the Strip, the Arrott Building on Wood Street and the Union Trust Building on Grant Street, among many.
The Garden was fought over for years in court by the URA and the New Garden Realty Corp. Appeals stopped short of the U.S. Supreme Court in February when the URA negotiated a deal for $1.1 million.
The state Supreme Court had affirmed a lower court’s ruling in December that the URA did not violate the theater’s state or federal free-speech rights in its effort to seize it by eminent domain.
The URA had amassed all the buildings it wanted for redevelopment around it.
Mr. McMunn said the Central Northside Neighborhood Council, a partner in the URA’s redevelopment plans, favors the theater remaining a theater or other entertainment venue.
First published on September 6, 2007 at 12:00 am
Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. -
Neville Plantation cooks Colonial
Thursday, September 06, 2007
By Gretchen McKay,
Pittsburgh Post-GazettePlenty of today’s cooks plant gardens in their back yards so they can enjoy fresh vegetables and herbs. Yet back in Colonial times, only the well-to-do could have afforded the so-called kitchen garden.
Eighteenth-century houses lacked both running water and hoses, of course, so homeowners would have had to rely on slave or servant labor to fetch and carry those heavy buckets of water from a nearby stream or catch drain. Ditto with keeping the garden beds free from weeds.
Adding to the cost were the plants themselves. As Rob Windhorst, president of Neville Historical Associates, points out, most seeds used by Colonists had to be shipped from Europe and were extremely expensive. The fact, then, that Woodville Plantation — the Virginia plantation-style home that Revolutionary War hero John Neville built in Collier in the late 1700s — boasted a kitchen garden with four large beds speaks volumes about his wealth.
Not that his servants planted anything fancy, of course. Strictly utilitarian, the gardens — planted in a continuous rotation so that something was always ready to harvest — contained the basic building blocks of Colonial cooking: root vegetables, melons and beans along with herbs such as lemon balm and lovage, a close cousin to celery.
Two hundred years later, the gardens are once again bearing fruit, having been sown since 1997 with a variety of veggies and herbs gleaned from heirloom seed projects. Many, in fact, are strains of the original plants that Mr. Neville and his family would have enjoyed on their dinner table so long ago.
On Sunday, the public gets a chance to see how these foods would have been harvested and cooked when the plantation opens its doors for its first Harvest Day.
This late in the season, many of the garden’s offerings are long gone. But it’s still full of early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, a compact, tear-shaped cabbage that fit easily in market baskets, and long Chantenay carrots, a French variety that was good for winter storage. There’s also plenty of horehound, a licorice-like medicinal herb, along with lemon balm, mint and chamomile.
Among the more unusual 18th-century dishes that will be demonstrated using traditional methods (i.e., cooked over an open fire in cast-iron pots and pans) is a meatloaf-like “forced” cabbage adapted from Hannah Glasse’s 1745 cookbook, “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.” Docents also will prepare fried carrot puffs, a sweet, doughnut-like side dish.
Woodville Plantation’s Harvest Day Celebration takes place Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at 1375 Washington Pike, Collier. Admission is $5 for adults and $10 for families. For more information, visit www.woodvilleplantation.org or call 412-221-0348.
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Book recounts 100 years of Westmoreland county courthouse
By Jennifer Reeger
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, September 3, 2007If history had repeated itself, the Westmoreland County Courthouse wouldn’t be ready to celebrate its centennial.
Instead, the majestic domed structure on Main Street in Greensburg would look more like something that came out of the 1970s.The previous three courthouses built on the same site had been deemed too small and were torn down.
But in the 1960s, when the powers that be were discussing whether to tear down the current courthouse or just build an expansion onto it, preservation prevailed. The courthouse annex was dedicated in 1979.
“Thank God we do have this beautiful building,” said Mike Cary, professor of history and political science at Seton Hill University and an editor of a book on the courthouse’s history. “People remember Greensburg — they remember that dome when they see it from a distance, and it’s somehow inspirational for people.”
The courthouse, completed in 1907 and dedicated in 1908, will be celebrated in upcoming events and a book, “This American Courthouse: One Hundred Years of Service to the People of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania,” scheduled to be released Sept. 14.
The centennial celebration entered its planning stages in 2002, when Judge Daniel Ackerman put a committee of academics, government officials and historians together.
“I thought this was an event that should not be missed,” Ackerman said. “… I can’t think of any (courthouses) that overall are more beautiful than this building. I always have said, ‘It’s like going to work in an art museum.'”
At the heart of the celebration is the book, edited by Cary and Tim Kelly, chairman of the history department at St. Vincent College.
During the past four years, they gathered historic photos of the courthouse and asked local people to contribute chapters to the book.
“It’s really been very much a community effort, probably more so than most books are,” Kelly said.
Of course, one chapter delves into the history of the current courthouse and the four others in Westmoreland County’s history.
The first, in Hanna’s Town, served from 1773 until the town burned in an Indian raid in 1782. For a few years, court was held wherever there was space, until a board-and-log-structure was built in what is now Greensburg in 1786.
By 1794, the courthouse was torn down for a larger replacement that wouldn’t be finished until 1801. Court was held in local taverns in the meantime.
The two-story brick building, which cost $5,000, would be replaced in the 1850s by a larger, Greek revival building with a small dome and columns.
That building, too, proved too small, and in 1901 it was torn down in favor of the current courthouse, which was completed in 1907.
