Category Archive: Preservation News
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Hartwood mansion getting some repairs
Monday, July 02, 2007
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteTalk about your fixer-upper.
Last year, when the molded plaster ceiling at the mansion at Hartwood Acres collapsed, the cost of restoring just the ceiling was $189,000. The furnishings and woodwork brought the total for the disaster repair to nearly $300,000.
For instance, repairs to the piano — an unusual art-case Steinway grand piano with eight hand-carved legs and inlaid woodwork — cost $11,000.
Now that the great hall is back together, and the house has been reopened for tours, there’s still a lot to do.
Anyone who owns an old house can sympathize.
The slate roof needs to be replaced, which could cost about $1 million.
And then there are the basic repairs from decades of wear to the furniture and rugs.
Sylvia Easler, recreation superintendent of the Allegheny County Parks Department, has been caring for the mansion for the two decades she has been working for the county.
Like anyone with a home, she can wander from room to room pointing out the work that needs to be done: a silk Chinese handmade rug in the servants’ quarters needs to be rebound; the carpet in Mary Flinn Lawrence’s room is wearing down, and a former servants’ room, which is now used for storage, needs to have the plaster repaired after the room is fixed.
Much of the deterioration of the furnishings, the home’s records and fabrics can be slowed by installing a climate control system. The home does not have air conditioning, but the county is trying to obtain a grant for the project.
In the stable, the woven-wheat mats in front of each of the stalls have deteriorated and Mrs. Easler has not found anyone who knows how to duplicate the way the Lawrences had them woven so the heads of the wheat were included in the weaving.
The good news last week was when Jim Dugan, a seasonal worker at the park, showed her that the toilet in the stable had been replaced and was working.
Mr. Dugan is spending a portion of the summer cleaning and oiling the wood in the stable.
“They kept the barn neater than the house. This was a showplace,” he said.
One of the most historically interesting projects on the home’s horizon is restoration of the 1908 Aeolian house organ.
Jim Stark, the treasurer of the national Organ Historical Society, said his organization is planning its annual convention in Pittsburgh in 2010 and one aspect of that convention may be to restore the mansion’s organ.
The organ was given to Mrs. Lawrence before the mansion was built in 1929, a gift from her father, state Sen. William Flinn, when she was living at home with him in Highland Park.
Mr. Stark said the organ has had some repairs over the years, but the leather, which was used for the bellows and to open and close the valves on the pipes, has dried and cracked so it no longer functions. “That has to all be redone.”
Mrs. Easler said the estimate to have the organ professionally restored 15 years ago was $115,000. Mr. Stark said the society can do it for about $45,000, which is the cost of parts.
Mr. Stark said while the organs at the Carnegie Libraries in both Braddock and Homestead also need to be restored, the organ at Hartwood is a better job for his group.
“The house organ at Hartwood is small enough that it is something we can take on.”
The organ, he said, was “rich folks’ home entertainment” in the early decades of the 20th century.
The organ at Hartwood is especially interesting because it is the only house instrument by the Aeolian company to have survived in Western Pennsylvania and because it is a player organ for which the rolls are still at the mansion.
Mr. Stark said the plan is to restore the organ, which is in the basement (the sound comes up through panels in the living room wall that open when it is played), and install a parallel electronic system that can play the organ through a computer.
“I’m so excited and they’re so excited,” Mrs. Easler said.
(Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699. )
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Summit Inn Resort provides relaxing escape
By Jennifer Reeger
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, July 1, 2007The psychics sat at the resort’s bar a few years back, regaling patrons with tales of the spirits around them.
But Karen Harris figured the psychics were phony. The women made no mention of the one soul who should have been lingering at The Summit Inn Resort: her father, Donald Shoemaker.“If there was somebody here, it would be my dad, because he loved this place,” Harris says.
Shoemaker and his wife, Eunice, loved the Summit so much that they borrowed from the bank and sold what they could to buy the resort in 1964, seven years after moving there to manage the inn near Farmington, Fayette County.
And while the Shoemaker family has spent 50 years tending to the resort atop Summit Mountain in the Chestnut Ridge along Route 40, those 50 years are only half the story.
This year, the Summit Inn, a grand old resort hotel on 1,000 acres, celebrates its 100th anniversary.It was opened in 1907 by a group of Uniontown businessmen, who thought a hotel overlooking their town along the National Road would make a good investment.
Tourists weren’t flocking to Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob back then — they didn’t exist — so the Summit and the beauty of the Laurel Highlands were the attraction.
