Category Archive: Preservation News
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Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Announces New Markets Tax Credit Allocation
March 24th, 2003
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation was recently informed that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in a national competition for New Markets Tax Credits, has received $127 million in tax credit allocations.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation worked with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to apply for the New Markets Tax Credit allocation in a program that could help develop businesses to assist disadvantaged neighborhoods, many of which contain significant historic buildings.
The Trust’s award was the sixth largest in the United States of 345 applications. The median award was $38 million in tax credits.
The reviewers of the proposal at the Treasury Department commended the National Trust submission because it was one of the few that contained letters of commitments from banks nationally and in Pittsburgh and had a significant leverage factor through the use of the Preservation Loan Fund of the National Trust as well as the Loan Fund of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, and increased that leverage by combining it with the Historic Tax Credit of 20%.
The New Markets Tax Credit program was enacted in 2001. It is meant to leverage $15 billion over the next ten years and it is targeted to be used for investments in commercial enterprises in low census track areas.
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Buffalo Mayor Launches Pittsburgh Inspired Preservation Plan
The Buffalo News recently reported that the Mayor of Buffalo, Mayor Anthony M. Masiello, has created a committee to devise a citywide plan for preservation that will launch with an inventory of the city’s historic buildings and recommend a broader, more community-based approach to preservation. The committee also will work on a strategy for cultural tourism and for improved relations with real estate developers.
Mayor Masiello credits this new appreciation of preservation to a new program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation which launched last June with Buffalo city hall representatives, preservationists, architects and developers visiting with members of the preservation community in Pittsburgh. The exchange was hosted by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and underwritten by the National Trust.
The first community exchange of this program, it took place over four days last June, with an influential group of city hall representatives, including the Mayor of Buffalo, visiting members of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Pittsburgh city officials and civic leaders including Mulu Birru, executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority who led the visitors on a tour of the Crawford-Roberts development in the Hill. The group also met with Mayor Tom Murphy to discuss issues of urban development and the approach to preservation in Pittsburgh.
“ We are pleased that the participants in this exchange were able to assimilate valuable information and that this participation led to the implementation of a preservation plan in the City of Buffalo,” said Arthur Ziegler, President. “We enjoy learning from others and are glad to share our experiences here with them and to have such a group of leaders visit
Pittsburgh.”Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation was founded in 1964 as a non-profit preservation organization serving Allegheny County. Its purpose is to identify and preserve architectural landmarks, historic neighborhoods, and historic designed landscapes in Allegheny County and to educate people about this region’s architectural heritage and urban and landscape design history.
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Oakdale Boys Home Planning Moves Ahead
At the request of South Fayette Township, PHLF has agreed to work with the community and match dollars to develop a land preservation and possible housing development plan for the 217 acre Oakdale Boys Home site. No buildings exist on the site today except a gymnasium which we plan to study for a new use for the community.
The goals of the project include preserving the farming on the site, creating trails and park land, and possibly some housing development with minimal land disruption. The Steering Committe has agreed to invite Randall Arendt of the National Lands Trust to establish guidelines for the development and will appoint a consulting team when Mr. Arendt’s report has been received.
Alex Graziani of the Smart Growth Partnership is also helping in the initial effort with Mr. Arendt. We hope to establish model land use for Southwestern Pennsylvania through this joint effort. Funds from our Farm Preservation program established by the Richard King Mellon Foundation are being utilized for this effort.
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Pitt wants to clean Cathedral
By Bill Zlatos
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, June 19, 2003After more than 60 years of wearing a coat of soot, the Cathedral of Learning may get scrubbed if the University of Pittsburgh can raise $3.5 million.
“When people come from other places, they say, ‘What a magnificent building. It would be great if you can clean it,” said Ana Guzman, associate vice chancellor of facilities management.And the cleanser that Pitt would use to remove that grime would be the same stuff people use to bake a batch of cookies or brush their teeth: Baking soda.
The cleaning idea is part of Pitt’s $1 billion capital campaign to spruce up the campus. Since the summer of 1995, it has spent $516.4 million renovating buildings. The university already has removed the dirt from Thackeray Hall, Schenley Quadrangle, the Stephen Foster Memorial and the old Masonic Temple.