The building, designed by architect William Kauffman in the Beaux-Arts style and constructed of light-gray granite from Maine, cost $1.5 million.
The book delves into that history as well as the history of the jail, which used to be attached to the courthouse.
It also discusses the building’s architect and architecture — which was controversial because some considered it too ostentatious, Cary said.
There are broader chapters on the changing role of judges and the history of the Westmoreland Bar Association. One chapter focuses on the social context of what was happening in the area at the time of the construction.
Another looks into the multiple uses of the courthouse.
Kelly said the book not only delves into the specific history of the building but gives “a broader read of social climate and the lives and the activities of people who came to the courthouse.”
He said the book is complemented by historical photos and modern pictures taken by attorney and amateur photographer Mark Sorice.
“It’s the sort of thing you could thumb through and never read a word and be happy,” Kelly said.
The book will be unveiled at a black-tie optional gala event on Sept. 14 at the courthouse.
Susan Mitchell Sommers, professor of history at St. Vincent College who chaired the courthouse centennial committee, said members of the Bar will offer tours of the courthouse, while judges and row officers will talk about their roles.
The tours will include, if the weather cooperates, the first public access to the courthouse dome in about 25 years.
Guests will be able to stroll through the courthouse and view the opening of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Council for the Arts juried exhibition, “History Through Art.”
The show will run through January, which marks 100 years since the courthouse dedication.
The culmination of the centennial celebration will be a free open courthouse event on Jan. 26.
“We’re hoping to get as many people into the courthouse as we can because I talk to neighbors and other people who you would have thought would have been here at one time or another and they haven’t,” Ackerman said. “It’s sort of a shame that so many people haven’t.”
Jennifer Reeger can be reached at jreeger@tribweb.com or 724-836-6155.
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The Granite Building To House Luxury Condominiums
Built in 1889–90 as the German National Bank and now a contributing structure in the Pittsburgh Central Downtown National Register Historic District, The Granite Building provided German immigrants to the Pittsburgh area with a place where they could transact their banking in their native language.
Designed by Bickel & Brennan, the “Richardsonian Romanesque” granite building imitates the style of the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail, designed by H. H. Richardson in 1884, just a few blocks away. Charles Bickel was a prominent Pittsburgh architect who designed several notable buildings downtown, among them Kaufmann’s department store.
After more than a century as an office building, Landmarks board member Holly Brubach is renovating The Granite Building as luxury condominiums and making the building available for a September 26th Heritage Society tour and reception.
Among the many downtown candidates for residential conversion, The Granite Building is considered ideal for its spaciousness and ample light. With only one 2,750-squarefoot unit per floor, The Granite Building provides the comfort and privacy of a single-family home in the heart of the city and represents another example of how historic buildings can stimulate economic development.
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Anne Nelson Joins our Team
Anne Nelson has joined the staff of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation as Program Associate where her responsibilities include assisting with general preservation programs as well as providing assistance on projects where a legal background is required, such as planned giving.
For the past two years, Anne interned at Landmarks and in 2006 was one of only three persons nationally to receive a summer legal internship at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington DC.
Anne recently completed her juris doctorate at Duquesne University School of Law, where she was a member of the Public Interest Law Association and the recipient of the University’s Pro Bono Award. In 2004, she earned a B.A. in history at Boston College, where she was also a four-year member of the varsity rowing team and captain in her senior year.
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North Side Woman Remembers Landmarks
by Jack Miller
Director of Gift Planning
September 1, 2007When Ethel Belcher learned about Landmarks in 1977 she immediately became a member. While she didn’t attend any events or volunteer her services, she appreciated Landmarks’ efforts to preserve western Pennsylvania, especially her beloved North Side.
Ethel lived most of her life in a working-class North Side neighborhood in a house that she inherited from her parents. The fact that the long-time dedicated secretary for the White Westinghouse Corporation never married gave her time to pursue personal interests. “She was far ahead of her time,” said neighbor and close friend Jan Wachter. “She was one of the first women to graduate from Robert Morris College. Ethel developed a keen interest in the environment and historic preservation before it was fashionable to do so.”
Mr. Wachter was so influenced by Ethel’s interest in preservation that he went on to earn his doctorate in environmental health science and is currently a professor in that field at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. “Ethel saw it as a community responsibility to preserve our significant buildings and environment,” said Mr. Wachter. “Ethel always led by example and now I just practice what she preached.”
Over the years, Ethel methodically invested part of her meager salary in the stock market. In addition to her savings, she set aside another part of her income for travel, annually visiting one or two different countries. “I believe that’s how she developed a greater appreciation for western Pennsylvania,” said Mr. Wachter. “She’d often comment on how Pittsburgh’s architecture was reminiscent of something she saw in Europe or some other far-off place.”
On March 12, 2006, Ethel passed away and was laid to rest less than a mile from her home. In July, Landmarks was notified that it was one of nine charitable beneficiaries Ethel remembered in her will. Her generosity will result in a bequest of more than $15,000.
Landmarks will use her bequest to establish the Ethel M. Belcher Preservation Fund, the income from which will be used to support important projects with a focus on the North Side. “Ethel’s life was a testimony to her belief that people should embrace and care about the things around them,” said Mr. Wachter. “Her bequest is proof that she trusted Landmarks as an organization that would carry on that work.”
For more information on how to establish a similar fund through your will or living trust, please contact Jack Miller at jack@phlf.org or 412- 471-5808, ext. 538.