From the inn’s wraparound porch, visitors can gaze out over five counties. And Harris says that on a clear day, the U.S. Steel building in downtown Pittsburgh is visible.
Ten years after its opening, the inn played host to the “American Science Wizards,” including Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, who raced down the mountain in automobiles. A copy of the guest register from their visit hangs in the hotel lobby, complete with signatures and room assignments.
In 1918, Leo Heyn took over as manager of the inn. Twelve years later, he bought the resort. Eunice Shoemaker, 81, says Heyn “really got this hotel on the map.”
Heyn was a “real colorful character” who kept two dachshunds at the resort to greet guests. A Bichon Frise, named Tootsie, serves as the resort’s mascot.
Under Heyn’s watch, the Olympic-sized outdoor pool was built, complete with high and low dives. He used to have contests for people to walk on logs in the pool, Shoemaker says. And Heyn added skiing to the resort’s offerings, although today, the Summit closes for the winter.
Summit Inn advertisements from the 1930s still hang on the walls. Harris, 52, chuckles recalling some of the claims, such as the inn being free of asthma, fireproof and having no mosquitoes.
At the time, guests could pay $50 to become “King for a Day,” which offered an unlimited expense account and the opportunity to eat everything from caviar to Maine lobster.
“I was thinking about today how much it would cost to have somebody be ‘King for a Day,’ ” Harris says.
The inn hit harder times during the Depression and war years, as fewer people were taking driving trips. The Heyn family sold the hotel in 1946 to Maxwell Abell.
In 1957, Donald Shoemaker moved his family from Bedford so he could take over as manager of the Summit. Eunice Shoemaker recalls that the Mission and Craftsman-influenced building had fallen into disrepair.
The owner was in Chicago and didn’t care to spend money on the inn, Shoemaker says. Her husband was ready to take a job in Puerto Rico when he was offered the chance to buy the inn.
“We sold everything we could and got money from the bank,” Shoemaker says.
They bought the inn in May 1964 and started renovations. They did a few rooms at first, enough so that Shoemaker could invite her bridge club over and not be embarrassed.
“For years, my father was a conservationist. If he could save anything, it was saved and it was used,” Harris says.
The whole family joined the effort to make it work. They lived across the road from the inn but spent most of their waking time at the resort. Harris was 5 when she and her parents moved there.
“The lobby really was my living room,” she says.
“She grew up with the hotel, and that’s why she’s able to run the hotel so well today,” Shoemaker says.
When Harris was little, she was paid a penny for every fly she killed. She folded napkins, too.
“The day (guests) came in, I’d sit on the porch and wait for someone my age,” she says. “When they’d leave, I’d hide because I didn’t want them to leave.”
As she got older, Harris became popular among friends.
“I used to have slumber parties, and my friends could not wait until it was my turn,” she says.
With its multiple staircases and lots of nooks, it’s easy to get lost in the massive building. But it also has a sense of intimacy.
“I think that’s the attention that our guests of today totally enjoy,” Harris says. “It’s more comfortable. Even though we have 94 rooms, it has the feel of a bed and breakfast.”
Harris says many guests think of mountain resorts from two movies — “The Shining” and “Dirty Dancing” — when they see the Summit.
But the inn made history in its own right, having been added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Things have changed over the years. Shoemaker remembers that the inn used to be run like a cruise ship.
“You had something planned every day and night,” she says.
Today, guests enjoy relaxing by the outdoor pool or swimming in the heated indoor pool. They might golf a round at the nine-hole course or play video games in the game room. But many guests choose to stay at the Summit and venture out to other attractions in the Laurel Highlands.
And while there used to be a formal dress code for the dining room, today’s guests arrive in jeans and shorts. Guest rooms have private baths, televisions and air conditioning. No two rooms are decorated the same.
“A building like this is just a constant renovation and upkeep. We just do what our eyes tell us needs to be taken care of,” Harris says. “We take probably 15 rooms or more a year and redo them totally, and the others we’ll just paint.”
But many things have remained the same. Guests still walk to the lobby down a grand staircase, the sun shining on them from two large stained-glass windows.
In the lobby, they sit on the same Gustav Stickley furniture that Ford and Edison found there. And they can look at — but not touch — an 1868 Steinway square grand piano.
Carol Rubaker, 68, of Baldwin, Allegheny County, first stayed at the Summit in the early 1960s. She was looking for a place she and her then-husband could drive to for a getaway.
