Category Archive: Tours & Events
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Hot Metal Bridge Portal Lighting June 12th
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Governor Edward G. Rendell, and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl invite you to join us in lighting the portals of the historic Hot Metal Bridge, which spans the Monongahela river at the South Side Works.- Time: 8:15 p.m.
- Meeting Location: Meet at the South Side Works at Hot Metal Street and the Hot Metal Bridge at the Steel Worker’s Monument ont he south bank of the Monongahela River.
- Fee : FREE
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New Pittsburgh Website Features 25 Downtown Landmarks
Click below to explore an interactive website that plays off Landmarks’ most popular downtown walking tour for students. There’s plenty of information, animation, fun facts, and material for adults too.
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Modern Venture: Home designed by famous architect on history group’s East End tour
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Like the elegant orchids in her kitchen windows, Betty Abrams’ love of beauty bloomed in a nurturing environment. Her mother designed the family’s English Tudor home on Beacon Street in Squirrel Hill and loved fashion; her father’s furniture sales on the streets of Braddock attracted buyers to his business, Ohringer Home Furniture Co.
Mrs. Abrams still recalls what features she liked best about the homes of her childhood friends and has read architectural magazines all her life.
So, it’s not surprising that she interviewed five architects before choosing Robert Venturi, winner of the 1991 Pritzker Architecture Prize, to design her Woodland Road home, which will be featured on Tuesday’s tour sponsored by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, the city’s largest preservation group.
Set on an acre of wooded land with a view of a 100-year-old stone bridge and three Japanese maples, the home, which features an entire wall of southern exposure windows, invites the outdoors inside.
Mrs. Abrams asked Venturi if he had ever visited the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., a sleek, light-filled space that is the work of I. M. Pei.
“That’s what I want,” she told him. “And that’s what I got,” she said during an interview last week. “I made Venturi listen to me.”
No walls separate the home’s kitchen, living room, bars and dining room, which are all visible as soon as you enter the first floor. The home’s most dramatic feature is a floor-to-ceiling window that is shaped like a ship’s wheel and cut into eight pieces.
Her late husband, Irving, was floored by the window’s design when he saw it on the blueprints.
“It’ll be OK. You’ll get used to it,” Mrs. Abrams told him.
A determined woman, Mrs. Abrams knew what she wanted — a 10-by-15-foot walk-in closet in the master bedroom, a lap pool just off the master bath, a heated two-car garage, maid’s quarters, and a living room and kitchen large enough to entertain.
The Abrams bought the land in January 1979.
“We broke ground in September of 1980 and moved in in April of 1982,” Mrs. Abrams recalled, adding that she began working as a financial adviser so she could afford to buy art for the couple’s new home.
The focal point of the living room is a Roy Lichtenstein print of a domestic scene; lowering the artwork by about a foot made a huge difference in how it looked and harmonized with the architecture, she added.
Noel Jeffrey finished the home’s interior design, selecting three shades of blue that are all visible as you stand in the living room. A light blue ceiling and darker shades of that color set off the balcony of an overhead loft that contains a library. Three clerestory windows light up the ceiling, intensifying the illusion of a blue sky overhead.
Three modern red chairs in the living room face a three-section sofa that once sat in the Pittsburgh Room of the Duquesne Club. After buying it at auction, she had the sofa reupholstered with understated multicolored fabric she found in Las Vegas.
The black and white marble dining room table has four chairs painted in a periwinkle automobile paint. Soothing celery green walls set off a neatly arranged, mirrored bar.
Long before granite counter tops became fashionable, Mrs. Abrams chose black and white granite for the kitchen and for two long bars where she serves appetizers and cocktails.
An accomplished cook who taught cooking and ran a catering business years ago, Mrs. Abrams insisted the kitchen be wider than Venturi had planned. She also rejected the idea of a grand staircase. When the Carnegie Museum of Art exhibited Venturi’s designs in 2002, the architect conceded that she had been right as he savored a bowl of her mushroom barley soup while seated in her dining room.
In her will, Mrs. Abrams has bequeathed the property to PHLF. Some day — when the house is at least 50 years old — it may be listed on the National Register of Historic Places due to its distinctive features and the significance of Venturi’s contributions to post-modern architecture.
In the meantime, its caretaker is enjoying it immensely. She particularly loves the rectangular skylight in the master bath.
“When I take a bath, I can look up and see the moon,” she said.
