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.
I wonder if Preservation Pittsburgh has evaluated its potential legal exposures created by having the organization’s president Matthew Falcone serving as a Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission member? As Preservation Pittsburgh’s leader, he nominates properties to become City of Pittsburgh historic landmarks. As a commissioner, he debates the merits of those nominations and votes on recommending designation to the Pittsburgh City Council. In 2020, Falcone even nominated, debated, and voted on the designation of his own home.
Preservation Pittsburgh website landing page.
Curiously, Pittsburgh’s historic preservation law makes all of this possible. It created a massive legislative loophole that enables this conflict of interest:
Submission of a nomination by a member of the Historic Review Commission, the City Planning Commission, or the City Council shall not preclude that member from full participation in the review of the nomination nor from voting on the recommendation or designation. (Pittsburgh Municipal Code §1101.03(a)(1)(b).
There’s no doubt that the HRC plays an outsize role in whether properties get landmarked or not. Being the board’s resident historic preservation expert doesn’t help, either. Along with the Planning Commission, the HRC acts in an advisory capacity under Pittsburgh’s historic preservation law. In its final say, the City Council puts great weight on what the two boards recommend.
Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission member Karen Loysen must not have gotten the memo: historic preservation is no longer just about pretty old buildings built by rich (white) men. Over the past 20 years, the field has sought to become more inclusive and people-centered. Loysen, a Pittsburgh architect, seems to be out of touch with current best practices in historic preservation.
Loysen’s unsophisticated and narrow perspective on historic preservation was on display in her statements about Pittsburgh’s Tito-Mecca-Zizza House as it worked its way through the HRC hearing cycle on its way to historic site designation. Though Loysen and her HRC colleagues declined to recommend landmarking the site, on June 7, 2022, the Pittsburgh City Council voted 6-2 to make the Tito-Mecca-Zizza House Pittsburgh’s newest historic site.
Children in the Tito-mecca-Zizza House side yard.
The landmark nomination that I prepared in 2021, in collaboration with Tito, Mecca, and Zizza family members, included many historical family photos. These pictures show the Victorian home over the span of several decades, lovingly used by the families. The photos also provide invaluable snapshots in time that show how some elements of the historic home have remained unchanged and how other elements were altered or replaced in the late 20th century. They are an invaluable asset any historian or architectural historian would be eager to have to make the case for a property’s historical significance.
In 2018, the City of Pittsburgh passed a law recognizing community organizations and implementing a process to improve stakeholder participation in development activities. The new law added to an already complicated bureaucracy for such municipal boards and commissions as the Zoning Board of Adjustment, Planning Commission, and the Historic Review Commission. These quasi-judicial boards hold public hearings where members of the public and City officials “are allowed to give testimony concerning issues under consideration.” The new Registered Community Organization Law requires all people living in a neighborhood with a registered community organization (RCO) to hold a public meeting called a development activities meeting or DAM before they can have a case heard before one of the city’s quasi-judicial boards.
Gina and Steve Super got sucked into the new DAM system soon after it launched. In1996, they bought a historic building on Pittsburgh’s Southside. For almost 50 years prior to their purchase, the two-and-a-half-story brick building at 2106 East Carson Street had housed Gerson Brothers, a tailoring and dry cleaning business. After buying the building, Gina Super opened The Laundry Basket in the storefront space.
2016 East Carson Street (Lucy’s Handmade Clothing Shop). Photo December 2021.
About two years ago, the Supers decided to make some changes. They closed the laundry business and converted the space into a retail store. At the same time, the Supers painted the building’s exterior. “All we wanted to do was freshen up the paint on the front and we replaced it with the same exact colors,” Gina Super told me in a January 2022 interview. “It wasn’t like we were changing or altering the front of the building. We repainted the identical colors.”