“It was only a 45- to 50-minute ride from Pittsburgh, and when we got there, it was like a million miles away from home,” she says.
“I love the old-fashioned charm of it,” she says. “No matter what room you get, you’re not beside an ice machine that’s clunking all night long.”
Rubaker says she’s stayed at the Summit every year since 1971.
“Everybody that knows me knows that I go to Uniontown for my vacation,” she says. “I’ve been to Hawaii. I’ve been on a cruise, but everyone remembers I go to Uniontown.”
Mary Boord, of Newark, Del., used to go to the Summit Inn as a child in Canonsburg, Washington County, about 65 years ago. She remembers the two dachshunds and the pool.
“The swimming pool had a slide going down into it,” she says. “I thought that was a lot of fun.”
She grew up and married her husband, Robert, a Masontown, Fayette County, native, and they moved away. About 12 years ago, on a trip back to Western Pennsylvania, the Boords, now in their late 70s, decided to take Route 40. They came across the Summit Inn and decided to stop for lunch and met some golfers, who had played the resort’s course. The Boords — golfers themselves — vowed to go back and try it out.
“In the past 12 years, we’ve been back 16 times,” she says. “That says we like it.”
“As a retired designer I look at the environment, and the lobby is sensational,” she says. “The rooms are all different, which is nice, because you have a lot of these cookie cutter places.”
The Boords note how friendly the inn’s owners and employees are.
“They must spend a lot of hours there tending their guests,” Robert Boord says. “It’s just nice to go somewhere where you’re recognized and you get to know them.”
The Summit should be in the family’s hands for a long time. When her father became ill in 1993, Harris started learning more of the business from him. By the time he died four years later, she was running the show.
Now the youngest of her three children, Amanda Leskinen, who just graduated from Washington & Jefferson College, will be helping more.
“She’s going to come back this year and start working, and maybe I’ll get to play a little golf,” Harris says.
Jennifer Reeger can be reached at jreeger@tribweb.com or 724-836-6155.
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Farmland Saved
June 28, 2007
PHLF NewsSeveral years ago we worked with the South Fayette Township Board of Commissioners and Township Manager Mike Hoy to analyze what uses might be made of the historic 217 acres Boy’s Industrial Home of Western Pennsylvania. The home had closed and only one historic building remained, but the land was used for farming and natural growth.
As part of our Farmland Preservation program, we employed the landscape design firm of LaQuatra Bonci, and the architectural firm Landmarks Design Associates, both of Pittsburgh, to work together with government leaders and community residents and our staff to try to develop a preservation plan for the property.
We are pleased that South Fayette has just announced that the Allegheny County Agricultural Land Preservation program is paying $1.6 million or $10,000 an acre for the rights to the land to ensure that it will remain farmland permanently. Fifty-seven acres will be utilized for recreation.
Through our Farmland Preservation program, this brings total land protected under the original grant we received from the Richard King Mellon Foundation to 1,314 acres.
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One grimy stone remains
Peter Hart & Kimberly K. Barlow
University Times
The Faculty & Staff Newspaper of the
University of Pittsburgh
June 28, 2007From top to bottom, the Cathedral’s limestone exterior will gleam when preservation crews are through, but one darkened stone will remain, thanks to Nationality Rooms director E. Maxine Bruhns.
She and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation officials requested that one weather-worn block of darkened stone near the Fifth Avenue entrance be preserved as a tribute to Pittsburgh’s industrial past.
Bruhns chose the particular block both for its character as well as its location. “What I like about the rectangle is on the lower part, the wind cut these wonderful patterns into it, and then it gets dirtier up above. It has real character,” Bruhns said. The stone is situated close to the building’s National Historic Landmark plaque and near the entrance where Nationality Room tours begin.
“As groups come to view the rooms on tours we can meet them out there and say, ‘This is the way it used to look.’ Honestly, because you know Pittsburgh was built by industry — steel mills — and we just can’t all be squeaky clean and pretend it didn’t happen.”
While Bruhns was convinced that one stone needed to be preserved as a reminder, she wasn’t so sure she could trust it would be done. She sent a memo to Facilities Management officials to let them know she was serious about saving one darkened stone. She even made a pact with co-workers to ensure her wishes were heeded as she departed for a visit to Lebanon in mid-May.
“While I was in the Middle East, [Nationality Rooms staffer] Eileen [Kiley] was going to splay her body in front of it all day to protect it,” Bruhns quipped. “When I got back, I went out and saw a young man there and I said, ‘I’d like to know if you’re going to save this rectangle.’ And he said, ‘That’s my job’ and, by golly, he did. It was fun.”