Marylynne Pitz may be reached at 412-263-1648 or mpitz@post-gazette.com.First published on May 31, 2008 at 12:00 am -
Shadyside tour benefits History and Landmarks scholarship fund
By Bob Karlovits
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, May 25, 2008Ten years ago, David Brashear began a scholarship program that he hoped would foster an appreciation for Pittsburgh among younger generations.This year, Brashear and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation are sponsoring a tour that will showcase sites to “help show the understanding of what makes Pittsburgh so great,” he says.The tour is part of the Landmarks Scholarship Celebration June 3 at Andrew W. Mellon Hall at Chatham University, Shadyside.
The event will feature the awarding of scholarships and comments from Brashear; Esther L. Barazzone, president of Chatham; and Arthur P. Ziegler, president of the History and Landmarks group.
But the focal point of the celebration will be a self-guided tour of three sites in the Woodland Road area at the heart of Chatham’s campus. With wine, hors d’oeuvres and docents at each site, the tour will stop at:• A Tudor Revival home with 11 fireplaces, stained-glass windows and dramatic woodwork. It was built by attorney Alexander M. Neeper in 1903 and is owned by Louis and Kathy Testoni.
• A home designed by Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi, an advocate of Postmodern style. It was built in 1979-82 by Betty Abrams and her late husband, Irving, as their “retirement pad,” she says.
• The renovated Mellon Board Room, which has replaced the swimming pool in the former mansion of Andrew Mellon, now owned by Chatham University. It was part of a $1.8 million renewal project.
The three sites are viewed as part of what makes Pittsburgh distinct.
“It is a city that is compact, yet it has a lot going on,” says Brashear, a Pittsburgh native who is president of Edgewood Investors near New York City. Each year, the scholarship fund he founded awards grants to students who compete by writing essays that display their appreciation for the Pittsburgh area.
There have been 25 scholarships awarded since 1999. They are for $1,000 for each of the winner’s four undergraduate years of college.
The celebration and tour, sponsored by the David and Janet Brashear Foundation, the Bank of New York Mellon and PNC, is, in some ways, an effort to call attention to the existence of the scholarships, Brashear says Louise Sturgess, executive director of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, says the tour shows off some of the city’s hidden gems.
“We go from the very grand of the Mellon Hall, to a little less grand to the very modern,” Sturgess says of the three sites.
The two homes vary greatly, but both are striking. Abrams confesses that she’s a “frustrated architect” and says she and her late husband wanted to build a dynamic modern home on the site they found in the Woodland Road area.
“If we couldn’t have gotten this spot, we wouldn’t have built this house,” she says about the home, which she hired Venturi to design after interviewing a handful of architects.
The house is at the base of a hillside that surrounds it on three sides and once was the location of a pool and creek. Abrams says she and her late husband raised the spot of construction 10 feet to be above the water, but the water disappeared after construction. A stone bridge remains, but it spans nothing.
Because of its “retirement pad” nature, the home only has two bedrooms, but it has an indoor lap pool and a large family room next to a kitchen-bar area. It is an example of the flexible-space school of design that Venturi and Abrams conceived before the notion became popular.
“I love to entertain, but I am also the cook,” Abrams says. “So I wanted to be part of the party.”
The home stands out in its use of color, from sky blue in the family room ceiling to the teal-inflected shades of the exterior. It is illuminated with skylights and massive side windows that allow natural light even on gray days.
The Tudor home owned by the Testonis is from 80 years earlier and has a different kind of appeal. Its entranceway, for instance, leads to a grand staircase in the center, sitting rooms all around and a kitchen with gourmet appliances.
“We sometimes sit on the floor in that entranceway with a glass of wine and just look at the woodwork,” Kathy Testoni says.
The upstairs features four large bedrooms off a large area at the top of the steps. The property, just across the street from the Abrams’ home, also features a carriage house that has been turned into a garage with an apartment above it.
The owners are adding a 6-foot-by-10-foot room off the kitchen that Testoni says will “allow her to look out at the garden without sitting at the island.”
She jokes about being so concerned with maintaining the “integrity of the home” that it took them nine years to decide to have the work done.
Sturgess talks about how the tour came together when Abrams and Testoni, both trustees with the History and Landmarks Foundation, volunteered their homes. The use of Mellon Hall became a logical extension, Sturgess says, because of its location in the mansion of the fabled banker.
The newly renovated hall also provides a gathering spot for the event, Sturgess says, and shows off architecture in a different way. In March 2006, architect Ken Doyno began work on designing a meeting hall where there had been a swimming pool, which was rendered unnecessary because of the university’s new recreation building.
