18952_UPPER_HILL_INVENTORY_REPORT_02-19-2021_reduced_(1).pdf

Architectural Inventory for the

City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Planning Sector 15: Hill District and Uptown

Upper Hill Neighborhood

Report of Findings and Recommendations

The City of Pittsburgh

In Cooperation With:

Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission

Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

February 2021

Herron Hill Park entrance from Adelaide and Milwaukee streets, September 21, 1937. Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection, University of Pittsburgh, Archives of Industrial Society.

Prepared By:

Michael Baker International, Inc.

Jesse A. Belfast Justin P. Greenawalt and

Clio Consulting

Angelique Bamberg with

Cosmos Technologies, Inc.

Chirag Moradiya iv | P a g e

The Architectural Inventory for the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, was made possible with funding provided by the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO), the City of Pittsburgh, and the U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service Certified Local Government program.

The contents and opinions contained in this document do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of the Interior. This program receives federal financial assistance for identification and protection of historic properties. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, or age in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, National Park Service; 1849 C Street N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20240.

v | P a g e abstract

Abstract

This Architectural Inventory for the City of Pittsburgh (Planning Sector 15: Upper Hill Neighborhood) is in partial fulfillment of Preserve Policy 1.2, to Identify and Designate Additional Historic Structures, Districts, Sites, and Objects (City of Pittsburgh Cultural Heritage Plan, 2012). This project is the eleventh phase of a larger undertaking which aims ultimately to complete the architectural survey for all of Pittsburgh’s Planning Sectors. The scope of this project provided for a complete inventory of Pittsburgh’s Upper Hill Neighborhood in Planning Sector 15.

This Report of Findings and Recommendations presents survey results and recommendations.

Recommendations pertain to 1) the eligibility of various resources for National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) listing; 2) the use of survey data by the City of Pittsburgh; 3) resources prioritized for intensive-level survey; and 4) a review of this survey effort’s methodology, with emphasis on lessons learned and recommended modifications for future surveys.

All previously surveyed resources within the Upper Hill Neighborhood were field checked and an updated survey record was prepared. The survey area contains a portion of one historic district that is listed in the NRHP. Within the Upper Hill, the survey documented 25 properties in the Schenley Farms Terrace area of the Schenley Farms Historic District. In addition, project historians considered whether any new areas could qualify as potential historic districts within the Upper Hill. Two areas, Andover Terrace and Preacher’s Row (comprising the southern half of Iowa Street) appear to have significance as historic districts.

Project historians surveyed the following resources:

PREVIOUSLY SURVEYED

• 40 previously surveyed extant resources

• 2 previously surveyed resources – now demolished and not replaced

• 0 previously surveyed resources – now demolished and replaced

• 42 TOTAL previously surveyed resources resurveyed

NEWLY SURVEYED

• 1,053 TOTAL newly surveyed resources

TOTAL SURVEYED

• 1,095 TOTAL resources surveyed vi | P a g e

ELIGIBILITY RECOMMENDATIONS

• 1 previously surveyed resource individually listed in the NRHP

• 1 previously surveyed resource – determined individually eligible for the NRHP

• 251 resources without an individual NRHP eligibility determination – recommended potentially individually eligible for the NRHP

• 26 eligible or potentially eligible resources recommended for intensive-level survey (or, if already determined eligible, formal NRHP listing)

Research documented one previously surveyed resource, Herron Hill Junior High, which was determined not individually eligible for the NRHP by the PA SHPO. No change in NRHP eligibility is recommended for this resource.

This survey also identified three streets (or portions of streets) with brick or stone pavement as potentially eligible as part of a larger city-wide district comprising all streets with historic pavement: Iowa Street, Ewart Drive, and Schenley Farms Terrace.

This project was administered by the City of Pittsburgh with support from PA SHPO staff. Professionals who designed this project, conducted the fieldwork, and wrote the report meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Professional Qualifications Standards (36CFR61) for history and/or architectural history. Consulting firms include Michael Baker International, Inc., Clio Consulting, and Cosmos Technologies, Inc.

This project was funded in part by a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Certified Local Government (CLG) grant, the program guidelines of which can be found at http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/grants/3794/certified_local_government_gr ant_program/417950.

1 This number includes three double houses, which are counted as one resource for purposes of NRHP eligibility.

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/grants/3794/certified_local_government_grant_program/417950 http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/grants/3794/certified_local_government_grant_program/417950 vii | P a g e table of contents

Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ v

Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vii

Introduction

Goals and Objectives

Methodology

Historical Context/Background History

Results

Recommendations & Conclusions

Bibliography

Appendix A: Attribute Fields – PA SHPO & City of Pittsburgh Survey Requirements

Appendix B: Figures

Appendix C: Tables

List of Plates

Plate 1: 1862 Beers and Beers map showing Upper Hill vicinity, then part of Pitt Township Plate 2: 1872 G.M. Hopkins Co. plat map showing Upper Hill vicinity Plate 3: 1882 G.M. Hopkins Co. plat map showing Upper Hill vicinity Plate 4: 1889 G.M. Hopkins Co. plat map showing Upper Hill vicinity Plate 5: 1904 G.M. Hopkins Co. plat map showing Upper Hill vicinity Plate 6: 1914 G.M. Hopkins Co. plat map showing Upper Hill vicinity Plate 7: 1923 G.M. Hopkins Co. plat map showing Upper Hill vicinity Plate 8: 1939 aerial photograph of Upper Hill vicinity (www.pennpilot.psu.edu) Plate 9: 1957 aerial photograph of Upper Hill vicinity (www.pennpilot.psu.edu) Plate 10: 1967 aerial photograph of Upper Hill vicinity (www.pennpilot.psu.edu)

