Latest News
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‘Isaly’s Building’ in Irwin Saved by Main Street Deli
Wednesday, November 24, 2010By Norm VargoLou Botti is realizing a childhood dream.
“I used to love it as a kid when my family went to shop in Irwin. I knew we would end up at Isaly’s for an ice cream,” recalled the North Huntingdon contractor.
“I would think to myself: Someday I’d like to own an Isaly’s.”
It’s not an iconic Isaly’s, Mr. Botti, 41, now owns. It’s the landmark Hamilton Building along Main Street, which many in town still call “Isaly’s.” For 43 years it housed the immensely popular dairy store, deli and bakery until it closed in 2004.
Earlier this month, Mr. Botti opened the Main Street Deli and Bakery in that space. The store offers cold deli sandwiches, pies, assorted pastries baked on the premises, milk, bread, buns, lunch meats, cheese and ice cream, the Hershey brand.
Mr. Botti plans to add a full kitchen later.
The interior was renovated to give the deli a retro look. A meat slicer left from the old Isaly’s sits on the back shelf.
The familiar white slate marquee sign with the black script lsaly’s logo remains.
“The sign is not intended to mislead people. I don’t own an Isaly’s, I don’t sell Isaly’s products,” Mr. Botti said. “It’s that the sign has a historical significance in Irwin’s downtown. The dairy store-deli was a destination for folks. Old-timers still call it “Isaly’s.”
“Lots of memories are in there, including mine,” Mr. Botti said.
“Customers keep bringing in mementos and souvenirs from the old Isaly’s. They want to share their treasures with me. It’s unbelievable,” he said.
A little history:
The late Art Lewis founded a dairy store in Irwin 65 years ago. The business outgrew its building.
When the Hamilton Building in the heart of downtown became available, he bought it.
About that time, Isaly’s began franchising. Mr. Lewis recognized the potential for a dairy store-deli in Irwin. He negotiated a franchise that would become so popular that he opened another Isaly’s in the Norwin Shopping Center in North Huntingdon.
Bakery goods were baked in the Irwin Isaly’s daily and delivered to the other store. Mr. Lewis retired in 1986 and sold that business to concentrate on the Irwin store.
Potential deals to purchase the three-story brick Isaly’s Building and the delicatessen, which was being operated by family members, fell through.
The structure deteriorated. Borough officials were considering condemnation.
“What council didn’t want to do was to tear down that landmark building and leave a vacant lot right in the middle of the downtown business district,” said Councilwoman Danyce Neal.
“We all were hoping somebody would buy it and restore,” Ms. Neal said.
Urged by Donn Henderson, the Irwin Main Street manager, Mr. Botti purchased the building in 2007.
He immediately corrected a multitude of building code violations to make the structure sound.
Then he renovated four apartments on the upper floors. All were rented before completion.
“I really was interested in those apartments,” said Mr. Botti, who estimated he “has put about $300,000” into the building.
“My initial plan was to find somebody to put in a deli,” he continued. “Three investors looked at it, but no deal materialized.
“I figured three years was long enough to wait. I decided to open one.”
Mr. Henderson said he hoped the deli would attract investors to invest in other businesses in the community.
For details, call 724-515-5525.
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Welcoming Vandergrift has Plenty of Special Features
By Bob Karlovits, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, November 22, 2010Many small towns have rich stories, but few tell them as well as Vandergrift.
Part of that tale is in the layout of the historic area of the 115-year-old town. Designed by the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted, the creator of New York City’s Central Park and many academic campuses, the streets arch over and around the hillside on which the town is built.
A grand theater, the Casino, sits facing a mall leading down to a train station. It was given that spot intentionally to offer a welcome to anyone arriving in the Westmoreland County town.
The town was built to provide a home for workers at the steel mill of George McMurtry. The mill has had six owners since its first, but still is working, despite the decline of the steel industry.
All of those features make Vandergrift a place where the past is a major part of the present. It makes it worth a visit to see that story.
