Category Archive: Preservation News
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St. Nicholas is spared, but what about its windows?
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, March 27, 2007Elsie Yuratovich was a pest, and I mean that in the most admiring and respectful way. She pestered me, she pestered the bishop, she pestered PennDOT, she pestered anyone she thought could play a role in saving St. Nicholas Church.
Thanks to Elsie, I have a voluminous file on the church, thick with photographs, postcards, anniversary booklets and her own memories written in her beautiful script. She never went to college and never took a course in public speaking, but she was the most dedicated and knowledgeable advocate the church ever had. Elsie always believed that then-Bishop Donald Wuerl would do the right thing by the church. Her faith in God and man never wavered.
So it was Elsie, who died almost two years ago at age 83, I thought of when I heard that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh was removing religious objects from the church, demolishing its altars and painting over its murals. If Elsie were still alive, this would have broken her heart.
In the life of a city, there are sadder things than the closing of a landmark church, but not many. For life-long parishioners like Elsie, whose grandparents were among the church’s founders, there is the inevitable grieving: disbelief, anger and often a profound sense of loss. For the city at large, it signals a shifting population — usually to the suburbs — and perhaps even the demolition of a building that has played an important role in its neighborhood and sometimes beyond.
St. Nicholas Church on East Ohio Street is an especially prominent one, at the foot of Troy Hill, along the Allegheny River and with three onion domes and stained glass windows that reflect the Eastern European roots of the first Croatian church in America. The church’s namesake fraternal twin — St. Nicholas in Millvale — was completed the same year, 1901, by the same architect, Frederick Sauer, but was destroyed and rebuilt after a fire in 1921.
A few days after the diocese closed the church in December 2004, it announced that it was forming a committee to study turning the church into a national Croatian shrine.
This was something that a group of former parishioners and supporters had lobbied for; they had formed the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation in 2000 to save the church, even as its fate seemed to have been sealed that year with the Route 28 expansion plans. The diocese had agreed to sell the church to PennDOT, and it would be demolished to make way for the widening of the road.
But in 2001, City Council designated the church a city historic landmark. Because the diocese opposed the designation, approval required a supermajority of council, and got it.
When PennDOT was able to draft new plans that shifted the highway toward the river to save the church, everyone who had worked and hoped and prayed for its survival breathed a sigh of relief.
Even the diocese seemed to be getting on board. A tentative sales agreement was drawn up between it and the newly formed Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance, which would buy the building and its contents for $250,000. But the deal fell apart, with the diocese and the Croatian group each blaming the other for the collapse.
For the Croatians, the ultimate deal-buster was that the diocese required that it be able to buy back the building for $100,000, even after they had completed their million-dollar transformation of the church into a shrine.
Why would the diocese insist on a non-negotiable clause it knew would be unacceptable? Why didn’t it do what Elsie always believed it ultimately would do, which was everything in its power to help the Croatians save their church?
Perhaps because a new suitor had entered the picture: the Follieri Group, an Italian development firm with ties to the Vatican that is seeking to buy and renovate Catholic church properties around the country, with limited success. But in this case, Follieri came up with a better offer — neither party is saying how much better — and the diocese accepted it. Follieri plans to purchase St. Nicholas Church and nine other buildings from the diocese.
The Croatian group still hopes to buy the church — not from the diocese, but from Follieri.
It has been disheartening to watch this unfold after the Croatian-Americans, whose national headquarters are here, worked so hard to preserve the church their ancestors built. For the diocese, the bottom line seems to be just that, the bottom line.
St. Nicholas is the only church that is a city historic landmark. After it was designated, then-City Councilman Bob O’Connor sponsored legislation, lobbied for by the diocese, stipulating that only the owner of a religious structure could nominate it as a landmark, and it passed.
But a church is never only a religious building; it is also one that speaks to the cultural and architectural heritage of a place.