List of Figures

Figure 1: Overview of Planning Sector 15, Hill District and Uptown Figure 2: Previously and Newly Surveyed Resources Figure 3: Historical Integrity of Surveyed Parcels viii | P a g e table of contents

Figure 4: Location of Pre-1890 Properties Figure 5: Location of Potential Individually Eligible Resources Figure 6: Location of Areas Recommended Potentially Eligible as Historic Districts Figure 7: Geographic Distribution of the Four Most Common Building Styles in the Surveyed Area

List of Tables

Table 1: Survey Completion Table 2: Individually Listed, Determined Individually Eligible, and Potential Individually Eligible Resources Table 3: Previously Surveyed Resources Table 4: Pre-1890 Resources Table 5: Resources in Schenley Farms/Schenley Farms Terrace NRHP District Table 6: Resources in Andover Terrace (Potential Historic District) Table 7: Newly Surveyed Resources

1 | P a g e introduction

Introduction

In 2013, the City of Pittsburgh received a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Certified Local Government (CLG) grant for partial funding of an architectural inventory of Pittsburgh neighborhoods.

The present survey (phase eleven of the Pittsburgh Architectural Inventory) focuses on Planning Sector 15’s Upper Hill Neighborhood. The survey was conducted in October 2020, and the report was compiled in February 2021. Previous phases of the survey include:

• Planning Sector 1 Troy Hill Neighborhood, October 2014.

• Planning Sector 1 Spring Garden and Spring Hill-City View neighborhoods, February 2015.

• Planning Sector 12 Larimer Neighborhood, September 2016.

• Planning Sector 5 Carrick Neighborhood, October 2016.

• Planning Sector 5 Brookline Neighborhood, September 2017.

• Planning Sector 4 West End and Elliott neighborhoods, September 2018.

• Planning Sector 2 Brighton Heights Neighborhood, May 2019.

• Planning Sector 6 Allentown and Knoxville neighborhoods, September 2019.

• Planning Sector 15 Middle Hill, Bedford Dwellings, and Terrace Village neighborhoods, October

2019.

• Planning Sector 14 North Oakland, West Oakland, Central Oakland, and South Oakland neighborhoods, December 2020.

The City of Pittsburgh is divided into 16 planning sectors. Each sector contains a number of neighborhoods and is delineated based on a number of factors, including neighborhood and ward boundaries and topographical features. The City chose to focus the eleventh phase of its Architectural Inventory on the Upper Hill Neighborhood to gain a comprehensive understanding of its development and extant historic-age resources because the area has not been previously studied in a holistic way and because of the increasing level of development pressure in the area. After two weeks of survey work, project historians surveyed 1,095 resources, of which 1,053 were newly surveyed and 42 were previously surveyed (Appendix B, Figures 1-2). This represents a complete survey of the Upper Hill Neighborhood. Properties were recorded using the PA SHPO minimum survey requirements (see Appendix A). Survey data were uploaded in real time to the City’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database via tablet computers.

These data were later re-formatted and transmitted to PA SHPO in a Microsoft Excel file in accordance with PA SHPO’s Cultural Resources Geographic Information System (CRGIS) requirements.

This Report of Findings and Recommendations presents survey results and recommendations.

Recommendations pertain to 1) the eligibility of various resources for National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) listing; 2) the use of survey data by the City of Pittsburgh; 3) resources prioritized for intensive-level survey; and 4) a review of this survey effort’s methodology, with emphasis on lessons learned and recommended modifications for future surveys.

2 | P a g e introduction

Qualifications

Professionals who designed this project, conducted the fieldwork, and wrote the report meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Professional Qualifications Standards (36CFR61) for history and/or architectural history. Project historians included Jesse Belfast and Justin Greenawalt, of Michael Baker International, Inc., and Angelique Bamberg of Clio Consulting. Project maps and data tables were compiled by Chirag Moradiya of Cosmos Technologies, Inc.

3 | P a g e goals and objectives

Goals and Objectives

In 2012, the City of Pittsburgh Department of City Planning released its Cultural Heritage Plan as a component of its first comprehensive plan. Resulting from the plan, the need to document historic architectural resources was identified with the goal to:

Document the City’s cultural and historic resources in ways that are accurate, meaningful, comprehensive, and useful to the City and the general public.

The Cultural Heritage Plan noted that the Historic Resources Inventory should be a “dynamic, comprehensive list of the City’s historic resources.” Further, according to the plan, the existing inventory of historic resources (over 13,500 parcels identified as being historic on some level) “needs to be field checked and continually updated as physical conditions change and additional resources are listed in the National Register of Historic Places or designated under the City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance” (Cultural Heritage Plan, 112).

