Category Archive: Preservation News
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City of Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission Denies Application to Build Medical Facility on First Baptist Church Parking Lot
Albert M. Tannler, Historical Collections Director
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation
July 12, 2006On May 8, 2006, Landmarks published a Preservation Alert regarding a proposal by The Elmhurst Group, the developer, and architects Burt Hill to erect a ten-story “acute care hospital” on a parcel of land next to the landmark First Baptist Church, owner of the property, which has been rented for some years as a parking lot. The site is located in the National Register Schenley Farms Historic District and the City of Pittsburgh Oakland Civic Center Historic District and adjacent to the City of Pittsburgh Schenley Farms Historic District. On Wednesday, July 12, 2006, the Historic Review Commission voted on the proposed construction. By a vote of 5-2, the Commission rejected the proposal. In two weeks the City of Pittsburgh Zoning Commission will hold a similar hearing. The proposal will then be sent to Pittsburgh City Council for a final decision.
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Sign of the times in Pittsburgh
By Andrew Johnson
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 6, 2006Bayer’s neon billboard atop Duquesne Heights is the Charlie Brown of local landmarks.
It’s likeable in a hang-dog sort of way, but not really memorable or exciting. It’s just kind of up there, with little fanfare and a faded paint job that defies almost anyone to make out “P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H,” allegedly written large on the sign.“If you never went to town, you’d never know it was there,” said Frank Voch, 67, who owns the Village Dairy on Shiloh Street in Mt. Washington, on the other side of Coal Hill, a short drive from the Duquesne Heights section where the sign dwells. “I don’t ever associate that with Mt. Washington.”
But surely it must be a civic landmark, much the same way as the Hollywood sign that looks out over Los Angeles, right?
“As far as I’m aware, it’s not,” said Frank Stroker III, staff assistant of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Residents and local historians might not be lining up to take credit for the sign, but this is invariably true: The Bayer sign is the one landmark first-time Pittsburgh visitors are guaranteed to see when they attend the All-Star Game at PNC Park on Tuesday — and that’s because you can’t miss it. It’s 30 1/2 feet high and 226 1/2 feet wide. It’s as reliable as the moon in Pittsburgh at night, flashing a red neon clock, blinking a round Bayer logo and dutifully relaying nonprofits’ messages.
An estimated 250,000 people see the sign each day, according to the sign’s owner, Lamar Advertising.
“I think it’s extremely cool,” said Mark A. Ryan, spokesman for Bayer, which has leased the sign since 1993. The German company has its North American headquarters, with 1,400 employees, straddled between Robinson and North Fayette in the South Hills.
Ryan said the company looked at modernizing the sign, making it display messages during the day, but was told it would require a complete “structural change” — basically replacing the sign.
“It works,” Ryan said. So, there are no plans to change anything.
Mark Stroup, 44, of Friendship, thinks “it could use a coat of paint, or some sprucing up,” but he said there are plenty of reasons for Pittsburghers to be proud of the sign.
Stroup, who founded the Pittsburgh Signs Project, documents local signs as a kind of social record of Pittsburgh’s commercial past. Whenever a sign is so large that whole communities can see it, “it serves a positive function,” he said. The sign helps ground Pittsburgh as a distinctive, permanent place, making Pittsburghers feel at home, Stroup said.
As a bonus, “neon is perennial,” said Stroup, about a kitschy cachet the sign has acquired in old age. And if you don’t like that, the sign’s got major tread on the tires, and “people always admire things that have been there for awhile,” Stroup said.
Ken Freeman, a Lamar account executive, said records place the sign’s origin somewhere around 1928. Lamar acquired the sign in 1999.
Freeman said the sign intermittently would go for years with nobody using it. Those that have leased the billboard, memorably, through the decades: Iron City Beer in the late 1950s, and aluminum giant Alcoa for 25 years, from 1967-92.
Freeman believes it’s one of the largest neon signs in the country. Sino Land Co.’s Hong Kong sign that covers 54,175 square feet is the world’s largest, according to Guinness World Records.
The Pittsburgh sign contains a little more than one mile of neon tubing laid on galvanized steel that got its daytime quilt-like paint job in 1977, Freeman said. The sign used to be all white, but people thought it would look better painted in different colors, he said.