The St. Nicholas windows, for example, depict the Croatian patrons Cyril and Methodius and other saints, and are the glory of the church. Sponsored by Croatian lodges around the country, which are also remembered in the glass, and made by Films Art and Glass Co. of Columbus, Ohio, they are an essential part of the church and its cultural significance.
The diocese hasn’t decided whether it will seek Historic Review Commission approval to remove the windows, which is required by canon law when a church no longer has a religious use. But what happens when canon law butts up against preservation law?
If the diocese wants to remove the windows from the church, it will need the commission’s approval. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, and that the diocese finds a way to do the right thing, for Pittsburgh, for the Croatians and for Elsie.
(Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590. )
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A fresh start for Wilkinsburg
By Marjorie Wertz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, March 25, 2007It was Col. Dunning McNair who laid out the first lots in what now is Wilkinsburg in 1790. He named his plan McNairsville and built the first mansion, Dumpling Hill.
The mansion eventually became the home of James Kelly, a wealthy businessman. Kelly bought thousands of acres and donated the land for churches, schools and two homes for senior citizens. It was Kelly who eventually would fight to make the borough independent.“Col. McNair had purchased about 266 acres, and he and Kelly developed the village,” said Jim Richard, a former borough tax collector and member of the Wilkinsburg Historical Society. Richard also is a member of the Wilkinsburg School Board.
But it was from the well-connected Wilkins family that the 2.03-square-mile borough eventually would take its name.
John Wilkins owned a lot of property in the village, while his brother, William, was a county judge, founder and first president of the Bank of Pittsburgh, legislator, state senator, minister to Russia in Tyler’s administration and, eventually, Tyler’s secretary of war.
In the 1800s, the area that became Wilkinsburg was annexed to the city of Pittsburgh. Kelly fought to make the village independent again, and, in 1871, he prevailed. Fifteen years later, on Oct. 5, 1887, Wilkinsburg was incorporated as a borough, and the community quickly grew.
The Pennsylvania Railroad laid its first tracks through the community in the mid-1800s. The Lincoln Highway would come through the borough in the early 1900s.
“We also used to have an airport in the Blackridge area of Wilkinsburg from 1930-38,” Richard said.
“Wilkinsburg was the home of a transportation network, with the highway as the main street, the railroad, and it was an early streetcar hub,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
The borough’s access to Pittsburgh’s “amenities” made it appealing. Plus, it was known as the “city of churches.” And it was, and still is, a “dry” community — no taverns or bars are allowed in the borough.
Popular home-construction styles in the borough’s heyday included Queen Anne and Romanesque (1890s), as well as Colonial Revival, Federal and Vernacular (early 1900s). Many buildings remain, forming the foundation for the borough’s rich architectural heritage.
The historical society has written a book that will be published by Arcadia Publishing on April 30. The book features 220 photographs and will be available at local bookstores and through the Wilkinsburg Public Library.
Joel Minnigh has been head librarian for 31 years. The library was founded in 1899 as a branch of the first Carnegie Library in Braddock.
“In its heyday, it was the largest library in the state,” Minnigh said. “Our first librarian was Fred Evans, whose father designed the British House of Parliament.”
According to a report by the Wilkinsburg Neighborhood Transformation Initiative in December 2004, the borough, like many Allegheny County neighborhoods, began to experience declining and aging population in the late 1960s, which led to an eroding tax base, out-migration, loss of neighborhood schools, abandoned or underutilized buildings and decaying business districts.
After the borough began to decline in the ’70s and ’80s, criminal activity increased.
Mark Smith lived in Uniontown for 10 years before moving to Wilkinsburg in 1998. Smith was director of the Wilkinsburg Chamber of Commerce from 1998-2000 and now is involved in a real estate and community-development consulting firm.
Smith bought and renovated property along Jeanette Street. His book, “Boldly Live Where Others Won’t,” resulted from his interest in community development.
“My desire has been to convince people to become property owners and live in the community as resident landlords,” Smith said. “There’s this housing stock in Wilkinsburg of larger homes that lend themselves to duplexes and small, multi-unit apartments, in which the property owner can live in one unit and rent the others.”