To realize these goals, the City prepared policies with corresponding action items in the historic preservation plan. This current field survey is in partial fulfillment of those items, including:

PRESERVE POLICY 1.2 - Identify and Designate Additional Historic Structures, Districts, Sites, and Objects

PRESERVE 1.2-A: Conduct a Citywide Reconnaissance Survey (cursory visual inspection).

Identify areas that are potentially eligible for new listings as City-Designated Historic Districts and NRHP Historic Districts. Focus on areas that:

• Have been previously identified as potentially eligible (see Cultural Heritage Plan Appendix B).

• Have a high percentage of structurally sound and architecturally significant pre-1940 buildings.

Identify individual structures and sites outside of City-designated and NRHP historic districts that are potentially eligible for individual nomination as a City-designated historic resource and/or for listing in the NRHP. Focus on structurally sound resources that:

• Would not otherwise be part of an eligible historic district.

• Are significant or unique for their architecture and/or engineering.

• Would severely and adversely impact the neighborhood's form, character, or economic growth potential if demolished or negatively altered. (Consider existing and former

4 | P a g e goals and objectives schools, religious buildings, and civic or quasi-civic spaces such as libraries, parks, fire stations, community centers, etc.)

The current survey effort represents the City’s second effort to identify previously unsurveyed historic resources within Sector 15’s Upper Hill Neighborhood, in partial fulfillment of the above-mentioned goal.

(The first effort occurred in 1992-93, when the Pittsburgh Register of Historic Places survey was conducted.) In addition, the City intends to use this project to further develop and refine the methodology for conducting architectural surveys that was used in the first through tenth phases of the Pittsburgh Architectural Inventory (October 2014/February 2015/September 2016/October 2016/September 2017/September 2018/May 2019/September 2019/October 2019/December 2020).

5 | P a g e methodology

Methodology

Background Research

Prior to initiating fieldwork, the project team conducted background research and reviewed published literature to identify and obtain sources of information regarding the history and architecture of the Upper Hill. A review of existing Pittsburgh history texts helped to predict the types of properties that should be expected in the survey area; historic mapping illustrated patterns of development and periods of growth in the neighborhood. Searches of CRGIS, the Pittsburgh Register of Historic Places—a city-wide survey conducted by the Historic Preservation staff of the Department of City Planning in 1991-1993—and the Allegheny County African American Historic Sites Survey resulted in a compilation of previously identified resources in the Upper Hill.

Reconnaissance Survey

The survey team consisted of three architectural historians who spent approximately eight days in the field with tablet computers. The tablets were pre-programmed with county property parcel maps and a fillable database of attribute fields developed by the project team to satisfy CRGIS database requirements (see Appendix A).

The project team conducted a windshield survey before beginning the building-by-building survey to get the “lay of the land” and develop a plan for data collection. The team was able to completely survey the Upper Hill neighborhood within the period allotted for field work.

An important function of the survey was to check and update previously identified resources. Having compiled these during preparation for field work, survey consultants notated previously identified resources in the fillable database using a number of newly created fields:

• Previous Survey: Surveyors used this field to enter the source(s) of previous identification/documentation of the resource, i.e. CRGIS, 1993 City Survey.

• NR Status: For extant resources listed in the NRHP or with official determinations of eligibility for listing from PA SHPO, “SHPO: Listed” or “SHPO” Eligible” were entered in this field. “SHPO: Not Eligible” was entered for resources previously determined by SHPO to be ineligible for the NRHP. For resources identified in a previous survey but without a determination of eligibility, “Unevaluated” was entered. In all of these cases, the historians performing this survey conducted their own evaluation of these resources, since many SHPO determinations were made long ago. “Demolished or 100% destroyed” was entered for resources demolished since they were last recorded in a survey.

• NRL: “Yes” was entered in this field for resources previously individually listed in the

NRHP.

6 | P a g e

• NRLD: “Yes” was entered in this field for resources previously designated as within the boundaries of a historic district listed in the NRHP.

• NRE: “Yes” was entered in this field for resources previously determined individually eligible for listing in the NRHP by PA SHPO.

• NRED: “Yes” was entered in this field for resources previously designated as contributing to historic districts determined eligible for listing in the NRHP by PA SHPO.

“No” was entered for resources previously determined ineligible if this survey agreed.

The following other new fields were added to the database for this survey:

• Architect/Builder: The name(s) of a resource’s architect and/or builder were entered in this field, if known through research.

• Related: Surveyors entered address ranges in this field for attached rows of houses or groupings of detached houses that were all designed and built at the same time by a single entity or individual. Separate records were still completed for individual addresses in related groups of residences. However, commercial buildings with more than one storefront were recorded as one resource under the main address, and the full address (e.g. 2302-2306 Centre Avenue) was entered in the “Address Discrepancy” field.