Freeman shrugs off the sign’s aged appearance.
You can still make out “P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H,” if you stare at it long enough, he said.
Andrew Johnson can be reached at ajohnson@tribweb.com or 412-380-5632.
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Former Mayor Tom Murphy heads into the record books (with an *)
A strange deal with the feds was the latest twist in a career that began with activism, ended with aloofness
An analysis by Dennis B. Roddy,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, July 04, 2006In a city renowned for political horse-trading, Tom Murphy preferred to travel by foot: walking door-to-door, retailing himself as a leader beyond politics, a youthful voice of reform in a town he said was slowly dying from doing things the old way.
Now, with a two-year federal probe ending in a strange agreement not to prosecute in return for Mr. Murphy’s acknowledgement that he traded a generous contract for the support of the firefighters union, a self-made reform politician goes into the record books with an asterisk.
This was a former seminarian and Peace Corps volunteer who in 1975 got chucked into the back of a police wagon when, he says, he stopped to help a group of youths who were being beaten by police.
In 1989, Mr. Murphy, then a state legislator from the North Side, came in a surprising second in the Democratic mayoral primary to incumbent Sophie Masloff, beating three others, including the favored county Controller Frank Lucchino.
Elected mayor four years later, he succeeded in building two stadiums and a new convention center. But in the course of those successes, the often aloof Mr. Murphy alienated old friends and newfound allies, finally losing both his political edge and his reformer’s label.
“The dark side of the force is strong. I don’t know how much it was Tom or how much it was the system that pushes people,” said Mark Fatla, who entered Mr. Murphy’s orbit during his days at the Community Technical Assistance Center, part of the stew of community groups with whom Mr. Murphy built his early base.
Mr. Fatla recalled Election Night 1993, when the room was filled with community activists drawn to the campaign.
“By the first re-election campaign, those persons were not active or their participation had been reduced,” Mr. Fatla said. The first signs of problems were budget cuts for community groups, he said. Later, it was access.
“I think as he became enmeshed in the bigger issues in the mayor’s office, it got harder and harder to talk to him, but it got much harder to hold his attention. And when you did talk to him you got the sense that his mind was already made up, that he wasn’t open any longer to what you were telling him. I think that was the change,” Mr. Fatla said.
To many who saw the transformation, Mr. Murphy’s disaster was caused by his straying from his political base and embracing another — the more traditional city politics with which he never felt comfortable and whose practitioners never quite accepted him.
Mr. Murphy and his chief lieutenant, Executive Secretary Tom Cox, cut their teeth as North Side community developers. In the idealistic atmosphere of the early 1970s, he should have fit in — but didn’t.
“Tommy was not a reformer. Tommy was a loner. There’s a big difference,” said Bob Cohen, a Shadyside consultant who preceded Murphy as director of the North Side Civic Development Council.
Tom Murphy was first elected a state representative in 1978. Mr. Cohen, who now advises clients in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, views Mr. Murphy’s management style as both his strength and weakness. Appointed to the chairmanship of the Insurance Committee in the state House, Mr. Murphy disappointed party leaders by refusing to raise campaign funds from lobbyists who did business with the committee, a long-standing Harrisburg practice Mr. Murphy found repugnant. Caucus politics did not interest him.
“Tommy was the world’s worst politician,” said Mr. Cohen.
In 14 years as a state representative, Mr. Murphy strengthened his reputation as a neighborhood builder, but never became a coalition builder.
Instead of making the Harrisburg tavern circuit, where lobbyists and legislators share drinks and ambitious legislators map out deals, Mr. Murphy’s work in the house was literal. He spent his evenings rehabbing a rundown house he co-purchased with four other members for $4,000 at 1616 Green St. in Harrisburg.
“He would stay back and work on that house. He wanted the neighborhood to look better,” said Allen Kukovich, one of the residents at 1616 Green.
Mike Dawida, another legislator who entered the House the same year as Mr. Murphy, and with whom he aligned himself politically, recalled his colleague as an idealist capable of spotting important policy issues, but not adept at working the legislative levers to bring them about.
“He wasn’t always good at working with the Legislature. Others would have to take up the ideas,” Mr. Dawida said.