Smith lists three advantages to buying property in Wilkinsburg: convenience, cost and conscience.
“You can get favorable appraisals and that leads to favorable financing plans. Plus, Wilkinsburg is 10 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh and 10 minutes from Monroeville,” he said. “Wilkinsburg has its issues, but for those who have vision and willing to stick it out and become a part of the solution, there’s opportunity.”
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation became interested in Wilkinsburg because of its history and the rich architecture of its buildings.
“Residents and local government officials asked us to try and assemble a program to create reinvestment in Wilkinsburg without relocating anyone,” Ziegler said. “We have developed a multi-pronged effort, which includes the use of our preservation loan fund to help some local nonprofits restore and renovate buildings.”
Kasey Connors, a Wilkinsburg resident and owner of Vintage Reconstruction, a restoration contracting company, also is involved in the Wilkinsburg Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.
The initiative came about when a development proposal called for demolition in the Jeanette Street area.
“The community felt so strongly about the historic nature of that area, we asked Landmarks to come in and help,” Connors said. “Landmarks brought their resources to the table with consultants and held multiple community meetings focusing on the Jeanette Street corridor.”
History & Landmarks was drawn to the project because of the architectural integrity of the Jeanette Street buildings, which were built in the 1890s and early 1900s.
Three houses along Jeanette Street and one along Holland Avenue were targeted for restoration. Restoration began in summer 2006 on the three single-family homes and one owner-occupied duplex.
“The houses will have special financing that includes $10,000 in soft mortgage provided by the county government,” said Michael Sriprasert, Landmarks’ assistant for real estate programs. “The houses will cost $70,000, but the buyer will have a first mortgage of $60,000. The $10,000 soft mortgage will be deferred until the buyer sells the home. If they sell after 15 years, the soft mortgage will be forgiven.”
Funding for the restoration projects came from Allegheny County, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Hillman Foundation and others.
The homes will be available for sale in early fall. Sriprasert said buyers can customize fixtures, paint and flooring if Landmarks has an agreement of sale in April.
Ziegler said History & Landmarks also might get into a restoration project with the historic Pennsylvania Railroad Station, which was built in 1916 but has been abandoned since the 1970s.
“The county wants us to look at the train station, which we’ve looked at many times,” Ziegler added. “That’s a big commitment.”
Connors is quick to commend History & Landmarks for its efforts in the community.
“I see them as a rescuing agent,” she said. “They brought these homes up to the standards on which historic districts are based.”
Mindy Schwartz saw opportunity in the form of gardens on vacant lots.
Schwartz operates Garden Dreams Urban Farm and Nursery on two vacant lots across the street from the Holland Avenue home renovation project. The business markets specialty and heirloom seedlings, sustainable gardening supplies and vegetables. A greenhouse in her Center Street basement allows her to grow 10,000 plants, including 80 types of tomatoes.
“My garden is a green oasis in the middle of a distressed neighborhood; a patch of green where life is growing,” Schwartz said. “The farm is a fountain of regeneration, in a way. It creates good energy and is a bright spot in town. It seems to have a significant impact in the community.”
Schwartz and two friends, Barb Kline and Randa Shannon, created Grow Pittsburgh, which teaches and facilitates urban agriculture. Its two affiliates are Garden Dreams and Mildred’s Daughters Urban Farm in Stanton Heights.
“There have been a number of people redoing houses and investing in the neighborhood,” Schwartz said. “My farm has been a magnet that’s excited and engaged people and has been a contributing factor in helping people want to invest in this neighborhood.”
She is working on another project in the Hamnett Place area of Wilkinsburg. The Hamnett Homestead Sustainable Living Center will be in a building Schwartz owns. The building will be transformed into a community center and greenhouse, where she will teach people how to grow food and achieve sustainability.
For Mayor John Thompson, the changes to the community in which he’s lived for 42 years are invigorating.