Park L. Rankin, Pitt’s senior manager of architecture, planning, design and construction, acknowledged that Facilities Management had a certain reluctance to leaving a piece of stone uncleaned.
“But based on many responses that the whole building should not be cleaned because it represented a landmark of our industrial past, we reconsidered, selecting a remote, but recognizable location, which would serve to not only save a remnant of our past, but also to highlight the vast physical improvement to this landmark, now that it has been cleaned,” Rankin said. “Once the cleaning is finished, and decades into the future, when no one will remember that this building was covered in soot and grime, they can compare the before and after, and possibly note what a great thing the University did in the preservation and cleaning of this landmark.”
Cleaning contractor Cost Co. fabricated a metal cover to protect the grimy stone during cleaning, leaving it in its blackened state. While there’s no plaque explaining why one block escaped the process, there soon will be, Bruhns said.
“I think there should be one, just to say what it is and why it’s there and to say when the cleaning was done,” she said. “After all, the school children who bought a brick [during the Cathedral’s construction] probably came from the steel mill towns, and they need to know that some brick is being left in its original state.”
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Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation announces Historic Building and Landscape Designations
Pittsburgh, PA –
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s Historic Landmarks Plaque Committee recently awarded historic designation to some 38 buildings, 3 districts, and 2 designed landscapes.
Residential architecture ranged from an 1832 log house in Gibsonia, Victorian houses in Leetsdale and Oakdale, Colonial Revival houses in Shadyside and Munhall, an Arts & Crafts enclave in Fox Chapel, to two 1936 houses in Ross Township’s Swan Acres, which Architectural Forum called “the nation’s first modern American subdivision.”
The oldest of three designated churches is the sole surviving documented building in Pittsburgh by the region’s first woman architect, Elise Mercur.
There are two golf courses, a municipal building, two industrial sites now converted to housing, an African-American landmark, several distinguished structures adapted to new uses, and an urban oasis—Mellon Square—that is an outstanding example of mid-20th-century design, urban planning, and local philanthropy.
• The specific sites designated as “Historic Landmarks” are (in chronological order):
• Chalfant Log house, 2716 West Hardies Rd., Gibsonia, Hampton Twp., 1832
• “Elm Ridge,” James Gardiner Coffin / John Walker house, 1 Breck Dr., Leetsdale, Isaac Hobbs, architect; David Kerr, builder, 1869. Plan published in Hobbs Architecture, 1873
• W. J. Stewart / Howard Stewart house, 124 Hastings Ave., Oakdale, 1873
• St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (now Christian Tabernacle Kodesh Church of Immanuel), 2601 Centre Ave., Hill, Elise Mercur, architect, 1896
• Colonial Place Historic District, Shadyside, George S. Orth, architect; E. H. Bachman, landscape artist, 1898
• Carnegie Steel Manager’s house, 518 E. 11th St., Munhall, 1900
• Armstrong Cork Company Buildings (now The Cork Factory Apartment Lofts), 2349 Railroad St., Strip, Frederick J. Osterling, architect, 1901, 1902; addition 1913
• Elmhurst Road Historic District, Fox Chapel, Wilbur M. May et al, 1904-20
• St. James Episcopal Church (now The Church of The Holy Cross), 7507 Kelly St., Homewood, Carpenter & Crocker, architects, 1905-06
• Mt. Lebanon Golf Course, 1000 Pine Ave., Mt. Lebanon, George A. Ormiston, landscape architect/designer, 1907-08, formerly Castle Shannon Golf Club
• First National Bank of Pitcairn (now commercial/rental), 500 2nd St., Kiehnel & Elliott, architects, c. 1910
• Central Turnverein (now Gardner Steel Conference Center, University of Pittsburgh), 130 Thackeray St., Oakland, Kiehnel & Elliott, architects, 1911-12
• Five H. J. Heinz Company buildings (now Heinz Lofts), Progress St., Troy Hill, 1913-27, H. J. Heinz Company, R. M. Trimble, and Alfred Kahn, architects
• Fox Chapel Golf Club, 426 Fox Chapel Rd., Alden & Harlow, architects, 1924-25; Brandon Smith, architect, 1931; course designed by Seth Raynor, 1925
• Pythian Temple (now New Granada Theatre), 2007 Centre Ave., Hill, Louis A. S. Bellinger, architect, 1927-28; remodeling 1937-38, Alfred M. Marks, architect
• Keystone Athletic Club (now Lawrence Hall, Point Park University), 200 Wood St., Downtown Pittsburgh, Benno Janssen for Janssen & Cocken, architects, 1928
• Mt. Lebanon Municipal Building, 710 Washington Rd., William H. King, Jr., architect, 1928-30
• Southminster Presbyterian Church (formerly Mt. Lebanon Presbyterian Church), 799 Washington Rd., Mt. Lebanon, Thomas Pringle, architect, 1927-28
Edgeworth Club, 511 East Dr., Brandon Smith, architect 1930-31; additions
Swan Acres Historic District, Ross Twp., Quentin S. Beck for Beck, Pople & Beck, 1936
Mellon Square, Downtown Pittsburgh, James A. Mitchell for Mitchell & Ritchey, architects; Simonds & Simonds, landscape architects, 1954-55
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Region employs the ‘Wright’ formula
By Emily Leone
DAILY COURIER
Tuesday, June 27, 2006Frank Lloyd Wright’s oft-quoted thought, “I believe in God, only I spell it N-A-T-U-R-E,” was the proper introduction to a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for a home designed by the world-famous architect in a Mt. Pleasant Township park.