• Associated Resources: A key number was entered in this field for an individual resource that had its own key number in addition to belonging to a larger entity, such as a historic district with a collective key number. The collective key number was noted in the main “Key Number” field for these and all resources that were part of larger sites or districts.

This field was also used to notate duplicate individual key numbers assigned to a resource.

Along with individual resources, surveyors had the ability to create a single site record including multiple resources by drawing a polygon around groups of contiguous parcels. This was most useful when recording a complex of related resources as a single site, such as a historic development plan or potential historic district. In the case of a site with multiple resources, surveyors used the “Related” “and Comments” fields to note address ranges and other features of those resources. Individual resource records were still completed in the field. In the case of multiple vacant lots, the ability to draw a polygon around several lots at once allowed surveyors to avoid tedious duplication of effort in recording every lot singly in the field. However, in order to have an accurate count of vacant lots at the end of the survey, an individual record for each lot was added later in the office and the polygon boundary for the vacant lots was deleted.

Consistent with previous surveys, the survey team photographed all non-vacant parcels (i.e. those with buildings, structures, or landscape features such as parking lots or gardens), regardless of age or integrity, because it required minimal effort when the surveyor was entering data on the resource anyway;

moreover, the photographs would enable project historians to review the condition and integrity

7 | P a g e assessments after the fieldwork was completed in order to assure consistency in integrity assessments among surveyors. Such additional photographic data provide an overall view of an area’s integrity and the nature of intrusions in a potential historic district. In the future, this photographic documentation will provide a complete snapshot of a particular area and be a rich source of archival data to document change over time in Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods.

Members of the survey team found it critical to establish consistency in the use of certain fields at the beginning of the survey. Use of the following fields is explained:

• Potential Individual Eligibility: Surveyors entered “Yes” for select properties discovered through background research to have been significant in the historical context of the community and for properties whose architecture and integrity stood out in the field, suggesting that further research on their history was warranted. Previously surveyed resources were re-evaluated in the field and marked as “Yes” only if their architecture, integrity, and/or historical associations warranted. Surveyors did not fill in this field for contributing resources in NRHP-listed historic districts.

• Potential District Eligibility: The project team determined during its windshield survey that the survey area, as a whole, would not be suitable for historic district designation.

Accordingly, project historians sought to identify smaller sections of the neighborhood or groups of related resources with sufficient integrity for historic district potential. An analysis of potential district boundaries was done after the field survey was completed and integrity maps of the surveyed areas had been generated. Therefore, the “Potential District Eligible” field was not used during the survey, but it was completed after potential historic districts were defined. This field was also used to update contributing and non-contributing resources in NRHP listed districts.

• Integrity: For this field, broad categories of “High,” “Medium,” and “Low” were utilized.

Resources in the survey area were judged to have some integrity if, despite some alterations, their original character was discernible. A property that had replacement siding but all original trim, windows, and doors intact might be given a rating of “High.”

“Medium” was assigned to those that exhibited replacement siding and replacement windows and/or doors, but that retained their original size, scale, rhythm and proportion of openings, and possibly some original ornamentation. “Low” was used for properties with drastically altered facades, fenestration, massing, and/or materials, such that their original character had been obscured.

• Style: Correspondingly, where a resource’s original style was evident in its massing, extant detail (such as cornice or window design), and/or characteristic features (such as classical porch columns), that style was entered in this field. Resources with no remaining features of their original style were assigned a value of “No Style,” even if their context suggested a specific era of construction. “No Style” was also used for vernacular properties with no ornamentation or other stylistic gestures. “Mixed” was entered for transitional buildings that appeared to have had characteristics of more

8 | P a g e than one style when built. For buildings that exhibited an original style and a later one associated with additions or alterations, these styles were entered separately in the “Style” and “Secondary Style” fields. “Other” was used primarily for mid-twentieth-century resources that were not described by any of the standard PA SHPO style categories, such as ranch houses, Cape Cods, and split levels.

• “Vacant parcels” and “properties constructed post-1975” were noted with a “Yes” in those fields. Additional fields and photographs were not recorded for vacant properties. For post-1975 buildings, sites, and structures, photographs were taken, and the current function was recorded. Integrity was not rated for post-1975 resources.

Parcels that were not occupied by a building or structure but that were in use (such as parking lots, parks, and gardens) were entered as “sites” and assigned a relevant function from the CRGIS-supplied drop-down list; such sites were also photographed.

• The “Historic Use” and “Current Use” fields allowed only one use to be selected. For mixed-use buildings, such as those with storefronts on ground floors and apartments or offices above, the first-floor use was entered.

• “Year Built” dates were generally entered in the field and were derived from observation of materials, method of construction, style, and context. In a few cases, the exact dates of major resources were known from research. For the rest, surveyors entered “C” for “circa” along with an estimated date. Historic maps, loaded onto surveyors’ tablets, were cross-referenced when possible. A secondary “Year Built” field enabled the surveyor to record the dates of additions or secondary buildings or structures such as garages; in some cases, the secondary date was used to indicate a range of years for construction.