“I’m excited about the positive things I see happening in Wilkinsburg,” said Thompson, who took office on Jan. 2, 2006. “We have committees working together and focusing on seven areas — economic development, municipal services, human services, communications, education, beautification and housing.”
A much-needed grocery store, Save-A-Lot, opened Feb. 20 in the borough, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Generations Building, on the corner of Wood and Franklin, took place March 14. The newly renovated structure will have offices and housing. The Sperling Building, on the corner of Penn Avenue and Coal Street, was transformed into a six- to eight-unit apartment building.
“We’re also looking at doing single-family housing projects on McNair Boulevard,” Thompson said.
In December 2006, the police department hired a new chief, Ophelia Coleman, who served as a Pittsburgh Police detective for 20 years.
“She is very community-oriented. She knows what needs to happen here in Wilkinsburg,” Thompson said. “There’s truly a lot going on in Wilkinsburg. If you can’t get excited about what’s happening now, I don’t know what it will take.”
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The history:
Wilkinsburg, which was first home to settlers in the 1700s and broke away from Pittsburgh’s eastern flank in 1871, has made its share of contributions to the region’s history.
* It was home to President John Tyler’s secretary of war.
* It was a transportation mecca in the 1800s, with the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Lincoln Highway and a streetcar system running through it.
* It was where, in 1919, the first commercial radio station, 8XK, was broadcast from the garage of Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad; the station was a forerunner to KDKA radio.
* It was birthplace, in 1920, of Scholastic Magazine, founded by Wilkinsburg native Maurice Robinson as a newsletter for high school students. Scholastic Magazine would become Scholastic Publishing, publisher of the wildly popular “Harry Potter” series.
For all the borough’s historic value, though, the past several decades have brought economic and social ills that have coincided with an eroding tax base. But within the past few years, a renaissance has begun, as residents and nonprofits work to revitalize the community.
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Old school deserves historic status
JILL HENKEL
Letter to the Editor
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Turtle Creek
Thursday, March 22, 2007On March 13, 2007, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Bureau for Historic Preservation in Harrisburg held a meeting to review the nomination of the former Turtle Creek High School to the National Register of Historic Places.
In order for a property to be considered for nomination, certain criteria need to be met. The property should be at least 50 years old, should be associated with events that have made a contribution to the broad patterns of our history, or be associated with the lives of persons significant to our past, or should embody a type, period, or method of construction.
The former Turtle Creek High School, now Woodland Hills’ East Junior High School, meets these criteria. I was fortunate to be able to speak on behalf of the nomination, which is the result of countless hours of research by dedicated volunteers. The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation offered its invaluable resources to help bring the nomination to fruition.
Also attending the nomination meeting were Woodland Hills school board President Cynthia Lowery and Superintendent Dr. Roslynne Wilson.
While I spoke in favor of the nomination, Mrs. Lowery asked the bureau to deny it! She spoke of a declining tax base in the Woodland Hills School District, and of not wanting to further burden the taxpayers therein by asking them to financially support two junior high schools.
Mrs. Lowery stated that she would like to close East. But if she truly has the taxpayers’ best interests at heart, she should be in favor of the nomination.
Owners of properties listed in the National Register may be eligible for a 20 percent investment tax credit for the certified rehabilitation of income-producing certified historic structures.
This [and available tax deductions and grants] would make the former high school very attractive to potential new owners.
If the school district wants to divest itself of this property, this building needs to be maintained accordingly. There are still costs associated with the day-to-day maintenance of a shuttered building. The school board speaks of an annual savings of more than $900,000 by closing East. Those costs will hardly drop to zero if that plan is carried through.
Mrs. Lowery spoke to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission of meeting opposition when plans for tearing down East and building a new multimillion-dollar school on the site were disclosed. Where was her concern for the fiscal burden on the taxpayer when that plan was formulated?