Plans were revealed for the Usonian-style Duncan House that will be reconstructed as a guest house and tourist facility at Polymath Park Resort, a new safe haven for the historic home. It is only the fourth Wright home in the country in which tourists can stay.Built in 1957, the 2,200-square-foot house was to be demolished in 2002, but Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy wanted it saved. The house was dismantled and moved from Lisle, Ill., to Johnstown, where plans to turn it into an education center fell through.
At yesterday’s groundbreaking, Polymath public relations director Laura Newsmith said once the core frame has been reconstructed, the Duncan House will be rebuilt, redecorated and furnished according to original blueprints and styles of the 1950s.
“We are fortunate to have the land to build and expand the resort for several uses,” she said. “All of our activities will be culturally focused, with an emphasis on nature and improving the mind, body and spirit.”
The house will join two other Wright homes already at the park — the Blum and Balter homes — available for year-round leasing. Construction will begin in July to put the Duncan House back together, and the floor plan includes three bedrooms, two baths and Wright’s trademark open living/dining area with a natural stone fireplace at the center.The park, off Clay Pike Road on the southern slope of Chestnut Ridge, was developed in the 1960s by Peter Berndtson, one of Wright’s apprentices. The area then was called Treetops and Mountain Circles and was meant to be a residential area. Owner Tom Papinchak bought the land two years ago and said there were several others bidding for the house, but Polymath received it because it was a “natural fit.”
In 2005, Papinchak began working with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, state agencies and The Progress Fund, an organization that helps to provide for rural businesses in Southwestern Pennsylvania. In a short amount of time, Polymath had not only secured the house but found several sponsors who would contribute reconstruction necessities, such as laying the foundation and roofing the home.
Newsmith hopes that with Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob so close, the addition of the Duncan House will complete a touring circuit, allowing tourists visiting other locations the opportunity to stay at the home, an “attractive location” within the Laurel Highlands.
Known nationally and internationally, Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob are considered two of the area’s most valuable attractions, said Julie Duncan of the Laurel Highlands Tourism Bureau.
“One of the biggest questions we get is where do you stay if you are visiting the Frank Lloyd Wright house or Kentuck Knob,” she said. “To have the opportunity to spend the night in a Frank Lloyd Wright house and then go to Fallingwater the next day just adds to the Frank Lloyd Wright experience.”
That experience includes the perfect unity of nature and architecture, a harmony that Papinchak believes can be found at Polymath and is further defined by the addition of the Duncan House.
More importantly, Papinchak said, the area will retain its charm and private setting and will not become commercial.
Construction on the Duncan House will be completed in the fall, and reservations and tour information will be announced in August.
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Landmark Downtown cathedral gets its first cleaning– Episcopal house of worship was being damaged by acid runoff whenever it rained
Monday, June 25, 2007
By Sara McCune,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteOne of Pittsburgh’s oldest cathedrals is getting a complete makeover.
Cleaning crews will wash away 120 years worth of grime from Trinity Cathedral in Downtown, interns from the University of Pennsylvania will clean headstones and landscapers will green up the property.
While the cathedral is being cleaned in preparation for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary, there’s another reason the cleanup’s time has come: The grime on the building from Pittsburgh’s steel mill days has been turning acidic when it rains, and is slowly deteriorating the sandstone cathedral.