Now it wants to hose down its most visible building.
“It’s the flagship of the University of Pittsburgh,” Guzman said. “It’s the physical identity of the university in Oakland. You can see it for miles away. It’s a national monument.”Pitt gets no argument about the significance of the Cathedral from architecture lovers.
“It’s a landmark to education well-known throughout the nation as well as architecture lovers around the world,” said Louise Sturgess, executive director of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
Sturgess endorses cleaning the Cathedral but said some Pittsburgh buildings look better in black. She cites Trinity Cathedral, Downtown, as an example.
“The sandstone has absorbed all the Pittsburgh soot and grime since the building was constructed in 1870 and has turned a rich velvety black,” she said of Trinity Cathedral. “It’s a wonderful contrast to the neighboring buildings clad in terra cotta.”
Cleaning the Cathedral of Learning will help preserve it, said Angelique Bamberg, the city’s historic preservation planner. The Cathedral was built to last 300 years.
“Soot is not good for masonry,” Bamberg said. “It’s pollution, dirt and grime that has built up over many years from many sources.”
She said Pitt would have to apply to the Historic Review Commission to remove the dirt, but the panel routinely approves such requests.
The Cathedral of Learning, named by a draftsman, was built between 1926 and 1937 under then-Chancellor John Bowman. He wanted to construct the biggest classroom building in the world as a symbol of aspiration for Pittsburgh’s working class, said architecture historian Walter C. Kidney.
“They could go to the University of Pittsburgh, get an education and improve their life,” he said.
Although the Mellons donated the 14-acre site, 97,000 schoolchildren anted up a dime each to help pay for construction. The building was built from Indiana limestone and a steel frame encased in concrete.
The 42-story building houses 2,000 classrooms and occupies 9 million cubic feet of space.
The Cathedral, Kidney said, is bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. That pyramid sits on 13 acres and is 450 feet tall. The Cathedral occupies 14 acres and rises 535 feet.
Pitt has a lot of scrubbing to do.
The university tested different methods for removing the dirt. Pitt decided against acids because they could etch the metal, and the runoff could kill grass and other vegetation.
Sandblasting also is taboo, Bamberg said. It can erode the surface of the masonry, damage the mortar that binds the blocks and erase ornamental carvings.
Pitt tested baking soda on the building and liked the results.
“It’s a mild abrasive,” Guzman said. “That’s why it works on teeth.”
A section of the building that has been cleaned reveals the tan limestone with orange streaks of iron, and silver aluminum panels that had been hidden by the soot.
No work will start on the building’s exterior until Pitt raises the $3.5 million it will cost to clean it, Guzman said.
Al Novak, interim vice chancellor of institutional advancement, and his staff are brainstorming ways to raise the money that harken back to the campaign for the building’s construction.
One popular idea is giving Pitt’s 200,000 living alumni a chance to clean a part of the building. But Pitt hasn’t decided how much an alum would have to give and what size of spot they would get to clean.
Another idea is trying to figure out what the students’ dimes from the Depression would be worth in today’s dollars and asking for that amount now.
“It’s such an inspiring story,” Novak said. “We want to do that first story justice.”
Bill Zlatos can be reached at bzlatos@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7828.
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DeSantis makes historic exit – Ends 13 stormy years as Historic Review Commission chief
By Patricia Lowry,
Post-Gazette Architecture Critic
Thursday, March 13, 2003After more than a decade calmly presiding over hundreds of impassioned, tearful, angry, thunderous, cajoling and cantankerous testimonies before the city Historic Review Commission, John DeSantis marked his 150th meeting as chairman of the commission with a low-key agenda of routine reviews.
It was also his last.
“I can honestly say in 13 years, I have not one regret, and I don’t regret leaving,” DeSantis said in brief farewell remarks to the commission after yesterday’s monthly meeting. “I am not in the least bit concerned about the kind of decisions that will come from the commission.”
In an interview, DeSantis would not say whether his departure was his idea or Mayor Tom Murphy’s.