1:30 p.m.
The Victorian Vandergrift Museum is in a school built in 1911 and, like many features of the town, is a work in progress.
With displays on three floors, it tells the story of the town in a number of ways. On the bottom floor is a room decorated with many pictures of initial work on the town along with map of the plans originated by the Olmsted firm.
If you’re lucky, you might run into Bill Hesketh, treasurer of the museum and historical society. He could tell you about McMurtry, owner of Apollo Iron & Steel, wanting to build a town that would attract workers and entice them to stay.
He would do that by having the famed designers draw up a plan for the ultimate company town. McMurtry thought a cultured worker was a good worker, so included plans for the Casino. He also saw the benefit of religious life, so provided $7,500 to any congregation planning to build a church costing $15,000 or more. He wanted sober workers, so the town was dry until 1936.
If you are lucky, Hesketh will be there to offer you some thoughts. But it will take some luck. He does not schedule tours or times he is there for visits. There are no other guides at the museum either. But simply wandering around the museum will provide a look at what Vandergrift is all about.
Victorian Vandergrift Museum, 184 Sherman Ave. Hours: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays. Details: 724-568-1990.
3 p.m.
Now, it’s time to take to the streets. In some ways, the rows of houses are the story of Vandergrift.
The look of the town is somewhat defined by the rows of company homes on streets that are devoid of 90-degree angles.
When the Olmsted designers laid out the plan, Hesketh says, they decided on 50-feet-wide lots, but McMurtry thought that was way too wide. He was selling the lots, and wanted to profit from them.
They became 25-feet-wide, leading to streets of homes generally built tightly together.
Hesketh points out some people eventually bought two homes and built them together to make one bigger residence. Or they bought one and tore it down to create a bigger yard. There are some properties that were sold as 50-feet-wide and are the sites of some nicer homes, for the non-laborer class.
Take a walk around and look at the history of a town as seen in its homes. The look of the town is created by the past and the gentle curves of the Olmsted design, which even creates a non-straight business district.
5:30 p.m.
After touring Vandergrift and getting ready for the finale of this day, it is time for dinner.
There are some likely stops for a meal in town, and these three win local praise. You probably saw them as you wandered around.
The G&G Restaurant (724-567-6139) on Columbia Avenue is largely a breakfast and lunch place, but is open till 9 p.m. for dinner.
A.J.’s Restaurant (724-568-2464) is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays until 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Fridays.
Offering a more specific dinner outlook is the Steeltown Smokehouse (724-568-4087) on Washington Avenue. The burgers-and-wings emporium is open till 8 p.m. Mondays to Thursday, 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 6 p.m. Sundays.
7 p.m.
The best way to do this trip is to pay attention to the shows at the Casino, which can be checked out at www.casinotheater.org, then plan a visit on a day ending with some entertainment.
Make sure to arrive at the Casino with enough time to look around.
The oldest, active theater in Western Pennsylvania had become a unused shell when a group that became Casino Theatre & Restoration Management took it over in 1991, Hesketh says. They brought the site back to life.
Trumpet star Maynard Ferguson (1928-2006) performed there along with the Vogues and the Clarks. The renovated theater has been the home of stage presentations. Some of the restoration meant changes from the original, Hesketh says, but some of that provided aspects that seemed to be needed.
“This place just called for boxes,” he says, pointing to box seats on each side of the stage.
Roam around the Casino. The balcony casts a good and attractive view of the stage. The lobby, slightly smaller than what it once was, offers an attractive entrance.
McMurtry thought the Casino would be a significant part of the town when it was built in 1900.
It still is.
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Old Pittsburgh Churches are a Sight to See
By Deborah Deasy, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, November 29, 2010t’s easy to overlook the oldest churches in Pittsburgh.
“Then, you come inside and see how beautiful it is,” says Sean O’Donnell, secretary at Smithfield United Church of Christ, one the city’s four oldest houses or worship.