Mrs. Lowery stated to school board Vice President Marilyn Messina at the March 14 school board meeting that she attended the meeting in Harrisburg as a private citizen, which is untrue. She pointedly identified herself as the president of the Woodland Hills school board. One has to assume that she spoke as the president of the school board when she said, and I quote: “that the residents of Turtle Creek have been angry for 25 years because the merger forced them to desegregate.” She feels that that is the real motivation behind seeking the nomination to the National Register. I felt compelled to speak again in rebuttal. I stated in no uncertain terms the outrage that I felt at the suggestion that my fellow residents and I are racists carrying a 25-year grudge.
Despite Mrs. Lowery’s objections, The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Bureau for Historic Preservation unanimously voted that the former Turtle Creek High School be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.
I’m sure that I speak for many concerned parents and taxpayers when I ask what Mrs. Lowery’s real motivation is.
JILL HENKEL
Turtle Creek
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Strength Inc. restoring buildings, the homeless
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, March 22, 2007Donald Henson is moving out of temporary housing into a permanent residence.
The move to an efficiency apartment is a big step up from the homeless shelter in which he spent time in 2005 after losing his apartment.
Mr. Henson, 53, is not the only one in the equation to have hit bottom. The Wilkinsburg building into which he is moving was once dilapidated and in need of help.
Strength Inc., which runs human services programs in the borough, can be credited with helping both. The four-story building on Wood Street officially opened March 14 with a ribbon-cutting by officials from Strength Inc., Allegheny County and Wilkinsburg, as well as the bankers who financed the project and the contractors who did the work.
Strength Inc. provided temporary housing for Mr. Henson after he left a shelter on the North Side in 2005. While he was there, he watched as, across the street, the agency renovated the Generations Building, cleaning and pointing the stone block on the early 20th-century building and creating 15 efficiency apartments on the top three floors. The ground floor will be used for offices and businesses.
Mr. Henson’s slide into homelessness goes back to 1996, when he was working at Shuman Juvenile Detention Center while acting as a professional wrestler on the side. In the ring, he was Mohammed Abdullah from Sudan.
During a match, instead of jumping from the ropes into the ring, he fell backward onto a concrete floor. His injuries left him unable to work and he lost his apartment.
He moved into Strength Inc.’s bridge housing program as part of the organization’s life management program. There he learned budgeting and life skills, like how to interview for a job.
The agency also worked with him on managing his health problems. He said in addition to injuries to his hip and back, he suffers from heart problems.
And so, while he was rebuilding his life with Strength Inc., the agency was renovating the building that will be his home.
The Rev. Marcus Harvey, giving a tour to Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato last week, showed how the agency used $4.2 million to renovate the building. Allegheny County provided $1.2 million and the rest was raised through private financing and historic tax credits from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency.
The marble staircases have been restored. Each of the top three floors has a laundry room. Each of the apartments has a table with two chairs, a galley kitchen along one wall, a bedroom area that is not separated with a door from the rest of the apartment and a bathroom equipped with grab bars to help residents in and out of the bathtub.
In addition to the apartments, each floor also has large storage closets for each of the residents.
“This has been a big project,” Mr. Harvey said. “We do programs. We don’t do buildings.”
But for years he has worked to rehabilitate the buildings on all four corners of the intersection of Wood and Franklin streets. This one will be occupied by men and women who are agency clients, but it will be managed by ACTION-Housing Inc.
Arthur Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, said the building was built between 1900 and 1910.
“You’re looking at a historic block in an historic neighborhood,” he said to the crowd that had assembled for the ribbon-cutting. “You can see here the reservoir of architecture that can be used to rejuvenate Wilkinsburg.”
Mr. Henson said he likes living in Wilkinsburg, just two blocks from a Save-A-Lot grocery store that opened last month. His rent will be paid with 30 percent of his income from Social Security disability. The rest will be paid through the federal Section 8 program.
Ethel Crystian-Nunley, deputy director of Strength Inc., said she had her hands full working on the building from financing to construction meetings and now with renting the units.
“I’m glad it’s over,” she said. “It’s finished and it looks beautiful.”
(Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699. )
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Monessen targeting ‘blueprint’ program for business district
By Stacy Wolford
VALLEY INDEPENDENT
Wednesday, March 21, 2007MONESSEN – City council will apply for a grant as part of an effort to participate in a downtown revitalization program.
Councilwoman Mary Jo Smith prepared a grant request for $22,500 for the “Blueprint for Pennsylvania Downtowns.” The program is provided through the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities and HyettPalma, which will conduct the study.
Smith presented the proposal to council during a Monday night work session.
The “Blueprint” program is designed to provide hands-on help to city officials and community leaders interested in energizing their downtowns.
HyettPalma will start by creating a working partnership with the city by forming a process committee. The end result will be a “downtown blueprint” that provides a comprehensive strategy to reinvent the downtown economy.
Smith said the city will apply for the $22,500 grant through the state Department of Community and Economic Development. If it receives the grant, the money will be used to offset the $45,000 cost to participate in the “blueprint” program.
Smith said the program will benefit everyone in the city, not just the downtown area.
“We need a starting point and we have to have a goal to get to,” Smith said. “All of us are working and we can’t put an eight-hour day into this.
“But this is their line of expertise and they can bring a fresh new outlook into town,” she added with reference to HyettPalma.
Smith said Uniontown, Franklin Township and St. Mary’s have all participated in the “downtown blueprint” program.
Mayor Anthony Petaccia approved the grant request and said he felt the program would be beneficial for the city.
Council will meet tonight at 7 for its public meeting.
Stacy Wolford can be reached at swolford@tribweb.com or (724) 684-2640.
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Religious objects removed from historic St. Nicholas Church
By Ann Rodgers,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, March 20, 2007A crew has removed religious objects from the interior of St. Nicholas Church, North Side, a landmark building on Route 28 caught in 15 years of wrangling between the parish that no longer uses it, former parishioners who want to save it, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
On Friday the altar, statues and other religious objects were removed, and religious murals were painted over in preparation for a pending sale to the New York-based redeveloper of church properties, The Follieri Group.
Although that deal has not yet closed, a decision was made to remove the objects now because there had been a break-in at the unused rectory, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the diocese.
“We feel that it is necessary to prepare the building for sale and to safeguard those items. We met with the new pastor down there recently and determined what should be removed,” he said.
The action was devastating to Susan Petrick, secretary of the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation, which had unsuccessfully tried to arrange the building’s purchase as a shrine.
Although church authorities had told her that religious objects would be removed, “I didn’t think they were going to take it down to an empty shell,” she said.
The church sits on a death trap stretch of Route 28 that PennDOT has long wanted to widen. In 1994 the parish merged with another Croatian parish in nearby Millvale, also named St. Nicholas. While leaders of the merged parish and the diocese wanted to sell to PennDOT, people from the North Side church had it declared a historic landmark to protect its exterior. PennDOT developed a plan to widen Route 28 with the church intact. The parish continued to use the building until 2004, when a broken boiler led to its closure.
The Follieri Group is run by Catholics who specialize in renovating churches for purposes that are acceptable to the church, including affordable housing. Father Lengwin said the group has not indicated how it intends to use the St. Nicholas property.
However, canon law requires that all religious objects be removed from churches that are being put to secular use. The diocese has been aggressive about that since a church was sold intact in the 1990s for what is now The Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville.
“We’ve learned from that experience, and are very vigilant,” said the Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, director of the diocesan Department for Canon and Civil Law Services.
The altar must always be removed. If a non-Catholic group plans to use it as a church, many of the items can be left if the buyer plans to use them. But if the building will be used for secular purposes, every religious object must go, he said.
“We would take out the candlesticks and the tabernacle, statues, vestments, chalices, anything that would have been used for sacred purposes. If there are any murals that we can’t take down, they would be painted over. Basically we are selling them a building that has no religious things in it,” he said.
It will be up to St. Nicholas parish to decide what to do with the religious items, Father Lengwin said.
“We redistribute them to parishes that need them. The parish itself will determine which of those items they want to incorporate in their [Millvale] building,” he said.
Some ethnic parishes have sent items from closed churches overseas to parishes in their motherland that are still struggling to emerge from rebuilding after communism. “But that has not been decided yet. It will be up to the parish,” he said.
(Ann Rodgers can be reached at arodgers@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416. )
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Saving Brownsville: Is its history key to future?
By Robin Acton
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, March 18, 2007Hamburgers and hot dogs sizzle on the grill at Fiddle’s Confectionery, where 15 counter stools fill as the lunch crowd arrives on a brisk afternoon.
Waitresses serve steaming cups of coffee with the $3.79 pizza burger special. Dozens of customers, including Warren Galiffa, of Bethel Park, and his 100-year-old aunt, Rose Hughes, dine in booths where generations of Brownsville’s sweethearts carved their initials on the tabletops.“It’s a throwback in time,” Galiffa said. “It reminds you of the way things used to be.”
The “way things used to be” is a frequent topic in this bleak Monongahela River valley town that has bled population and businesses for decades.
Tara Hospital, the former Brownsville General Hospital, closed last year. Police and borough workers were laid off in December. In January, when a longtime lender, National City Bank, denied a $75,000 tax anticipation loan, council members begged the electric company not to shut off the town’s street lights.
“There ain’t nothing here,” said Levi Gnus, a lifelong resident. “We don’t even have a grocery store downtown.”
What’s happening in this Fayette County community is not unique. Experts say it is an example of a downward spiral common to small municipalities.
“It’s an unhappy situation, but it’s replicated all over the valley,” said Robert Strauss, a professor of economics and public policy in the Heinz School of Public Policy & Management at Carnegie Mellon University.
Like many southwestern Pennsylvania communities, Brownsville already was in decline when it suffered crippling job losses from the demise of the region’s steel mills and coal mines in the 1970s and 1980s. Families moved, college students never returned and failing businesses closed until the main thoroughfare, Market Street, became a desolate stretch of shuttered storefronts and empty lots.
In 1960, Brownsville had 6,055 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2005, death and migration cut the population to 2,690.
Between 1960 and 2005, the same thing happened all over the region. Pittsburgh’s population went from 604,332 to 316,718, while McKeesport’s dropped from 45,489 to 22,701 and New Castle’s fell from 44,790 to 25,030.
“We train people very well and then they leave,” said Albert Luloff, a professor of agricultural economics and rural sociology at Penn State University. “You can’t stop that unless we create jobs.”
Luloff and Strauss also blame Pennsylvania’s “fractured government system” for creating hundreds of municipalities with dwindling tax bases, no industry and limited means to provide services.
“It makes any effort by any community almost impossible as they’re trying to attract industries while competing with each other,” Luloff said. “They’re working at each other’s throats.”
Civil war
Brownsville’s leaders agree that something must be done, but they are at odds over a solution.
Mayor Lewis Hosler said there is a power struggle between preservationists who want to bank on Brownsville’s rich history and people who favor projects such as a proposed velodrome for Olympic-style bicycle races.
“There’s people who don’t want to see change,” Hosler said. “They want to preserve the old buildings, and a lot of them aren’t even historical.”
Leading the preservationists is former mayor Norma Ryan, a volunteer with the nonprofit Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp., who believes the town’s history is critical to its future.
Located off Route 40, the National Road, Brownsville was the first meeting site for the Whiskey Rebellion, boasts the nation’s first cast-iron bridge and is where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had a boat built for their westward exploration.
“I think people have faith that the town will come back,” Ryan said.
Records show the organization received several million dollars in state, federal and foundation grants and matching funds since 1989 that were spent on property acquisition and renovation, cultural ventures and educational purposes.