• Several fields allowed surveyors to record addresses and other locational information that was different or missing from the pre-loaded county property information. The “Address Discrepancy” field was used to record street addresses that differed from the addresses in the county database. “Location” was used to record the address, parcel, or descriptive location of resources added by the survey team in the field, for example, objects such as sculptures and structures such as segments of streets that retained historic paving. A “Skip” field allowed surveyors to note that a data point was redundant with another already completed for a property. For example, in an apartment building with more than one ground-floor storefront, a county property address point might be present for each commercial address, but only one record usually needed to be completed for the building. In this case, surveyors would complete one record for the whole property, note the range of addresses in the “Address Discrepancy” field, then select “Yes” in the “Skip” field for each additional address.

• The “Comments” field was used by surveyors to record any additional features of note or unusual circumstances. Project historians also used the “Comments” field to note

9 | P a g e the presence of multiple buildings or structures on a single parcel, for example, a house and detached garage.

Database Management

Once the reconnaissance survey was complete, the City GIS department uploaded the results from the platform software to Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheet data were reviewed for accuracy and completeness.

PA SHPO Key Numbers and Inventory ID numbers were manually entered for all non-vacant, pre-1976 surveyed resources (note: post-1975 resources and vacant parcels were assigned Key Numbers and Inventory ID numbers if they were located within the boundaries of existing or proposed NRHP districts).

After the Excel file was complete, it was used to generate mapping (Appendix B) and tables (Appendix C).

The Excel file was resubmitted for uploading into the City’s GIS system so that it would contain the most accurate and complete data from the survey. The GIS data concluded the deliverable for the City to incorporate into its Historic Resources Inventory.

PA SHPO required a slightly modified spreadsheet to update its CRGIS database. A copy of the City’s database spreadsheet was modified by removing irrelevant data fields, by reformatting column headings to use CRGIS naming conventions, and by adding primary (i.e. common) Inventory ID records for grouped resources that share a key number. Information included in the primary record for the resource group included such fields as an address range, architectural styles, and materials. The primary Inventory ID number consists of the CRGIS Key Number plus the suffix .0001, and related resources are numbered sequentially beginning with the suffix .0002. Thus, for a grouped resource with Key Number 123456, the primary record’s Inventory ID would be 123456.0001 and the first related resource’s Inventory ID would be 123456.0002.

10 | P a g e historical context

Historical Context/Background History

Introduction

The Upper Hill neighborhood is located approximately three miles east of downtown Pittsburgh on a high plateau between the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. It is part of City Planning Sector 15, Hill District and Uptown, and is bounded by Ridgeway Street to the north; Centre Avenue to the south; Bigelow Boulevard to the east; and Herron Avenue to the west. The neighborhood includes the highest point in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, the top of Herron Hill around the Herron Hill Reservoir.

The Upper Hill is the easternmost subsection of the larger area known as the Hill District, which also comprises the Lower and Middle Hill neighborhoods. Though bounded and named separately on city neighborhood maps, the Upper, Middle, and Lower Hill District neighborhoods are historically, culturally, and physically related to one another. The Hill District urbanized in the late nineteenth century with the arrival and settlement of European immigrants and became predominantly African American during the Great Migration of the early twentieth century. The Upper Hill was the last part of the Hill District where this occurred; it remained over 50 percent white until after the end of World War II, then gained a reputation as “Sugar Top,” a precinct of well-to-do African American professionals. Each part of the Hill District exemplifies different aspects of Pittsburgh’s African American story. “The progression from the slums of the Lower Hill to the tenement blocks of the Middle Hill and the green avenues of the Upper Hill is almost an emblematic outline of the American Dream” (Franklin Toker, Pittsburgh: A New Portrait, 281).

At its edges, the political boundaries of the Upper Hill contain areas more related to adjacent neighborhoods of Oakland (the hillside terraces southeast of Iowa Street known as Schenley Heights) and Polish Hill (the northwestern sector of the neighborhood where it slopes down toward Bigelow Boulevard).

PreservePGH notes that the Upper Hill—along with the rest of the Hill District—“has a large collection of pre-1940 buildings; however, distressed properties affect the historic appearance and integrity of many blocks. Even so, architecturally significant dwellings… are scattered throughout” (PreservePGH, 91).

History of the Upper Hill:

1795-ca. 1900 In 1784, William Penn’s heirs granted the privilege of mining coal in the hills around Pittsburgh for £30 per lot. One of the earliest references to the Upper Hill is to a Mr. Mossman mining coal under what was later known as Herron Hill; the coal was sent by wagon downtown where it was used by Pittsburgh’s residents and early industrial concerns (Harper, 532).

Herron Hill is named for the estate of John Herron and his descendants. John Herron was a successful lumber dealer who moved from the Point to the Hill in 1833 and participated in the Upper Hill’s earliest land uses, farming and mining of the Pittsburgh Coal Seam, which underlies the Hill. He owned a farm, coal mines, and “other properties of value” on the Upper Hill until his death in 1863 (Encyclopedia of

11 | P a g e

Contemporary Biography of Pennsylvania, 258). John Herron's house stood on the north side of what is now Clarissa Street below the south embankment of the Herron Hill Reservoir (“Cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny with Parts of Adjacent Boroughs”). The lands around it were planted in fields and orchards.

Also notable was a portion of Springfield Farm, a 319-acre property acquired by James O’ Hara (ca. 1752- 1819) from Thomas Smallman and used as a summer residence (Charles Shetler, “James O’Hara’s Landholdings in Allegheny County,” 30). The property was inherited by James’ daughter Elizabeth Febiger O’Hara Denny (wife of Harmar Denny). The house associated with this estate, possibly dating to the 1780s2, was located on the upper side of Ridgway Street, just east of Herron Avenue (current parcel 28-J- 281). The site commanded a view of the Allegheny River and was noted by the O’Haras for the beauty of its sunsets. It is reported that the Dennys continued to occupy the house “until the encroachments of the railroad rendered the mansion no longer desirable as a family residence” (qtd. in Florence C. McLaughlin, “Margaret Townsend Scully’s Trunk,” 379, 381). The house was demolished soon after the death of Elizabeth F. Denny in 1878. The site of the O’Hara House may have archaeological significance.

By 1862, a few more farmhouses were present in the area (Beers). J. Orr’s house stood at the approximate location of Camp and Rampart streets. Others were owned by Herron’s son, William Anderson Herron (b.

1821); W.A. Herron’s brother-in-law, Richard Sill; and another relative, D. Herron—presumably David Herron, another of John Herron’s sons. William A. Herron began his career as a dry goods merchant in downtown Pittsburgh and joined his father’s coal business, Herron, Brown, & Company, in the 1840s. In addition to a number of mines in the Upper Hill, the company owned land near Turtle Creek on the Monongahela River. It filled contracts for Pittsburgh’s iron mills, factories, and gas works, and shipped large quantities of coal in flat boats to Cincinnati, Louisville, Cairo, and New Orleans (Mercer County Biographies: William Anderson Herron). William A. Herron also served as Pittsburgh’s Clerk of Courts for six years.

The Herron mines gave rise to Minersville, a small settlement of mostly detached frame worker houses centered on Herron Avenue (then Miner Street, on a slightly different alignment) between Centre Avenue and Milwaukee Street (then Madison Avenue). Herron Avenue is shown with its present name and alignment on the Hopkins map of 1872; Madison Avenue’s name was changed in 1907 to avoid duplication upon Allegheny’s annexation to Pittsburgh. In the 1860s and 70s, there were a few more than a dozen houses in Minersville, along with a frame church, Seventh Presbyterian, built on land purchased from John Herron (Beers; Hopkins, 1872). On the 1882 Hopkins map, this building is briefly labeled as a schoolhouse, but Seventh Presbyterian is again shown as the property’s occupant in 1889 (Hopkins, 1882, 1889). A few lots north, another frame church, the Second German Evangelical Church, faced Ossipee Street near its intersection with Shawnee beginning in the 1880s. Today, only one early building still stands in the vicinity of Minersville: a ca. 1880 frame house on the northwest corner of Shawnee and Lyon streets. The rest of Minersville’s original buildings were replaced with more substantial brick ones around and after the turn of the twentieth century.

2 James O’Hara resided on the farm at least as early as 1787, but it is not known if the house was subsequently improved or rebuilt by him prior to his death in 1819, or by his daughter Elizabeth prior to the coming of the railroad in the 1850s.

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The most significant remnant of historic Minersville, the Minersville Cemetery, is not directly affiliated with the village’s residents or industry. This seven-acre burial ground was established in 1852 by the Second St. Paul Lutheran Church, a German congregation located on Pride Street in the Lower Hill, and it first appears on property maps of the Upper Hill in 1872. Tombstones reflect skilled German stonecutting, but also the presence of other immigrant groups, including Slovak, Greek, and one stone in Arabic, perhaps marking the grave of one of the Hill’s Lebanese or Syrian immigrants. A section of the cemetery was purchased by Rev. William Passavant, founder of the Pittsburgh Infirmary on the North Side, for paupers’ graves. After the closure of the church on Pride Street in 1981, ownership of the cemetery transferred to the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and burials ceased. Minersville Cemetery became neglected, overgrown, and damaged by tree roots and vandals. Conservation efforts beginning in 2012 have made progress in clearing and maintaining the landscape and restoring the damaged and toppled headstones.

The Civil War was a strong catalyst for growth in Pittsburgh. The city expanded from the Point eastward into the Hill District, and in 1867, added 14 wards through annexation, including Minersville, bringing an additional 35,000 citizens into Pittsburgh. The Herron estate began to be subdivided and platted into the present neighborhood during this period. John Herron’s widow, Clarissa Anderson Herron, died in 1873, and the Herron house was destroyed by fire in 1877. Afterward, Clarissa Street was laid out across its site.

The Centre Avenue street railway served the neighborhood via a passenger station at Herron Avenue between Milwaukee and Bryn Mawr beginning in the early 1870s. The line was acquired by the Central Traction Company and converted to electric operation in the early 1890s. In the early twentieth century, the station became a car barn.

The Pittsburgh Water Commission purchased land for a new reservoir on the Hill from the Herron family in 1872 to meet increased demand on the growing city’s public water supply. At 1,250 feet above sea level and 583 feet above river level, the property included the highest point in Allegheny County. The Herron Hill Reservoir and pumping station were completed in 1880. The original, frame pumping station stood on the corner of Adelaide and Milwaukee streets, but was beset by landslides; the City replaced it with a new brick pumping station at Centre Avenue and N. Dithridge Street in 1897.

The creation of the Herron Hill Reservoir and the contemporaneous construction of the Highland Reservoir (1879) coincided with the goals of Edward Manning Bigelow—a city engineer who became Director of Public works in 1889—to establish a system of public parklands in Pittsburgh. Seizing on the opportunity of scenic open space already under public control, in 1889 Bigelow asked City Council to set aside 46 acres of City-owned land around the Highland and Herron Hill reservoirs and to authorize the Department of Public Works to improve them as parks. Thus, Herron Hill Park became one of Pittsburgh’s inaugural city parks. Historic photographs show its paths lined with benches; benches also faced outward toward the views at intervals around the reservoir itself, which was enclosed by a simple wrought iron picket fence.

Aside from the cemetery and the park, little else remains from this early period in the Upper Hill. A couple former farm houses stand out amid the Upper Hill’s present urban streetscapes: the George Lambert

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House (ca. 1870), set back from Bryn Mawr Road in its 700 block, and 3383 Webster Avenue (c. 1875), the S. D. Herron, Jr. House. Also notable is the ca. 1875, Second Empire style, double house at 738-740 Anaheim Street, which was owned by the Henke family.

The African American Historic Sites Survey of Allegheny County discusses the Cokain Coke ovens of Minersville, calling them “architectural reminders and potential archaeological sites… mentioned in the city directories as early as the 1830s. They are therefore artifacts of an age when industrial infrastructure was built close to the point of consumption, in this case the early iron manufactories of the Pittsburgh area” (African American Historic Sites Survey of Allegheny County, 99). The report states that it is not known for certain whether African American laborers utilized the ovens, but their location near the locus of black antebellum settlement in Pittsburgh suggests that black as well as white workers may have found employment in Minersville. The exact location of the Cokain Coke ovens is not identified.

ca. 1900-1950 Residential development was sparse and scattered in the Upper Hill until about 1900, then boomed. West of the reservoir, housing lots on Milwaukee and Adelaide streets filled up with a mix of detached, two- to two-and-a-half story frame and brick houses facing the park between 1900 and about 1920. Below Webster Avenue, Ridgeway Street was built up at around the same time but was topographically separate.

Land to the east of the reservoir along Camp and Jefferson (now Finland) streets remained in large tracts held by heirs of the country estate era well into the twentieth century (Hopkins 1904, 1914, 1923).

The Upper Hill’s demographic character also changed over the first half of the twentieth century. Between about 1915-1930, the Great Migration brought a surge of African Americans from the rural south to northern industrial cities such as Pittsburgh. The Hill had had a small African American population since the 1830s, mainly concentrated in an area known as Arthursville or Little Hayti centered along Roberts Street in the Lower Hill. Initially, the Hill’s black population was restricted to the Lower Hill, and the occupants of the Upper Hill neighborhood were mostly white of German, English, Irish, and Scots-Irish descent; late-nineteenth-century city directories also list residents of Minersville with French, Dutch, and Jewish last names (City-data.com ; City of Pittsburgh Directories). During the Great Migration, patterns of segregation prevented newly arriving blacks from living in many other areas of the city, while restrictions on black families owning property lifted throughout the Hill District. The Hill became predominantly African American during this period.

After the Great Depression and World War II, Pittsburgh’s African American population continued to grow in size, and it began to disperse from the Lower and Middle Hill District to other parts of the city. At around the same time, the post-war GI Bill provided favorable terms for white families to move out of the city to new homes in the suburbs. The Upper Hill’s elevation, views, and green, leafy character attracted a professional class of African Americans who worked as lawyers, doctors, teachers, ministers, merchants, and barbers (a trade well-respected in the African American community). In the Upper Hill, these financially stable African Americans saw an opportunity to own homes in a more affluent neighborhood but remain close to the family homes and institutions in which they had grown up. At first, the middle-class African Americans of the Upper Hill lived alongside their white peers. As the number of African

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American residents of the neighborhood expanded in the mid-twentieth century, it became known as Sugar Top after the famous Sugar Hill section of Harlem in New York.

Along the neighborhood’s western edge, Herron Avenue emerged as Sugar Top’s business district.

Historic photographs through the 1950s show a dense streetscape of mostly two-story buildings with ground-floor storefronts and a street heavily trafficked with pedestrians, cars, and streetcars. A movie theater, the Pastime, stood slightly south and across the avenue from Bryn Mawr.