The others — all soaring stone structures within blocks of each other — are the First Presbyterian Church and Trinity Cathedral, both on Sixth Avenue, and the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church on Grant Street.
One claims the grave of a Shawnee Indian chief. One has 13 Tiffany stained glass windows insured for $2 million. One boasts the world’s first architectural use of aluminum. One has a marble, wood and brass altar once exhibited at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Each offers an oasis of quiet — at no charge — and sights to please even the most agnostic art lover. All offer free, informational brochures and tours upon request.
“These are real treasures for people to look at,” says the Rev. Catherine Brall, canon provost at Trinity Episcopal.
Visiting the churches helps one appreciate the city’s architectural history, along with “the depth of faith and piety that created these beautiful buildings,” says the Rev. David Gleason, senior pastor at First English Evangelical Lutheran Church.
On a recent Friday, the First Presbyterian Church wowed curious passers-by from Wyoming, Arizona, Ohio and Virginia.
“I think going to a church is a beautiful thing, regardless of your religion or politics. There are so many aspects that can be shared and appreciated,” says Morrison Simms of Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Simms’ companion — Stuart Herman of Scottsdale, Ariz. — believes a visit to such places helps couples discover and appreciate each other’s interests. “It opens dialogue,” he says.
Two of the churches — Trinity Cathedral and First Presbyterian — also offer sit-down eateries for weekday visitors. The Franktuary at 325 Oliver Ave. — under Trinity Cathedral — offers vegetarian, organic beef and gourmet hot dogs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays to Fridays. Our Daily Bread at 320 Sixth Ave. — under the First Presbyterian Church — serves hot lunches, soups, sandwiches and salads from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays to Fridays.
Trinity Cathedral (1872), Architect: Gordon W. Lloyd.
A plaque on the cathedral’s black iron fence describes the site as Pittsburgh’s “oldest unreconstructed landmark.”
Trinity Cathedral and the First Presbyterian Church share a former American Indian burial ground deeded by William Penn’s heirs to the congregations’ forefathers. French soldiers at Fort Duquesne (1754) and British soldiers at Fort Pitt (1758) also used the ground for burials.
Today, Trinity Cathedral maintains the last 128 marked graves of an estimated 4,000 people once buried on the site. The identified remains of many have been moved to other cemeteries. The unmarked bones of many others remain interred within a crypt in the sub-basement of First Presbyterian.
Prominent folks recorded on the present tombstones include Red Pole, principal chief of the Shawnee Indian nation, and Dr. Nathaniel Bedford, Pittsburgh’s first physician and a founder of the University of Pittsburgh.
Inside the cathedral, visitors will find hand-carved pews of white mahogany, a stone pulpit covered with intricate carvings of prophets, saints and bishops, plus, stained glass windows dating back to 1872.
Trinity Cathedral, 328 Sixth Ave., Downtown. Hours: 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. Services available at 12:05 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays and 8:45 a.m. and 4:45 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, and 8 and 10:30 a.m. Sundays. Details: 412-232-6404 or here.
First English Evangelical Lutheran Church (1888), Architect: Andrew Peebles.
A 170-foot-spire distinguishes the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church, second oldest structure on Grant Street. Only nearby Allegheny County Courthouse & Jail is older.
Interior decorations include a contemporary cross by Virgil Cantini; the 500-square-foot “Good Shepherd” window of Tiffany Favrile glass, and a free-standing marble, brass and wood altar once displayed at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Also notable is the “The Presentation of Our Lord in Temple” lunette, a shimmery glass mosaic and cloisonne work made in the late 1800s. It hangs high above the church’s permanent marble altar.
Newest additions to the landmark include a 100-drawer columbarium for the cremated remains of church members and friends of parish. “There’s enough room for 200 bodies,” says senior pastor Gleason. “It’s designed as a special reliquary. … These are the bones of our saints.”