Mr. Murphy’s biggest weakness, Mr. Dawida said, was a failure to listen.
“Reformers tend to be people who listen. He didn’t cultivate that talent very well,” Mr. Dawida said. “It got a lot worse in the mayor’s office.”
Dan Cohen, who served on City Council during Mr. Murphy’s tenure as mayor, remembers a man who rarely initiated contacts on his own.
“There was an aloofness,” said Mr. Cohen, who now works as a telecommunications lawyer. “Was Tom a politician? Not as we typically use the term. He was the anti-politician.”
That anti-politician posture would sometimes frustrate Mr. Murphy’s supporters. His staff would sometimes be frustrated that, during fund-raisers, the mayor didn’t seem to know who his biggest donors were.
For that matter, he didn’t always know when his fund-raising events were scheduled, said Sal Sirabella, deputy mayor under Mr. Murphy.
On one occasion, Mr. Sirabella recalls Mr. Murphy returning from a run and saying, ” ‘You know what? I think we have a fund-raiser tomorrow. Isn’t it great that we don’t even know when our fund-raisers are?’ ”
Some Democratic ward leaders gradually became disenchanted. “The only time he knew my name was when he was up for re-election,” said Barbara Ernsberger, who has chaired Shadyside’s 7th Ward Democratic Committee since 1994 and who was elected city Democratic chair during Mr. Murphy’s administration.
She recalls putting in a phone call to the mayor’s office to suggest a meeting between Mr. Murphy and the Democratic committee.
“I was told we were not on his agenda,” she said.
A partnership with Allegheny County Commissioners Mike Dawida and Bob Cranmer helped Mr. Murphy build two new stadiums and a convention center. That, too, frayed.
One notable moment came Sept. 29, 1998, when government buildings along Grant Street were evacuated when an unexplained noxious odor wafted through. City and county emergency officials didn’t communicate with each other, even though they shared some of the same buildings. The ensuing turf battle between the city and county climaxed when Mr. Murphy announced he was calling off plans to merge the city’s 911 center with Allegheny County’s.
Mr. Dawida was stunned by the reaction.
“I guess what I’m saying is there were these issues that popped up from time to time when a little bit of listening would have done the guy some wonders,” Mr. Dawida said.
Relations with City Council were strained, thanks to both fiscal constraints and Mr. Murphy’s infrequent communication with council, said Dan Cohen.
Then came the publicly financed construction of two new stadiums despite taxpayer resistance, and the mayor’s controversial effort to revitalize Downtown’s Fifth and Forbes retail district.
Mr. Murphy wanted to seize properties and turn them over to a Chicago developer. “We asked for an open process, and in fact it was a closed process,” said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. A Murphy enthusiast in 1994, Mr. Ziegler joined the many vocal critics of the Fifth and Forbes plan.
Mr. Dawida sees Fifth and Forbes as the turning point leading to Mr. Murphy’s slide.
“He had invested a lot of his capital in it because the Downtown of Pittsburgh was always a kind of showplace,” Mr. Dawida said. “It was the public perception that this was a very important thing and then it never happened.”
When retailer Nordstrom pulled out, Mr. Murphy abandoned the plan. But with his neighborhood base disenchanted, and his foes energized, the mayor had to build a new base.
He reached out to firefighters.
In April 2001, Mr. Murphy attended a meeting at Larry’s Roadhouse with his campaign manager David Caliguiri, Arlington neighborhood activist Michele Balcer and Pittsburgh Fire Fighters Local 1 President Joseph King.
On April 30, Mr. King wrote to union members that he’d reached agreement with the city on contract basics that would preserve jobs and raise wages between 4 percent and 8 percent. Mr. King later estimated that the raises would have cost the city $10 million to $12 million over four years, had the deal not been trimmed after 2002.
At around the same time, the 870-member union switched its endorsement from then City Council President Bob O’Connor to Mr. Murphy.
“I told Tom at the time I thought it was a bad deal. But he didn’t often listen,” Mr. Dawida said.
Mr. Sirabella doesn’t think the fire union’s endorsement decided the 2001 primary, which Murphy won by 699 votes.