“That’s something I’d rather not get into,” DeSantis said. “That would place one or the other of us with pulling the trigger, and it’s really not that way. It’s by mutual consent.”
Murphy could not be reached for comment.
An articulate, outspoken and sometimes controversial chairman, DeSantis brought leadership and direction to the foundering commission after Mayor Sophie Masloff tapped him to head it in 1990. A preservation activist, DeSantis was a surprise choice for the Masloff administration, which was perceived as being anti-preservation.
“People assumed I was being appointed to dismantle the system,” DeSantis said.
Instead, with the support of Masloff and her top aide, lawyer Joseph Sabino Mistick, DeSantis led the commission and the city to a new “state-of-the-art” preservation ordinance written by consultants who fine-tuned it for a city with a legacy of historic buildings and a history of divisive designation battles.
“Politically there was a sense that maybe the city would be better off without a preservation ordinance and there was consideration in the administration of repealing it. I was advocating against that. Their response was, ‘Would you be willing to do something about it?'”
DeSantis said he remembers Mistick saying, “There are going to be days when I will sit at my desk with my head in my hands and say, ‘Why did I put him there?’ And there will be days when I will sit at my desk and say, ‘Thank God I put him there.'”
“I’ve had both those kinds of days,” Mistick, now a Duquesne University law professor, said yesterday, laughing. “I think he’s done an excellent job in an arena in which it is extraordinarily difficult to do a good job.
“I would not be surprised if certain powerful entities would be happy to see him leave that position because he’s eloquent and zealous. When I was chairman of the zoning board, I used to call him the best land use attorney in Pittsburgh, and, of course, he’s not a lawyer.”
An Allegheny West resident and vocal community activist who saw preservation as a tool for revitalization, DeSantis was among the pioneers who, in the 1970s and ’80s, helped return that deteriorating neighborhood to its late-19th century status as one of the city’s most desirable places to live. DeSantis, who had nominated Allegheny West as a city historic district, was a familiar figure then at meetings of the zoning board and planning and historic review commissions.
But the activism that gave him a broad education in the politics of preservation also made him a controversial choice to head the commission.
“I don’t think you’re very reasonable,” then-City Councilman Jim Ferlo told DeSantis at his confirmation hearing in August 1990.
DeSantis proved to be not only reasonable, but a master of the art of compromise who time and again urged conflicting parties back to the table to work out solutions. And Ferlo himself, within a few years, became City Council’s most ardent supporter of historic preservation and a co-founder of the advocacy group Preservation Pittsburgh.
“The landscape has changed,” DeSantis said. “Preservation Pittsburgh became a good and regular voice for advocacy and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation returned to its roots” and once again became an advocacy group. “And we have a body of things that are protected.”
During DeSantis’ tenure, the number of city-designated historic districts grew from five — Market Square, Manchester, Mexican War Streets, Penn Liberty and Schenley Farms — to 12, with the addition of Allegheny West, East Carson Street, Oakland Civic Center, Deutschtown, Allegheny Commons, Alpha Terrace and Murray Hill Avenue.
He also oversaw creation of the Pittsburgh Register of Historic Places, adopted by the commission in 1993 — a comprehensive list of buildings the city deems worth saving but are not necessarily designated historic.
But DeSantis also agreed to the demolition of more than half of the Market Square historic district to make way for Murphy’s ill-fated Market Place at Fifth and Forbes project. DeSantis said he brokered an agreement between the city and its developer to save 13 historic facades at a time when all of the buildings were targeted for demolition.
Still, many preservation advocates were deeply disappointed and believed his vote came at the urging of the mayor. DeSantis said neither the Murphy nor Masloff administrations ever tried to influence his decisions.
“We were sometimes confused about exactly what the standards of the commission are, but that’s not just a responsibility of the chairman,” Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation President Arthur Ziegler said yesterday. “We do think he is a dedicated preservationist and gave a great deal of effort to a civic volunteer responsibility.”
DeSantis, who is director of the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show, said he isn’t sure how he’ll spend the 30 to 40 hours he devoted to commission business each month, but will continue to play an active role in preservation.