First English Evangelical Lutheran Church, 615 Grant St., Uptown. Hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays to Fridays; 8:30 to 12:30 p.m. Sundays. Services available 12:10 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, 8:30, 9:45 and 11 a.m. Sundays. Details: 412-471-8125 or here.
First Presbyterian Church (1903), Architect: Theophilus Parsons Chandler
Tiffany Studios designed 13 of the church’s 26-foot-by-7-foot stained glass windows, now insured for $2 million. All were hand-painted, making them unique among Tiffany windows.
“Each of the windows cost $3,000 when the building opened in 1905,” says Bob Loos, a deacon who gives tours. “As soon as you get a little sunlight coming in, they take off in brilliance.”
The Tiffany windows, however, are just a few of the 253 stained and leaded glass windows throughout the sandstone church.
Also notable are two 80-foot ceiling beams — each cut from 150-foot Oregonian oak trees — plus, a pair of rolling, two-ton, 30-foot oak doors in the sanctuary. “They operate on a track in the floor. … and are so perfectly balanced that one person can open or close each one,” reports the church’s free guide for visitors.
Visitors also will notice untold carved birds, animals and insects on the church’s interior stonework, including an eagle, butterfly and dove on the pulpit — representing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
First Presbyterian Church, 320 Sixth Ave., Downtown. Hours: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, 9 a.m. to noon Sundays. Services available at 12:25 p.m. Tuesdays and 10:45 a.m. Sundays. Guided tours offered after the 10:45 a.m. Sunday service. Details: 412-471-3436 or here.
Smithfield United Church of Christ (1926), Architect: Henry Hornbostel
An airy, 80-foot aluminum steeple — supported by interior steel beams — marks the multilevel Smithfield United Church of Christ. It’s the sixth house of worship for the city’s first organized Christian congregation. The spire “has the distinction of being the first architectural use of aluminum in the world,” according the church’s Spire bulletin.
“The sanctuary reminds me of some of the big cathedrals in New York City,” says O’Donnell, the church secretary. “I was most taken by the plaster work.”
Interior features include a 19-foot rose window made in 1860, and 12 towering, stained-glass windows that illustrate Biblical scenes and Pittsburgh history, including an 1861 visit by President-elect Abraham Lincoln.
Smithfield United Church of Christ, 620 Smithfield St., Downtown. Hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays to Fridays; 9:45 a.m. to noon Sundays. Services available at 12:10 p.m. Wednesdays and 11 a.m. Sundays. Details: 412-281-1811 or here.
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Fairbanks Feature: A New Train of Thought— Missing from the Fairbanks Archive!
James D. Van Trump Library | Frank B. Fairbanks Transportation Archive | Fairbanks Features
Showcasing a variety of materials located in the Frank B. Fairbanks Rail Transportation ArchiveNo. 8 Presentation
Fairbanks Feature: Missing from the Fairbanks Archive!
The Archive is seeking biographical sketches of family members and/or friends who were involved in some capacity of railroad employment. Currently we have vignettes about railroaders who worked in various parts of the country and in some cases lived very early in the 20th century.
Pittsburgh-area railroaders should certainly be written about and their work stories submitted to the Archive. These people worked long, hard, and many times dangerous days. We need to have a record of their professional experiences. All stories can be as long or short as the writer wishes (one page or more). Any pictures of the railroader or related paper memories can be added, but are not necessary.
The stories are cataloged by family name in our data base, cross referenced with the specific railroads mentioned, and available to be read by all who visit the Archive. This will be a chance to leave a record for railroad history.
MISSING––yes! All those biographical sketches that as of yet have not been sent by mail or e-mail to the Fairbanks Transportation Archive. Stories can be mailed to:
Judith Harvey, Librarian
Fairbanks Rail Transportation Archive
100 West Station Square Drive, Suite 400
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Or e-mailed to: fairbanksarchives@phlf.org
- “A Tragic Death,” a story of Venturini Vincenzio, oiler and packer in the Norfolk & Western yard, Columbus. Written by Ann Kelton, wife of her husband’s grandfather.