Nonetheless, had 350 people — firefighters or otherwise — moved from Mr. Murphy’s to Mr. O’Connor’s column, the former wouldn’t have had to contend with a budget meltdown and, presumably, last week’s odd settlement that suggested Mr. Murphy had done something if not indictable, at least wrong.
To some old friends, it seems almost as if Mr. Murphy’s lack of skill in the kinds of insider dealing he so flatly rejected starting with his Harrisburg days, might have left him unprepared for the junctures at which politics and governance sometimes merge.
“It would seem to me that there are some people who might be what’s described as wheeler-dealers in political jargon, who might know how to handle those situations better, perhaps, than someone who’s not used to figuring out how to deal with tough contracts when there’s an election coming up,” said Mr. Kukovich. “It takes someone with rare skill. For someone who’s not adept at that sort of thing, I guess it can be a problem.”
It remained for Mr. Dawida to sum up the paradox of his old friend: “He was bullheaded, stubborn and opinionated. But he wasn’t ever dishonest. This kind of thing implies that he was and he wasn’t.”
(Staff writer Rich Lord contributed. Dennis Roddy can be reached at 412-263-1965 or droddy@post-gazette.com. )
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Carnegie Library repairs pegged at $2M
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, July 3, 2006A lightning bolt that struck the clock tower of the Allegheny Regional branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in April caused at least $2 million in damage to the historic North Side building.
The repair cost will be covered by insurance, library spokeswoman Suzanne Thinnes said.Library officials have been working with the city, which owns the building and leases it to Carnegie Library, to come up with specifications for repairs. Officials do not know when work will begin. The library has been closed since the lightning strike.
The lighting, which hit the building at 5 Allegheny Square about 8 p.m. April 7, exploded a pyramid-shaped portion at its top, blasting gaping holes in the roof.
A chunk of granite weighing several hundred pounds ripped into the second-floor lecture hall, imbedding itself — point first — in the floor. A piece of stone weighing about 2,000 pounds had to be pulled out of the attic, where it wiped out the building’s heating and cooling system.
Water lines also were damaged, sending a stream cascading through parts of the building. The building was closed at the time, and nobody was injured.Library patrons, who have been without a facility for nearly three months, soon will have access to the library in the Woods Run section, which has been closed for renovations.
“We don’t have an exact date yet. We should be opening (Woods Run) early in July,” Thinnes said.
Library officials have had no luck finding a temporary replacement for the North Side library, Thinnes said.
“We’ve looked at probably 20 buildings, but none of them was suitable,” she said. The space would not have to be as big as the 42,000 square feet that was lost, but it must be wired for Internet use and be accessible to people with physical disabilities.
The Allegheny Regional branch was the fourth most-visited library in the Carnegie network, Thinnes said. Last year, it circulated 76,000 items and had more than 96,000 visits.The branch has about 100,000 items in its collection.
The building also was used to store historic collections, including directories, meeting minutes, photos and newspaper clippings of Allegheny City, a portion of the North Side that existed as a city separate from Pittsburgh until 1906. A private company has been hired to make sure those rare documents are protected, Thinnes said.
Despite the extensive damage to the building, none of the library’s collection was damaged.
The Romanesque-style building, which opened in 1890, was designated a historic landmark by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in 1970. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7987.
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Book salutes closed school – Pupils take their memories with them
By Al Lowe
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Thursday, June 29, 2006Jonah Bayer, 10, of Allentown, remembers the bowling alley as the “coolest place” at Bishop Leonard School.
The school closed June 7 and will merge with St. Mary of the Mount in Mount Washington, opening Aug. 28.
Bishop Leonard in Mount Oliver was formed from a previous merger, and is affiliated with St. John Vianney parish. Like St. Mary, it served pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade.
The Diocese of Pittsburgh said the name of the merged school is Bishop Leonard-St. Mary of the Mount Academy. Pupils will go to the St. Mary building on Bingham Street in Mount Washington.
On the last day, copies of a book, “Bishop Leonard Memories,” compiling their contributed written memories, were distributed to the 224 pupils. Jonah’s memories were among them.
“The kids were really excited taking away something with such good memories of their school,” Principal Cindy Baldridge said.
The bowling alley was a favorite memory for many.