Also along Herron Avenue at the terminus of Wylie Avenue stands the older of the Upper Hill’s two historically and architecturally significant churches. The Romanesque Revival John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church was built in 1895 for the Seventh Presbyterian congregation that had occupied this site since the early days of Minersville. In 1894, the Seventh Presbyterian Church reorganized and changed its name to Herron Avenue Presbyterian Church. It also took out a building permit for the current brick church building, designed by James N. Campbell. Campbell was a native of Washington, Pennsylvania, who worked for a number of architects in Pittsburgh as a draftsman before opening his own practice in the 1880s. Of his few known works, another one that still stands is the former California Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church at 3403 California Avenue in Brighton Heights, also designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style (Historic Review Commission of Pittsburgh, Historic Structure Nomination Report: John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church). Since the late 1960s, the California Avenue building has housed the Avery A.M.E. Zion Church, another African American congregation.

Over time, the congregation of the Herron Avenue Presbyterian Church dwindled, until in 1944 it disbanded and turned over its property to the Pittsburgh Presbytery. The Presbytery, in turn, sold the church to the Board of Trustees of John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church the next year.

John Wesley A.M.E. Zion is one of the oldest African American congregations in Allegheny County, organized as the A.M.E. Mission in the Lower Hill 1836. Its congregation previously worshipped in a building—now demolished—on Arthur Street, but this became too small as the A.M.E. Zion movement grew along with Pittsburgh’s black community during the Great Migration. In 1920, the Rev. Elijah L.

Madison became the church’s pastor. Rev. Madison, himself from North Carolina, was known for his efforts to help new migrants from the south adjust to their new homes and lives in western Pennsylvania.

In 1927, Rev. Madison took the lead in establishing Wesley Center A.M.E. Zion Church on Centre Avenue in the Middle Hill to relieve the overcrowding at the Arthur Street church.

After the Great Depression and World War II, as Pittsburgh’s African American population continued to swell and its most affluent members made their homes in Sugar Top, John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church migrated with them away from the Lower Hill. City directories indicate that the congregation moved into the former Presbyterian church building at 594 Herron Avenue in 1949. There it continued to be an important spiritual and social anchor for the African American community. The basement of the Herron Avenue building, known as Fellowship Hall, served as meeting place for the NAACP during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s (African American Historic Sites Survey of Allegheny County, 99).

The Upper Hill’s other historic church was constructed in 1915 to the design of architect Charles Beeler at the corner of Bryn Mawr and Iowa streets. Initially, the complex—which includes a parsonage and a small

15 | P a g e garage—served the congregation of Schenley Heights Methodist Episcopal Church, which formed from the merging of the Herron Hill and Centenary M.E. congregations in 1914. Schenley Heights M.E. Church closed after another reorganization in 1948, and Grace Memorial Presbyterian took over the building.

Grace Memorial, the first black Presbyterian congregation in Allegheny County and “the mother-church of black Presbyterians” (Dyer), was organized on Miller Street in the Lower Hill, then the locus of African American settlement in Pittsburgh, in 1868 and moved to Arthur Street in 1874. There, the congregation built a house of worship in 1886, which is now demolished. In 1940, it moved to 2546 Centre Avenue. In 1948, Grace Memorial followed the African American elite to which it catered to Sugar Top. The church’s 1915 complex is situated amid many of the neighborhood’s finest homes along Iowa and nearby streets.

In 1954, Faith Lutheran Church was constructed just past the end of Iowa Street where it bends into Ewart Drive. The block of Iowa Street between Grace Memorial and Faith Lutheran was known as “Preachers ’ Row” because the ministers of Macedonia, Monumental, Central, and Ebenezer Baptist Churches—all African American Baptist churches in the Hill—maintained personages there. The Faith Lutheran Church building now houses the Schenley Heights Community Development Program, a youth enrichment program founded by Grace Memorial.

The Upper Hill was historically served by its own elementary and junior high schools, while older children attended high school outside of the neighborhood. Beginning in 1860, the children of Minersville attended the Minersville No. 1 Public School at Centre Avenue and Morgan Street in the Middle Hill. In 1873, that two-story building was expanded with the addition of a third floor, and in 1902, it was supplemented by a new primary school, Minersville No. 5 Public School, on Milwaukee Street. This was later renamed Madison School after Madison Avenue. Madison School’s architect, Ulysses J.L. Peoples, worked for a time at D. H. Burnham and Company in Chicago and reportedly brought elaborate terra cotta forms back to Pittsburgh following their display at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Peoples was known for his extensive and often extraordinary use of terra cotta ornament in his commissions, including the now-demolished Moose Building downtown. Madison School features extravagantly modeled terra cotta entrances depicting monkeys, snakes, cherubs, and a variety of other beasts coexisting with vaguely Romanesque abstract decorative motifs. Peoples also designed the Larimer, Wightman, McCleary, and Oakland Schools in Pittsburgh. Madison School received an Art Deco addition by Pringle & Robling in 1929. Madison School’s 1902 construction and its 1929 addition are reflective of the expansion of Pittsburgh public schools in the early twentieth century to accommodate population growth. Minersville No. 1 Public School was demolished in 1942.

Nineteenth-century elementary schools provided education through eighth grade, but modern educational theory in the early twentieth century favored the establishment of junior high schools to prepare pre-adolescents for secondary education. The Pittsburgh Board of Education adopted this approach and built several specialized junior high school facilities beginning in the 1920s.