- “My Father on a Run-a-way Train,” a story about Martin Joseph Ragan, employed by the Conemaugh & Blacklick Railroad, operating inside the Johnstown Bethlehem Steel Plant. Written by his son Ronald W. Ragan.
- “My Father, a Hard Worker and a Railroad Man,” a story about Oliver C. McIntyre, who worked in the Scully yard on the wreck train crew and later as a car Inspector, for the Pennsylvania RR. Article respectfully submitted by his son Keith McIntyre.
- “Go to Work for the Railroad and You Will Always Have a Job,” a story about the author’s grandfather (Edward C. Cook), an engineer on the Pennsylvania RR, and other family members. One relative who ran a boarding house in Carnegie for railroaders was sure the trains would run forever; there were 14 sets of tracks in the town. Written by granddaughter Judy Davis Kueshner.
- “From Telegraph Operator to Superintendent Labor & Wages,” a story about Harry K. Brady (a Pennsylvania railroader from 1884-1930), who had eight very different jobs. The author outlines these jobs and reports on the 1905 train situation that made it necessary to be “railroad creative” on the inaugural run of “The Pennsylvania Special”––and a world speed record was set in the process. Written by grandson H. William Brady.
The Frank B. Fairbanks Rail Transportation Archive is open by appointment on Mondays, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Use of the archive is free to PHLF members (one of the benefits!); non-members are assessed a $10 use fee.
The Archive is located on the fourth floor of The Landmarks Building at Station Square, in the offices of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
To schedule an appointment, email the Librarian James Halttunen: James@phlf.org
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Public Meeting for South Park Future Planning
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Jones’ Cresson Home May Avoid Razing
Saturday, November 20, 2010By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A tentative sales deal has been reached for the Cresson house built by Pittsburgh steelmaker B.F. Jones in 1887-88. Patricia Lowry/Post-Gazette
The Cresson Area Historical Association, which has owned the 14-room, Queen Anne-style house since 1990, has a tentative agreement to sell it to Andrew and Carrie Dziabo, who grew up nearby and live just a few minutes away.
The tentative agreement, reached Friday, appears to have the blessing of Cresson Township supervisors, who heard the couple outline their plans at a township meeting earlier this month.
“We’re still working on it,” said Mr. Dziabo (pronounced zay-bo). “There are issues that need to be worked out, but it’s looking promising.”
The dilapidated house has been under threat of demolition since a Cambria County judge approved its razing in late 2008. Supervisors had told the historical association the house could be torn down after Sept. 30.
A member of the historical group wrote in an e-mail that the house would be sold for a nominal fee, with the new owners also paying the township’s legal expenses incurred during the long court proceedings. Mr. Dziabo referred questions about sale price to the township solicitor, who was unavailable Friday.
Mr. Dziabo grew up a block away from the Jones cottage, in a historic house that also was part of the Mountain House resort grounds. He worked with his father, civil engineer Michael Dziabo, on restoring that house, and the two plan to collaborate on this one.
While Andrew Dziabo, who works for a power company, has admired the Jones house since he was a child, it wasn’t until the historical group offered tours in the spring that he was able to see the interior.
“The house isn’t in as bad shape as I thought,” he said. “It’s actually very sturdy inside. There is some water damage that ate the plaster in a lot of the rooms, but as far as the structure goes, it seems pretty sound and sturdy. The floors don’t even creak.”
The Dziabos intend to restore the exterior and preserve as much of the interior woodwork as they can.
“The whole appeal of it to my wife and me is the character of the Victorian-style home,” he said, adding that its ornate, well-preserved foyer and staircase “would be very easy to restore. It’s just a matter of elbow grease.”
The Dziabos expect to know soon whether the Jones cottage is theirs.
“The township wants to have this issue to bed by the next [supervisors] meeting.”
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Unusual Touches Mark Phipps’ Winter Show
Saturday, November 20, 2010The Winter Flower Show opens Friday at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Oakland. Nine of the indoor gardens will be bedecked with topiary snowmen, decorated trees, hanging baskets, thousands of lights and more than 2,000 poinsettias. Newer varieties of poinsettias will be on display, including ‘Polar Bear,’ ‘Winter Blush,’ ‘Ice Punch,’ ‘Visions of Grandeur’ and ‘Tapestry.’
Also on display is the garden railroad with operating trains and miniature living scenery that includes dwarf conifers. The show, which runs through Jan. 9, was designed by the conservatory staff with help from Michele McCann.
“The show is a wonderful combination of horticulture and whimsy, with beautiful new poinsettias and common annuals used in unusual ways,” says Margie Radebaugh, Phipps’ director of horticulture and education.
Special seasonal events include:
• Visits by Santa Claus on Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 19.
• A “Garlands & Gifts” sale on Dec. 2-3 from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m.
• Phipps stays open until 10 p.m. daily, beginning Dec. 6, with candlelit walkways and live entertainment.
Admission is $12 for adults; $11 for seniors 62 and older and students with valid ID; $9 for children ages 2 to 18; free for children under 2. Information: www.phippsconservatory.org or 412-622-6914.
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Buying Here: Larimer
Saturday, November 20, 2010By Gretchen McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Heavenly Vision Ministries and parsonage, formerly known as the Our Lady Help of Christians in the Larimer section of Pittsburgh, has a 6,000-square-foot rectory and a banquet hall in the lower level. It's on the market for $169,900. J. Monroe Butler II/Post-Gazette
Our Lady Help of Christians in Larimer was barely 5 years old when fire ripped through it in 1905, destroying the church at the corner of Meadow and Turrett streets. The Italian immigrants who had guided its construction in 1898, though, were a resolute bunch.
Within a year they’d rebuilt the Baroque-style structure, and until it closed in 1992, Help of Christians served as a center of Italian-American religious and social life, hosting not just Catholic Masses but everything from the annual celebration in honor of St. Agnello Abate to an array of sporting activities for neighborhood kids.
The ceiling and plaster walls have peeling paint at the former Our Lady of Help Christians church in Larimer. J. Monroe Butler II/Post-Gazette
Like many churches in the city, however, its parish aged and dwindled and was merged in the 1990s with five others to form St. Charles Lwanga parish in Lincoln-Lemington. In 1995, the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese sold the church, which has a banquet hall in the lower level, and adjacent rectory to Heavenly Vision Ministries.
Three years ago, Heavenly Vision put 6513 Meadow St. back on the market, at first quietly through word of mouth, and then last year officially for $169,000 through Coldwell Banker Real Estate’s Fox Chapel office (www.pittsburghmoves.com; MLS No. 838378; 412-963-7655).
Larimer
At a glance- Website: www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/district9/
- Size: .445 square miles
- Population: 2,602 (2000 census)
- School district: Pittsburgh Public, pghboe.net
- Enrollment: About 28,000
- Average 2010 SAT scores: (Peabody High School) 379 verbal; 410 math; 380 writing
- Taxes for a property assessed at $100,000 *: $2,870; City: $1,080 (10.8 mills); School district: $1,392 (13.92 mills); County: $398 (4.69 mills)
- Wage tax: 3 percent (1 percent to the city, 2 percent to the school district)
- Bet you didn’t know: Originally settled by Germans in the mid-1800s, Larimer was Pittsburgh’s “Little Italy” until the 1960s. It is named for railroad magnate and radical abolitionist General William Larimer, who built a manor home overlooking East Liberty along a path that would eventually become known as Larimer Avenue.
* Includes the Act 50 Homestead Exclusion, which reduces assessed market value by $15,000 for county taxes.
The cupola is missing stained-glass windows. J. Monroe Butler II/Post-Gazette
Time has not been kind to Help of Christians, which could accommodate up to 1,000 worshippers in the nave and balcony in its heyday in the ’50s and ’60s. The amount of repairs necessary to breathe life back into the property are pretty extensive.
There is no glass in its long, arched windows and holes in the roof. The coved ceiling and plaster walls are peeling paint. Vandals have broken the pews and stolen the pipes from the organ. Carpeting is matted with dust, debris and pigeon feathers. The hand-painted frescoes that brightened the chancel are so badly faded and tarnished you almost can’t tell they were ever there. There’s no heat or water.
“People go in an ooh and aah over the architecture, but it’s a broken structure,” says Realtor Ted Harchick, who shares the “as-is” listing with Dan Boehler.
Adding insult to injury are the many thefts that have stripped the space of most everything of architectural significance. Only a handful of the dozens of original stained-glass windows remain. And it’s only because they’re too heavy to lift that looters also didn’t carry away the marble communion rails in the chancel.
Most heartbreaking is the massive circular window that crowned the front door. Somehow, the robbers managed to sneak the stained glass out of the wood framing in the stealth of night.
Vandals also have trashed the 6,000-square-foot rectory, which during Heavenly Vision Ministries’ tenure housed Family Options Foster Care, in addition to church offices. The property’s current market value is $256,400 ($172,900 for the church and $83,500 for the rectory). Taxes are in arrears on the rectory.
“It’s not for the faint of heart,” admits Mr. Harchick. “We need a risk-taker.”
On the plus side is its location in Larimer. Developments such as Bakery Square, a new “lifestyle center” in the old Nabisco plant on Penn Avenue, are helping to make one of Pittsburgh’s poorest neighborhoods attractive to national retailers and other businesses. UPMC, for instance, is planning to open a technology development center there by the end of the year, and Free People, a hip clothing boutique, follows on the heels of Anthropologie this winter. Next year, a $1.8 million, 14,500-square-foot vocational center funded by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Small Business Administration will open not far from the church on Meadow Street.
The Rev. Armenia Johnson, leader of Heavenly Vision Ministries, says she will be very careful in selecting a buyer for the old church.
“We want them to restore it into something that is beneficial and positive for this community,” she says.
In other words, if you’re thinking “brew house” or “night club,” it’s probably not going to fly.
Rev. Johnson, who is now associate pastor of St. James Baptist in Homewood, paid $100,000 the property in 1995. Although the Garfield native did her best to maintain the elegant building, she never had the funding she needed to properly maintain or improve it. So bit by bit, the once grand structure fell into terrible disrepair.
It’s a common fate for churches, which account for a growing number of real estate listings thanks to declining membership and consolidations. According to RealSTATS, a South Side-based real estate information company, 45 churches have changed hands in Allegheny and surrounding counties since January 2009, with sales prices ranging from $5,000 for Ambassador Baptist Church in Ross to $1.1 million for Christian Community Church in Adams.
Occasionally one will make the transition from place of worship to heavenly home. But given the high redevelopment costs, it often takes a grand idea — restaurant, performance hall, multi-unit condo development — and corporate investors to fill such a grand space. CVS, for example, bought the church in Adams. Most are purchased as-is by other religious organizations, or they languish on the market for years.
“You definitely don’t have as many players,” notes Tom Conroy of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, who has sold so many churches for Hanna’s commercial division that he’s known as The Church Guy.
Mr. Conroy’s current listings include Harvest Baptist Church in New Kensington ($199,000; MLS No. QL102931); St. Michael Church ($250,000; MLS No. QL103962) in Munhall; and St. Mary Magdalene ($159,000; MLS No. QL103653) in Homestead.
Financing, zoning and parking all can be challenges. Many older churches were built in walkable residential areas that prohibit commercial enterprises. Former parishioners add to the difficulty. Even after religious artifacts have been removed and the building is just a building, some stay emotionally attached.
“Significant events take place there,” says Mr. Conroy. “Marriages, baptisms, funerals.”