The yearlong celebration of the founding of Pittsburgh’s Episcopal church runs from this Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving 2008.
“There had been some debate within the diocese about whether or not to clean it,” Bishop Robert Duncan said. Some members of the diocese thought the blackened exterior would serve as a reminder of Pittsburgh’s industrious past. But the bishop said he could look out of his Oliver Building office and see the deterioration. In 2000, he and some colleagues hired an engineering firm to take a sample of the grime and test it.
“Every time the building gets moist it’s like it’s getting an acid bath,” he said.
Fred Thieman, co-chairman of the anniversary celebration campaign, said the cost of the restoration work won’t be known until after the cleaning. Young Restoration Co., of Carnegie, which has been contracted for the cleaning, uses a wash which is essentially baking soda and water, and environmentally friendly. The cleaning, which began last week, is expected to take three to four months.
While the cathedral was built in 1872, the cemetery’s origin was as a Native American burial ground. It also holds the remains of French and British soldiers and early Americans. University of Pennsylvania postgraduate student Teresa Duff, the site supervisor, said she and two graduate students are cleaning and preserving headstones as the third and final part of a stone-conservation campaign involving the cathedral.
There are eight different methods of preserving and treating the headstones, which are used on a case-by-case basis. For example, some of the stones need to have grout injected into cracks, and some need metal pins inserted to keep them from crumbling .
About 140 headstones will be pulled, treated and returned to their original places.
Ms. Duff said members of the university worked on other stone conservation efforts involving the graveyard in 1990 and 2001. The University of Pennsylvania has one of the state’s best architectural preservation programs.
The alley between the church and the Oliver Building will have landscaping done and be turned into an informal “heroes way” with a memorial to Pittsburgh’s modern heroes, such as the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 and the firefighters who died while fighting the Ebenezer Church fire in 2004.
Trinity Cathedral is in the area of Fort Pitt, where Pittsburgh’s first Anglican prayer service was held.
The Episcopal Church was formed as an American successor to the British Anglican Church.
The cathedral hasn’t been cleaned before for financial reasons, said Canon Cathy Brall. The church has already raised two-thirds of the money needed through bequests, donations and sponsors.
The yearlong celebration also will include lights to provide up-lighting of the cathedral at night.
“Christians consider Jesus as the light of the world,” Bishop Duncan said. “We want the church to be a light for Pittsburgh.”
(Sara McCune can be reached at smccune@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1122 )
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Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation works to identify local historic structures
By Robin Acton
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, June 24, 2007Architectural historian Albert M. Tannler rattles off names and dates and addresses in a rapid-fire manner when he talks about significant properties in Allegheny County.
Drawing from memory, he speaks of architects and builders and landscapers as though they are his friends, delving into their family histories, career passions and design trademarks. He peppers conversations with detailed information about the building materials, design styles and engineering innovations incorporated in their projects.Tannler, the historical-collections director for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, has much to talk about. Allegheny County, he says, is rich with some of the nation’s finest examples of architectural design, engineering and planning.
In May, more than three dozen of those significant properties were recognized by the foundation’s Historic Landmarks Plaque Committee, which awarded historic designation to 21 sites that include 38 buildings, three districts and the landscapes at two golf courses.
“We’re saying you’ve got a lot of neat stuff in this town, and these are the examples,” Tannler says. “We’re saying that these properties are worth saving.”
The newly designated sites join some 500 others throughout Allegheny County that have been awarded historic plaques since the program began in 1968. They range from churches to private homes to public buildings to golf courses — each with a story to tell about the architect, builder or era in which it was constructed.Residential architecture in this round of designations includes a log house built in 1832 in Gibsonia, Victorian homes in Leetsdale and Oakdale, and Colonial revival homes in Shadyside and Munhall. An enclave of Arts & Crafts houses in Fox Chapel and two modern homes built in 1936 in Ross also made the list.
The former St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, one of three churches recognized last month, is the only surviving documented building in Pittsburgh designed by the region’s first female architect, Elise Mercur, according to information provided by the foundation. Designations also were awarded to several public buildings and Mellon Square, an urban oasis described in foundation materials as “an outstanding example of mid-20th century design, urban planning and local philanthropy.”
In some cases, property owners applied for the designation, while foundation staff members nominated others for the committee to review. But all are important to the area’s heritage, Tannler says.