Doyno, from Rothschild Doyno Architects in the Strip District, says the effort became a classic example of “project creep,” with one job leading to another. He explains that it eventually was realized the room could be illuminated with tall windows below tiny light wells from the past.
Framework for those windows and nearby doorways was designed by Japanese woodworker Tadao Orimoto and made of mahogany, Danyo says. He adds that wood could be used only after it was certified to be taken from a forest area deemed environmentally unthreatened.
“The whole project had a very green nature,” he says, pointing out that work on the meeting room was done without affecting the trees on the carriage entrance above it.
The project also created possibilities for masonry work on the exterior and the need for new paths leading through a nearby garden area.
Brashear believes the tour is an event that fits well with the scholarship-fund effort.
“It is a way to shine the spotlight on these great homes and on the scholarship fund,” he says.
Bob Karlovits can be reached at bkarlovits@tribweb.com or 412-320-7852.
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School Tours Booked through June
PHLF News
March 7, 2008Now through mid-June, our calendar is filled with tours for school groups and private groups–so if you would like to explore Pittsburgh with our staff or docents, book your FALL TOUR now.
Contact Mary Ann Eubanks at 412-471-5808
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Membership Tours
Register now to attend our Ethnic Heritage Tour in West Homestead and Munhall on April 26, from 12:15 to 4:00 p.m.
Visit https://phlf.org/phlf-tours-events/ for details.
Our tours to Kopp Glass, Clairton Coke Works, and Edgar Thomas Works in January, February, March, and April sold out quickly.
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June 3 House Tour and Scholarship Fund-Raising Event
PHLF News
March 7, 2008Save the date of Tuesday, June 3, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and tour the Abrams House (designed by Robert Venturi, 1979-82) and the Neeper House (c. 1903), both on Woodland Road, and enjoy a reception in the Andrew W. Mellon Hall at Chatham University. Event tickets: $100 and up.
We will be celebrating and building support for the Landmarks Scholarship Program that provides financial assistance to City and County students attending college who have demonstrated a love for the Pittsburgh region and excel as students and citizens in their communities.
Since 1999, Landmarks has awarded college scholarships to 25 outstanding young people, thanks to contributions from the Brashear Family Named Fund and from several trustees. For details about the June 3 event and the Landmarks Scholarship program visit:
https://phlf.org/education-department/scholarships/the-landmarks-scholarship/landmarks-scholarship-program-fundraiser/Help us expand a program that gives us the opportunity to build lasting relationships with capable young people who care deeply about the Pittsburgh region.
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Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program: Building Pride/Building Character
PHLF News
March 3, 2008The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation welcomes corporate support of our “Building Pride/Building Character” program made possible by the PA Department of Community and Economic Development’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program.
Last year, 7 businesses––Ellwood Group, Inc.; PNC Bank; Allegheny Technologies Incorporated; Equitable Energy, a division of Equitable Resources; Frank B. Fuhrer Wholesale Company; Bridges & Company, Inc.; and Hefren-Tillotson––graciously contributed a total of $54,111 to the “Building Pride/Building Character” program. These contributions are allowing elementary students from ten Pittsburgh Public Schools to participate in the “Building Pride/Building Character” program through May 2008.
Through tours, art activities, exhibits, and in-school programs created for the “Building Pride/Building Character” program, students discover a lot about their school, neighborhood, and city––and a lot about themselves––and fulfill academic standards in the process. Your support after July 1, 2008 will allow Landmarks to continue this program in the fall of 2008 and through May 2009.
To support the “Building Pride/Building Character” program, please visit the EITC Web site and complete the application (Appendix I EIO) found in the EITC Business Guidelines. Eligible businesses are those authorized to do business in Pennsylvania who are subject to one or more of the following taxes: Corporate Net Income Tax, Capital Stock Franchise Tax, Bank and Trust Company Shares Tax, Title Insurance Companies Shares Tax, Title Insurance Companies Shares Tax, Insurance Premiums Tax, or Mutual Thrift Institution Tax. Businesses may receive tax credits equal to 75% of their contribution if only one year or 90% of their contribution if the business agrees to provide the same amount for two consecutive tax years. The limit per business is $200,000 per taxable year.
For more information about the “Building Pride/Building Character” program for Pittsburgh Public Schools, contact the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation: 412.471.5808, ext. 536; louise@phlf.org.