Restoration of Market Street’s Flatiron building, Frank L. Melega Art Museum and Flatiron Heritage Center is perhaps its main achievement. A store that sells clothing for historical re-enactments and a flower shop opened in its renovated buildings.
“We are slowly acquiring and renovating buildings to get the town back on track,” Executive Director Alison McConnell said. “If you have the ability to see beyond the blight, you can see the potential.”
Councilman John Hosler, the mayor’s brother, disagrees.
“Nobody’s coming here. Why should they? You can’t go downtown to buy a dress or a pair of shoes or food. You need a hub store, not a store that sells flowers or relics,” he said.
Critics contend the organization has little to show for its efforts and claim it undermines viable projects while advancing its agenda of property acquisition.
“BARC doesn’t belong in the real estate business,” said Ray Koffler, owner of Tru-Copy Printing Service.
Luloff doubts that selling history will revitalize Brownsville. He said dozens of small museums and groups are trying to do the same thing.
“These places barely survive,” he said.
Property disputes
Plans for the community have been a point of controversy for decades. Central to the dispute are Monroeville developers Ernest and Marilyn Liggett, owners of Manor Investments.
Since 1992, they’ve pumped millions into some 100 blighted properties purchased on the assumption that “mass creates opportunity,” Ernest Liggett said. Although Brownsville’s access to highways, the railroad and the river made it ideal for development, problems obtaining permits and opposition from some circles blocked their plans for riverboat gambling, an Indian casino or a retail strip mall.
Some blame the Liggetts — who fell behind on taxes and have been fined for code violations as their properties further deteriorated — for all that is wrong with Brownsville. Others say it was in trouble long before they arrived.
“It’s not these people,” said hardware store owner Pat Ballon. “All they bought was the empty buildings.”
Future plans
Ballon, Koffler, the Liggetts and others support the velodrome proposed by CB Richard Ellis, a real estate brokerage and management firm in Pittsburgh.
“I’d like to see Brownsville become to Olympic cycling what Williamsport is to Little League Baseball,” said Liggett, who envisions his properties filled with retail, hotel and office space.
Supporters are shocked that others in town question its chances for success.
“It doesn’t make sense to me why they’re not beating the cymbals, saying it’s Mardi Gras time,” Ballon said.
Frank Ricco, president of the Greater Brownsville Chamber of Commerce, said the Brownsville Free Public Library, the post office and American Legion Post 295 could be relocated from the Snowden Square area to a new civic complex to accommodate the velodrome, which would be owned by a public authority.
“There’s no question in my mind this could be the thing to save Brownsville,” he said.
Lead architect Jeff Slusarick, a principal of the Astorino firm in Pittsburgh, said CB Richard Ellis and Astorino consultants are developing plans for a project feasibility study.
Slusarick, whose firm designed Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, called the velodrome “a unique opportunity.” The 1980 Brownsville Area High School graduate has wanted to do something to help his hometown for years.
That’s the way it should be, according to Luloff at Penn State.
“When people care about each other and the place that they live, the community is alive and well. When they stop, it falls apart,” Luloff said. “If they really are interested in the best thing for the community, they’ll realize a community isn’t buildings and a community isn’t history. A community is people.”
Robin Acton can be reached at racton@tribweb.com or 724-830-6295.
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Woodland Hills school closing OK’d
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, March 15, 2007Before a standing-room only crowd last night, the Woodland Hills school board voted to begin the process of closing East Junior High School in Turtle Creek.
The vote was 6-1, with board member Robert Tomasic dissenting.
Under the plan, the 280 students at East Junior would attend school with the district’s other middle school students, at a location yet to be determined, at the start of the 2008-09 school year.
A hearing on the closing will take place in May. A final vote will be taken within three months after the hearing.
“It has to be done,” said board President Cynthia Lowery of the school closing. “We cannot afford to keep partially filled buildings open. The closing would save us $900,000 yearly in our operating budget.”
Superintendent Roslynne Wilson favors closing East, saying it “makes sense educationally and financially.”