“Not too many grade schools have them,” wrote Nina Ricciardi, 11, of South Side. “From the outside, it looks really small, but inside, you can tell how big it is. It’s really big for the kind of space it is in.”
The four-lane alley had been unused for years but was refurbished in 2004 through the efforts of teacher Patty Nelson and other volunteers and was dedicated a year later as a recreation center, featuring air hockey and ping-pong tables. It was used for occasional gym classes, Spirit Days and the Bowling Club.
Some other memories shared by the pupils for the book:
“I experienced everything from scraped knees to a broken heart on that playground,” wrote Maegan Wagner, 13, of Mount Oliver.
“My favorite building is the cafeteria. I love food,” wrote Brandon Lewis, 12, of Arlington.
“What people don’t usually notice is the engraved statue [of St. Joseph] near the front door of the school. When I first came to this school in fourth grade, that was the first thing I noticed. I stared at it and it stared back at me. In seventh grade, we had to make a poem and picture about something. I found that same beautiful, detailed, though faded and chipped statue to draw,” recalled Jami Szalla, 12, of South Side.
“The squeaking bleachers have a vibration. I like it when it does that because at Mass, I get tired and it wakes me up,” wrote Dillon Secilia, 11, of Bon Air.
“I’ll miss the church, the lunchroom with the big windows, the creaky floors, the so-so view of downtown from Room 408, the stairs never ending, the long hallways and, most of all, the school,” wrote Jamie Miller, 12, of South Side.
“My favorite part of the school was the tunnel that connects the school to the cafeteria. I know no other school will have a tunnel,” wrote Dustin Miller, 10, of Bon Air.
“The most meaningful spot for me would have to be the four seats in the cafeteria. Every lunch, my friends and I shared laughs, gossip and, of course, lunches there. We would torture each other and never hold a grudge. We didn’t care who else was at the table or what was going on around us. We were in our world,” wrote Drew Miller, 13, of Bon Air.
The books were underwritten by PNC and were published by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, with funding support from South Side Local Development Co.’s Neighborhood Assistance Program/Compehensive Service Program and the Grable Foundation.
(Al Lowe is a freelance writer. )
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Drive-through proposal prompts turnout
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, June 29, 2006Opponents of a proposed Walgreens drive-through in Point Breeze blasted developers and urged City Council to reject a request to alter zoning laws that would permit three 100-year-old homes to be demolished for the project.
“We want to see viable, creative development in our neighborhood, not a condescending lesson about what is good or bad for it,” said Bill Anthes, who recently moved to Pittsburgh with his wife to pursue a doctoral degree at Carnegie Mellon University.Protesters packed a meeting Wednesday at the City-County Building, Downtown, waving fluorescent red and green placards that said, “Don’t Re-Zone Park Place.” Resident Joan Rabinowitz handed out freshly baked cookies bearing the same slogan.
Park Place residents said rezoning the site at Penn and South Braddock avenues would drive down property values and hurt the character of the neighborhood, where many homes are 100 years old. Paradise Development Group wants to demolish three houses for a two-lane drive-through developers say will alleviate traffic congestion.
City planners voted to allow the rezoning. Council will decide next week whether to approve it, said Council President Luke Ravenstahl.
Brandon Miles, a project manager in Pittsburgh for the Tampa, Fla.-based Paradise Development Group, said he has tried to accommodate Park Place residents’ concerns and has worked to meet city code requirements for the project. Paradise has signed letters of intent with the three families to sell the homes that would be razed, Miles said.
“We’ve worked to protect the welfare and integrity of the neighborhood,” Miles said.
Asked what might happen if council rejects the rezoning, Miles said he was “reserving judgment until a decision is made.”
Arnold Horovitz, a land-use attorney representing the Greater Park Place Neighborhood Group, said residents don’t necessarily oppose a Walgreens in the neighborhood, just the drive-through.
The demolition, he said, would be “out of character with the neighborhood.”
Arch Pelley, an urban planner who attended the hearing, said the issue comes down to compromise.
“The question is, ‘What is the best way to develop this site?’ ” he said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5625.
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Store plan draws ire
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, June 27, 2006Angered by a developer and the city’s planning process, people fighting a proposed drive-through for a Walgreens drug store in Point Breeze plan to attend a special City Council meeting Wednesday.
Their opposition centers on the fact that the two-lane, 24-hour drive-through for the Penn Avenue store would eliminate three Victorian homes in the neighborhood’s Park Place section.“Number one, the drive-through is not necessary. And two, we fear the loss of the residential properties will be a serious detriment to the neighborhood,” said John Mayberry, president of the Greater Park Place Neighborhood Association.
Council will hold a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. and will vote next month whether to approve zoning that would allow the store to be built. The Planning Commission has recommended the rezoning.
Opponents also are riled about planning commissioner Todd E. Reidbord’s role in the process.
Reidbord is president of Walnut Capital, a Shadyside investment company that previously developed a property that had Walgreens as its anchor tenant, raising concerns about conflict of interest, said Arnold Horovitz, an attorney representing Mayberry’s civic group. Reidbord did not disclose his previous affiliation with the drug-store chain when the Planning Commission considered the plan, and he shouted down and cut short residents when they tried to voice their opposition, said Horovitz and others who attended the meeting. Reidbord voted to recommend rezoning April 4, when the commission backed the move 7-1.
“Our real problem was his attitude at the previous meeting when he tried to stop opponents from speaking,” Horovitz said. “It was an aggressive effort to control the meeting because opponents couldn’t make their case.”
Reidbord did not return calls for comment.
City Planning Director Patrick Ford deemed the concerns regarding Reidbord valid.
“The community is correct. (Reidbord) should have recused himself and disclosed the conflict,” Ford said, referring to Reidbord’s company.
Ford said the conflict-of-interest issue would be discussed at Wednesday’s hearing and that “a number of residents” complained about Reidbord’s behavior in the meeting.
City planning staffers recommended approving the zoning change to the Planning Commission, Ford said.
Park Place resident Jim Hart said the integrity of the neighborhood would be affected if the three antique homes are torn down.
“We have to take a stand now, before it’s too late,” Hart said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5625.
Back to headlines
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South Side wins national preservation award
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, June 19, 2006The South Side has received one of three national awards for transforming its economy while preserving its history.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized the neighborhood, along with Dubuque, Iowa, and Roslindale Village, Mass., with an Urban Pioneer award at a recent Main Street conference in New Orleans.
All three winners were among the first seven Main Street designees when the program was established in 1985. About two decades earlier, the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation had begun agitating for historic restoration for the South Side.
“We began to educate residents on the importance of what was under their aluminum siding and InsulBric,” said Cathy McCollom, chief programs officer with Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “We held a lot of meetings and went door to door.”
Architect John Martine bought a building on Carson Street in 1974, one year after establishing his practice in Oakland, and lived above his office, across from the Birmingham Bridge. The South Side wasn’t languishing then. The chamber of commerce membership included Jones & Laughlin and U.S. Steel.
“But people were not flocking to the South Side, and it was an area people didn’t see as an investment,” said Mr. Martine. It had traditional merchants — a five-and-dime, clothing and appliance stores, bakeries — but by the late ’70s, artists and antiques shops started to appear, “to some extent what is happening in Lawrenceville today,” he said.
“Storefronts had undergone lots of remuddling,” he said, “with some very unsympathetic things done to the ground-floor facades” — garish signs, small windows. The chamber established a committee to campaign for facade restorations and the city authorized paying Mr. Martine $50 a building for historic renderings for merchants.
“We did get a number of people to fix up their storefronts at their own cost,” he said. In fact, merchants spent a collective $200,000, with which the chamber leveraged a matching grant from the city for streetscape improvements. The Birmingham mural at 12th Street, a mid-block parklet across from the post office and brick handicap ramps resulted, from 10th to 24th streets.
Mr. Martine then produced a booklet, “Streetfront and Storefront: A Planning Guide for East Carson Street,” a design and marketing tool, he said, “to get people to invest.”
New residents began teaming with longtime residents to form the Birmingham Union, which lasted about six years, “long enough to get things going.”
South Side Local Development Co. was established in 1982 to counteract the increasing number of vacant buildings in the twilight of steel and two years later won Carson Street a place on the National Register of Historic Places. The Main Street designation came the next year.
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette