Tag Archives: historic preservation

A stroll through Schenley Farms

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Last month we signed up for a walking tour of Schenley Farms, a historic subdivision in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood. A local historic preservation group organized the tour and charged participants $20 per ticket; a Schenley Farms resident led the tour. Full disclosure: I’m a veteran walking tour consumer and I design and lead tours professionally. We had low expectations going into the tour and 90 minutes after it began and we walked away in disbelief that it was much worse than we anticipated.

This isn’t the place to pile onto an amateur tour guide or the tone-deaf and obsolete historic preservation organization behind the tour. Instead, it’s where I want to reflect on what was in the tour and what was missing.

What the tour had was lots of celebratory history about the wonderful white real estate developers, architects, and homeowners whose names are indelibly attached to the neighborhood. These included former university presidents, food company executives, and a popular amusement park founder.

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There is No Basis in the Law for Demolishing this Historic Building

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In 2023, the Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission unanimously approved an application to demolish a historic building in the city’s Uptown neighborhood. The developer took that decision to the Pittsburgh Planning Commission for approval in an April 2, 2024 hearing. The HRC approval had no basis in law and preservation practice. Despite serious questions raised by my testimony and statements submitted by other parties opposed to the project as proposed, the Pittsburgh Planning Commission voted to approve the project (five affirmative votes, one abstention), including the demolition of Joe Tito’s former garage and beer distributorship.

Visitors attending the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House pop-up museum in April 2022 read text panels next to Joe Tito’s former garage and beer distributorship. The Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission and Pittsburgh Planning Commission have approved this landmarked building’s demolition. Photo by David S. Rotenstein.
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Historic Preservation Contributes to Black Trauma

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Buried deep inside my recent Pittsburgh City Paper cover story is a little bit about historic preservation:

In his 1984 memoir Brothers and Keepers, John Edgar Wideman, the award-winning Pittsburgh-born author, made the prison the setting for his brother’s incarceration and a central character.

“Western Penitentiary sprouts like a giant wart from the bare, flat stretches of concrete surrounding it,” Wideman wrote. To Wideman, Western Penitentiary punished its inmates and their loved ones by dehumanizing them.

Wideman’s take on the prison captures the sentiments held by Black Pittsburghers: revulsion, not nostalgia. Compare that to the efforts by white historic preservationists who sought to protect the landmark which in 2022 was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The conflicting views of the impending demolition underscore the need to better understand history holistically and equitably. They also speak to how Pittsburgh preserves its Black history landmarks: the jail at one end of Wylie Ave. is a tourist attraction with a brass plaque, and the church at the other end is condemned.

Former Western Penitentiary (2023).
Condemnation notice affixed to the John Wesley AME Church (2020).

The Pittsburgh preservationist who was pushing to save the former Western Penitentiary is the same one who fought to preserve the Civic Arena. Constructed in the Lower Hill District, the Civic Arena and its sprawling parking lots replaced hundreds of mostly Black owned and occupied homes, businesses, churches, and recreational spaces.

The Pittsburgh Civic Arena and the Lower Hill District. “The Changing City: Report of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh.” Pittsburgh City Archives.

Wait, what? Yep, the same white preservationist dude who 15 years ago wanted to force the city to preserve one of the most painful reminders of urban renewal and displacement wanted to keep the hulking reminder of mass incarceration. At best, it’s tone deaf. At worst, it’s a reminder of the white supremacy and classism that continues to dominate historic preservation.

© 2024 D.S. Rotenstein

Is It Time To Tear Down A Bootlegger’s Home and Garage? [UPDATED]

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Last year the Pittsburgh City Council voted to designate a former bootlegger-turned-brewery executive’s home as a historic landmark. Joe Tito became a booze and gambling kingpin during Prohibition. He built an empire from his 1817 Fifth Avenue home and a brick garage. Both buildings comprise the city-designated historic site. At a January 17, 2023, development activities meeting, Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh, the community development corporation that sponsored the historic landmarking, announced that it supported demolishing the garage. It would be replaced by one of two buildings in a $70 million redevelopment project.

Site plan shared during the Jan. 17, 2023, Development Activities Meeting. The blue rectangle denotes the 2022 historic site boundary.

Located at 1818 Colwell Street, Tito built the garage in 1922 to house his family’s fleet of trucks used to move bootleg whiskey and beer throughout the region. After Prohibition ended, Tito and his brothers bought the Latrobe Brewing Company. They converted the garage into the brewery’s first Pittsburgh beer distributorship. It’s where they first sold Rolling Rock beer in 1935.

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“She died in that house”

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“She died in that house,” Dolores Slater told me in a January 2023 interview. I had asked her about Ada B. Harris, beloved Pittsburgh numbers banker William “Woogie” Harris’s widow, and the house at 7101 Apple St. that historic preservationists have dubbed the “National Negro Opera Company House.” 

There’s no doubt that the Apple Street house is one of Pittsburgh’s most important Black history landmarks. What is in question, however, is how (and by whom) that story is being told.

Where Ada Harris died is important for lots of reasons. In a new NEXTpittsburgh op-ed, I laid out some of those reasons. I also illustrate some significant issues with the high profile National Register of Historic Places nomination where a consultant to the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation wrote that Ada Harris had moved out of the home five years before her death.

In my op-ed, I offered some primary documentary sources where PHLF’s consultant might have gotten more accurate information about Ada Harris, etc. Of course, the PHLF consultant who researched and wrote the nomination didn’t have to go to all the trouble tracking down legal records, etc. to learn where Ada Harris died. She could have read Ada Harris’s front-page obituary published Nov. 18, 1972, in the New Pittsburgh Courier: “Mrs. Harris, whose husband amassed great wealth as a business man in the Hill District … died at their home, 7101 Apple St.”

The New Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 18, 1972.

Of course, my op-ed is about much more than bad facts and omissions. It’s also about exclusion and an obsolete approach to historic preservation (and public history). As one of my collaborators told me, “That’s part of my family history … It affects people I know.” Perhaps that’s something that preservationists should keep in mind when writing about real people.

©2023 D.S. Rotenstein

Are there any Black history sites in downtown Silver Spring, Md.?

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Earlier this week a Silver Spring, MD, community group hosted a virtual talk on historic preservation in Montgomery County. Eileen McGuckian (a former Historic Preservation Commission chair and president of a countywide preservation organization, Montgomery Preservation) spoke for about an hour and then took questions.

One Silver Spring resident asked McGuckian if there were any Black history sites in downtown Silver Spring. This video clip captures the exchange.

(Video clip is from the Zoom recording posted by Silver Spring Town Center, Inc.)

Spoiler alert: contrary to McGuckian’s answer, there are many Black history sites in the area covered by the question. In fact, the Montgomery County Planning Department recently released a short video about a new marker commemorating one of them:

Pittsburgh’s Black-Owned Barber Shops are a National Treasure

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Pittsburgh’s Black-owned barber shops are an important part of the city’s history. They are the quintessential African American third spaces: places where business is transacted, information is exchanged, and social ties are maintained. They are places where the built environment meets intangible cultural heritage and they are ripe for a closer examination before the buildings and the people that make them special disappear forever.

Big Tom’s Barber Shop, Centre Ave.

Pittsburgh Planning Director Karen Abrams, at the February 2023 Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission meeting, observed that the city may be filled with sites planners and preservationists don’t know about or have historically ignored. “How we can bring light to some things that have just been not on our radars in the city, that are in predominantly Black neighborhoods,” Abrams said in a discussion of the National Register nomination for a house in Homewood once owned by Pittsburgh barber and gambling entrepreneur William “Woogie” Harris and his wife, Ada.

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Imagine if this was your family

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Just imagine if this was your family and all this had been published over a period spanning nearly 20 years.

2007 City of Pittsburgh historic site nomination completed by the Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh (PDF p. 9).
“National Opera House” website, January 2023 screen capture.
January 3, 2023, Facebook exchange, with corrections that were also emailed per the FB request.
“National Opera House” website, March 7, 2023, screen capture.

For reference:

  • Ada B. Harris died in 1972 (not 1975)
  • The Slater family name is not spelled “Slator.”
  • Vicki Battles Fox is Woogie and Ada Harris’s granddaughter (not their “niece”).
  • Marion Slater was Woogie and Ada Harris’s daughter. She inherited the property from her mother, Ada B. Harris.

For further reading: “She died in that house.”

Public Participation Without the Public and Without Participation

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Yesterday’s Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission discussion of the National Register of Historic Places nomination of the William A. “Woogie” and Ada Harris House was billed as an opportunity for public comment.

Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission Feb. 1, 2023, agenda. Note the reason for including the “Woogie Harris House”: “for public comment.”

With no public notice (beyond listing on the HRC agenda posted on the city’s website) and no notification by the city’s historic preservation community, community groups, and other stakeholders, the 10-minute discussion was a master class in public participation minus the public and minus participation.

Monochromatic

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This is rich: the local historical society responsible for whitewashing Silver Spring, Maryland’s history and creating decades of monochromatic celebratory products is angry about a property owner erasing the color from his vintage Googie building.