“I’m kind of looking forward to being an Indian and not a chief.”
Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Landmarks Partners With Manchester Citizens Corporation in Neighborhood Transformation Initiative
On March 12, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (Landmarks) in partnership with the Manchester Citizens Corporation (MCC) presented the Manchester Neighborhood Transformation Initiative to the Historic Review Commission (HRC) at its monthly meeting. The report represents the culmination of several months work by MCC and Landmarks to access, inventory, and recommend action on 162 abandoned buildings and vacant parcels of land in Manchester.
The organizations began this work when the City appeared to be advocating demolition of many of these abandoned buildings. The neighborhood felt that a closer examination of each of the buildings was needed prior to demolition and the HRC urged the neighborhood to look at these buildings as part of a total plan rather than as individual units.
As a result of this report, MCC and Landmarks made the following recommendations:
1. Ninety-two buildings are recommended for restoration;
2. Thirty-four buildings are recommended for demolition;
3. Twenty vacant parcels are recommended for in-fill new construction;
4. Twelve abandoned buildings are recommended for demolition followed by in-fill new construction;
5. Four buildings should have façade and parcel restorations.The total cost for restoration and demolition is approximately at $24 million. It is estimated that 66% most come from private sources.
An initial review by the City was enthusiastically positive and the City has expressed the hope that other neighborhoods will model this approach.
Over the next several weeks, MCC with continuing assistance from Landmarks will hold neighborhood meetings to further involve the community as the program moves forward.
Next steps also include verifying cost estimates, further visits with city
officials and private funding sources to determine the level of funding
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To the Point: A prayer for preservation – Religious groups argue for a bad exemption
By John G. Craig Jr., Editor
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Sunday, March 02, 2003If you have read the editorial page lately, you know that the Post-Gazette is not a fan of a measure passed 6-2 by City Council last week that would exempt structures used for worship from key provisions of the Pittsburgh ordinance designed to protect historic structures and neighborhoods.
The key change would be a prohibition on nomination of any place of worship for protection as a historic building that did not come from the religious group that owned it. Under current law, any individual or institution can make nominations to the Historic Review Commission and the commission, in turn, can recommend to City Council that the designation be made law. Owners do not have either to make the nomination or to agree with it, though they can argue against it.
The newspaper thinks Mayor Murphy should veto the law and send it back to council for refinement. Surprise, surprise; so do I.
To get right down to it, historic preservation laws cost private property owners money. The government is telling a citizen what she can and can’t do with her property. If the building is registered as historic, or is located in a district that is registered as historic — the Mexican War Streets, where I lived and owned property for many years, is one such — you are stuck.
Want to replace the windows? The new windows do not have to be an exact duplicate of what was there, but the next closest thing to it. The same goes for everything else about the exterior. Maintenance costs you money; sometimes it can be a great deal of extra money if the materials involved are tin and slate and tile. There are some tax benefits for registered buildings that offset these extra expenses, but they do not fully cover them. At the end of the day, the government’s historic preservation laws use up dollars that citizens could spend for other purposes.
I dwell on this because the representatives of religious organizations lobbying for the exemptions make much of it. This is not a position that is unique to them; libertarians make a similar argument. The government is “taking” property without compensation.
Because the law on this subject is well settled and not in the libertarians’ favor — historic structures have been protected throughout the United States for decades without governmental subsidy — the local group takes a different tack:
We are a special case, they argue, different from all other Pittsburgh property owners, nonprofit or not. We are religious organizations protected by the First Amendment. When you require us to spend dollars on buildings, you are taking away dollars that could be used for social purposes or for worship. That is a violation of church-state protections.
It is an effective political argument. Given the large body of law on preservation, it is doubtful, however, that it will pass muster in federal court if this ordinance goes into effect and someone challenges it, which they will. But that aside, what is at issue here, in my view, is not the burden of extra costs in taking care of structures, but the freedom to sell them to others or to tear them down and use the land for a new purpose.