Save and protect
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, a nonprofit formed in 1964 by Arthur P. Ziegler Jr. and James D. Van Trump, was the nation’s first historic group to launch a countywide survey of architectural landmarks when it embarked on the project in 1965. Through that survey, and another completed in the mid-1980s, more than 6,000 sites have been documented.
Historic designation has been awarded to only a fraction of those properties, according to the foundation’s executive director, Louise Sturgess. She says that working with more than 20 or 30 properties at a time would be an unmanageable undertaking for everyone involved.
Tribune-Review owner Richard M. Scaife, who has chaired the plaques committee for the past two decades, describes its members as individuals who are “dedicated to architecture.” The committee meets at least once a year to review properties that are up for consideration, relying largely on pictures, application materials and information from the foundation’s staff.
Sometimes sites are considered after the property owner submits pictures. In other instances, staff members find a building or a church that they think is worthy of being saved and nominate it for the committee to review.
“We have no shortage of buildings to judge,” Scaife says.
Although the plaques identify properties as historic landmarks, the distinction does not protect them from demolition or alteration. The foundation staff works to correct the misconception that plaques restrict owners in what they can do with their properties.
“The most important thing that people need to know about the plaques is that they don’t protect the buildings, people do,” Sturgess says. “The plaque program gets to the heart of the mission to show people that there’s some pretty amazing stuff out there that we don’t want demolished.”
Scaife, who is passionate about history and architecture, says he’s concerned that some worthy properties might be lost. He says he worries most about the Union Trust Building, a Downtown landmark that has been up for sale for some time.
The Flemish Gothic-style building designed by Frederick Oesterling, one of Pittsburgh’s premier architects, was completed in 1917 for owner Henry Frick. It was used as a shopping arcade with 240 shops on four levels. A rotunda was capped with a majestic stained-glass dome.
“You want to save those that are important,” Scaife says. “I’m not sure what will become of it. When it comes to historic, architecturally significant structures, remodeling is worse than tearing down.”
Ziegler, the foundation’s president, concedes that he also worries about “a lot of properties every day.” However, he notes that the historic-plaque designation appears to benefit preservation efforts.
“The plaques bring honor and public notice to properties. Those things in themselves help provide staying power to buildings,” Ziegler says.
Making the grade
Properties that are considered worthy of historic plaques need not be majestic, impressive structures, records show. Modest, wood-framed homes, gardens, parks, golf courses, churches, mansions, public buildings and bridges all have found a place on the list, either individually or as part of historic districts.
Some are examples of ingenious engineering, architecture or planning, while other sites are important because of the architects responsible for their design. Program administrator Frank Stroker III, who has been with the foundation since 1984, says that the common denominator is historical significance.
Stroker says that placement of a plaque is done at a cost to the property owner of about $150 for a standard aluminum marker. Larger markers and those made of bronze are more expensive.
Most property owners are pleased with the designation, Tannler says, adding that it often starts them on a path to historical research. He says the program’s credibility also appears to help properties attain recognition on the National Register of Historic Places as National Historic Landmarks.
Property owners can choose not to accept a plaque from the foundation. When that happens, the site holds the designation and is listed in foundation materials, but remains unmarked. In some cases, plaques are refused by people who are reluctant to participate because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves, Tannler says.
Attention getters
Homeowners William Wakeley and Matthew Galla love the distinction that comes with living in the dream home they bought when they relocated from Palm Springs, Calif., to Munhall two years ago.
They paid $195,000 for the 107-year-old home at 518 E. 11th St., thinking it was a steal compared with the cost of real estate on the West Coast and in major cities across the country. They soon realized the house was rich in history because it is one of only two surviving structures from a group of six original Carnegie Steel Co. managers’ homes.
When neighbors told them of the home’s past, they turned to the foundation for help with research.
“It was mentioned in several books. All this history came out, and we were just floored,” Wakeley says.
They applied to the foundation’s plaque program, and their home was included in the most recent round of historic-designation awards. They’ll have a party for the official unveiling of their plaque when it is installed on the house, which also is being featured at 11 tonight in an episode of “If These Walls Could Talk” on the Home and Garden Television Network.
Wakeley, a graphic designer, took a year’s sabbatical to paint, decorate and complete some deferred maintenance on the house. He and his partner, who works at Federal Home Loan Bank, put a personal touch on the 6,000-square-foot home, which has been featured twice on the Munhall Holiday House Tour.
“We love this house,” Wakeley says. “The bones were here and the structure is wonderful, but we just wanted to make it our own. We absolutely love Pittsburgh.”
Local treasures
Fulfilling the foundation’s educational mission, its volunteer guides tell people that Pittsburgh’s historic landmarks can be found on almost every corner of the city.
“Always look up. You’ll see things up there that you won’t see below,” retired high school teacher Gabe Funaro says while leading a group of third-graders on a recent sunny morning.
Funaro leads the group from the foundation’s Station Square headquarters across the Smithfield Street Bridge and into the heart of Downtown. Along the way, he explains the meaning of historic designations, identifies types of stone and teaches the students to spot decorative gargoyles and grotesques jutting from buildings.
At the Union Trust Building, Funaro points out the historic plaque awarded in 1968 and tells the students the story of the building’s architect and its origin as one of the nation’s first indoor shopping malls. Hot, tired and preoccupied with their approaching lunch time, the students begin to fidget until Funaro takes them inside and asks them to look up.
They stop in their tracks and gasp aloud, awed at the sight of the towering spiral ceiling of the central rotunda.
“The main thing is, at this age, we just try to get them to look,” Funaro says.
And that’s the object of the plaques, Sturgess says, noting that the markers make people stop and think and look at properties that have been identified as important. Then, they might want to go inside and explore further, or they might become passionate about preservation to save these places for future generations.
“They do not build buildings the way they used to,” Sturgess says. “When a place is gone, it’s hard to revive the memories.”
Historic sites
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s Historic Landmarks Plaque Committee recently designated as historic landmarks these sites listed in order of their construction dates:
Chalfant Log House: 2716 West Hardies Road, Gibsonia, Hampton, 1832
Elm Ridge, James Gardiner Coffin/John Walker house: 1 Breck Drive, Leetsdale, 1869
W.J. Stewart/Howard Stewart house: 124 Hastings Ave., Oakdale, 1873
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (now Christian Tabernacle Kodesh Church of Immanuel): 2601 Centre Ave., Hill District, Pittsburgh, 1896
Colonial Place Historic District: Nine houses, Shadyside, 1898
Carnegie Steel manager’s house: 518 E. 11th Ave., Munhall, 1900
Armstrong Cork Co. Buildings (now the Cork Factory Lofts): 2349 Railroad St., Strip District, Pittsburgh, 1901, 1902, 1913
Elmhurst Road Historic District: Six houses, Fox Chapel, 1904-20
St. James Episcopal Church (now The Church of the Holy Cross): 7507 Kelly St., Homewood, 1905-06
Mt. Lebanon Golf Course (formerly Castle Shannon Golf Club): 1000 Pine Ave., Mt. Lebanon, 1907-08
First National Bank of Pitcairn (now commercial/rental): 500 Second St., Pitcairn, circa 1910
Central Turnverein (now Gardner Steel Conference Center, University of Pittsburgh): 130 Thackeray St., Oakland, 1911-12
H.J. Heinz Co. Buildings (five buildings, now Heinz Lofts): Progress Street, Troy Hill, Pittsburgh, 1913-27
Fox Chapel Golf Club: 426 Fox Chapel Road, Fox Chapel, 1924-25, 1931
Pythian Temple (now New Granada Theatre): 2007 Centre Ave., Hill District, Pittsburgh, 1927-28
Keystone Athletic Club (now Lawrence Hall, Point Park University): 200 Wood St., Downtown, Pittsburgh, 1928
Mt. Lebanon Municipal Building: 710 Washington Road, Mt. Lebanon, 1928-30
Southminster Presbyterian Church: 799 Washington Road, Mt. Lebanon, 1929
Edgeworth Club: 511 East Drive, Edgeworth, 1930-31
Swan Acres Historic District: Two houses, Ross, 1936
Mellon Square: Downtown, Pittsburgh, 1954-55
For more information about other properties identified by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation as historic landmarks, go to www.phlf.org.
guidelines
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation created its Historic Landmarks Plaque Program in 1968 to identify Allegheny County’s architecturally significant structures and designed landscapes. The program’s guidelines indicate that buildings, districts and landscapes may be approved for a plaque if these conditions are met:
Properties must be at least 50 years old.
They must be remarkable pieces of architecture, engineering, construction, planning or landscape design, or impart a rich sense of history. Alterations, additions or deterioration cannot have substantially decreased their value in those areas.
They are not in historic districts already bearing a plaque (unless they are of exceptional individual significance).
Robin Acton can be reached at racton@tribweb.com or 724-830-6295.