The petitioners deny this. They argue that they are not concerned about exemptions for church property that is not being used for worship or for buildings that were once active mosques, synagogues or churches and are now empty and closed. They want to be the sole designee only for buildings that are being used for worship now and will be used for worship going forward. They say they are making a First Amendment argument only for them.
I am skeptical about this, because I think the targets of this initiative are campaigns by citizens to register closed churches (or churches scheduled for closing) so they cannot be sold to developers and torn down. I say this because the law as passed by council does not make clear a distinction between a still-being-used-as-a-church and a closed-down-church. This, alone, is reason for the mayor to veto the ordinance and send it back for refinement.
When he does that, it would be good if he took up a suggestion by Councilman Sala Udin that government have a larger role in the nominating process. I do not believe the government alone should identify and nominate, but I do think procedures in Pittsburgh, as opposed to those at the federal level — where the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Department of the Interior hold sway — could be tightened up.
In my experience, much that needs to be maintained is not being taken care of, while places of marginal significance get VIP attention. We get into a lather about a change of ownership or use of almost any sort, and will permit neighborhood groups to make the most frivolous claims for the most parochial reasons, but pay no attention to what matters most: the day-to-day grind of enforcing the laws which assure that facades and streetscapes are protected.
This ordinance, in sum, contains solutions for which there is no obvious or immediate problem by the testimony of all concerned. At the same time, council has passed up an opportunity to put in place law that would tighten up procedures that would serve us well.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Pittsburgh City Council opposes saving Mellon Arena
Landmark status loses in preliminary 5-0 vote
Thursday, February 27, 2003
By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
When it comes to winning historic landmark status, Mellon Arena doesn’t have any friends on City Council.
In preliminary action, council members voted 5-0 yesterday against giving city historic designation to the 42-year-old silver-domed hockey rink in the Lower Hill District.
“Just because something is old — and the arena isn’t even that old — doesn’t mean it’s a landmark,” said Councilwoman Barbara Burns. “I don’t think this meets the city’s criteria as a historic structure. I don’t think the advocates presented a good argument for making it historic.”
Mellon Arena opened as the Civic Auditorium in 1961. The name was later changed to Civic Arena. Mellon Financial bought the naming rights four years ago.
Councilman Sala Udin has been adamant that the domed structure either be demolished or dismantled and moved to some other site. He would like new housing and stores built on its 28 acres.
He is still angry about how city officials in the late 1950s tore down a largely black neighborhood where he and hundreds of other people lived, forced the residents to move and built the arena as a home for the Civic Light Opera.
Councilman William Peduto said he personally “loves the arena. I skated there last month. It’s a semi-religious structure and I would be sad if it’s torn down.”
On the other hand, “it was built as an opera house and it failed as an opera house, and now it’s a hockey rink and the National Hockey League players recently voted it the worst place to play hockey,” Peduto noted.
Councilman Alan Hertzberg said, “I saw that Jean-Claude Van Damme movie on TV the other night — ‘Sudden Death,’ the one where the Civic Arena gets blown up. It’s a bad movie, but it was a tremendous way to bring this whole [historic designation] issue to a conclusion.”
As a way to ensure Mellon Arena’s long-term future, two historic preservation groups, Preservation Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, nominated the arena for historic status in May. That was soon after Penguins owner Mario Lemieux went public with a pitch for a new arena.
Designating the arena as a historic landmark would make it more difficult to tear it down. Historic structures can’t be razed without approval from the city’s Historic Review Commission.
But even the review commission, in a 4-3 vote, recommended against making the arena historic. The city planning commission also recommended against it.
City Council’s final vote is set for Tuesday.
Mellon Arena is likely to remain standing, at least in the short term. The Penguins have a lease to play there until mid-2007.
If a new arena is ever built for the Penguins — the proposed site is just south of Mellon Arena, between Fifth and Centre avenues — the current arena’s future could be in question. Penguins officials have said they don’t want Mellon Arena used for hockey, circuses, wrestling, tractor pulls or anything else that could compete with activities in a new arena.
Building a new arena is, however, dependent on finding up to $270 million in city, county and state funds, a difficult political hurdle.
Tom Barnes can be reached at tbarnes@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette