By Mike Panzitta – Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh

Hey everyone! Did you miss the RBCoYP meetup last month in Buffalo and want to know exactly how many tears you should cry in sorrow? Were you there and you really want to relive the memories? Are you some kind of deep-pocketed philanthropist who is looking for a group of really awesome, fun-having, excited preservationists with a regional organization to fund? Well, come join me and I’ll run down just what we did. July’s meetup brought preservationists from the Rust Belt to New England (and even some Canadians) to Buffalo to live some of the Queen City’s amazing history!

Friday

Friday was just great. As people trickled in, the RBC group started by exploring the Curtiss Malting Building, which is currently housing a fantastic art installation. We chatted about future uses of the building before snagging a great picture with Buffalo’s awesome flag!

And we were off! our next stop was at the Pop In, where we had our official kickoff party. Everyone was showing their Buffalove as we caught up with all our preservationist friends, drinking local beer and eating pizza and (of course) buffalo wings.

Saturday

Saturday started early at Silo City, which was in my opinion the best part of the weekend. Like, seriously, if you’re in Buffalo and have the opportunity, CHECK OUT SILO CITY!

 

Silo City is the largest collection of grain elevators on our fair planet of Earth, and it does not disappoint. From the art installations inside the elevators to their connection to the history of Buffalo, they really were amazing. I want to go back just to kayak the canal and see them from the water. Oh, we also (of course) busted out our This Place Matters flags and got a pic:

Saturday continued with some downtime in Larkinville, a really cool section of town with amazing restored and repurposed buildings, some old industrial facilities, and the smallest nano-putt-putt course in the Rust Belt. They have a Preservation- themed hole, so obviously we all played a round (in between beers and taco truck runs).

We then headed downtown, to see some of Buffalo’s most famous buildings. From the Guaranty Building to City Hall, each place had a fantastic story, told to us by our impressively-knowledgeable guides.

 

After a packed Saturday like this, you’d have thought we’d have just gone right to sleep, right? Wrong! We were too excited for that, so we headed to Resurgence Brewing to celebrate our very own Bernice Radle’s 30th birthday!

Sunday

Though all of us wept Sunday due to our imminent departures, we did find the time to tours the Richardson-Olmsted Complex, which was really something else.

The H.H. Richardson-designed buildings and Frederick Olmsted-designed grounds were a gigantic mental health facility built in the late 1800s and are now being restored to use as hotel and conference space. Going through the buildings in their various states of restoration, disrepair, and partial reconstruction really told the story of this fantastic place.

Some people did some stuff after that, but I don’t care about that, since I am a child and I had to head out after the Olmsted Tour.

So that was our Buffalo weekend! We’re really disappointed if you had to miss it, but don’t fret! There are plenty more opportunities to hang out with us! Our next meetup will be in another “Queen City,” Cincinnati, Ohio, in October. So save the date, set your watch, and retune your astrolabes to make sure you get to southwest Ohio for our next meetup. I don’t want to spoil too much, but some of the ingredients so far in our planning stew include preservation-themed beer, streetcar tours, hashtag contests, spaghetti with chili on it (god forbid), manholes, subterranean exploration, bicycles, a continuation of RBC’s love of urban staircases, and (of course) granola. See you there!

By Mike Panzitta – Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh (above image photo credit Emily Pumm)

I was originally going to call this “What We’re Planning to Focus on this Year” but 2016 is already half over! Happy July! I wanted to give a quick rundown of what YPA has planned in the upcoming months to give a quick update to you, all my fantastic Rust-Belt-y friends.

Happy Hour with Carrie

As you know if you came to Pittsburgh for our RBC April Summit, we love our industrial history out here in Southwest PA, and the Carrie Blast Furnace site is a prime example of how artists and preservation advocates can come together to create something you really can’t find anywhere else.

If you went on the Carrie Furnace Tour in April, this is pretty much the same thing…except imagine after touring a real life going out for beers at a local brewery with your tour guide afterwards! Yeah. Sounds pretty great. This is our second year of partnering with Rivers of Steel for this event, and it promises to be amazing. I missed it last year and cannot wait!

Check out our event page for more info!

Open Streets at the Pedestrian Bridge

As an engineer and infrastructure nerd, I love infrastructure. And as a North Sider, I love the North Side. What kind of sandwich do you get when you smoosh those two loves together with some preservation mayo? You get the Allegheny Commons Pedestrian Bridge (and a really stretched metaphor).

The Pedestrian Bridge, which was one of our heart bomb sites last year, used to be an important connection over a rail line that runs through the park. Sadly, the deck has been removed so freight can be double-stacked on rail cars. And as much as I love train infrastructure, pedestrians come first. So we’ve been working with City Government and a couple of the local Foundations to rebuild this connection!

One of the ideas we “borrowed” from BYP is the concept of “Painting for Preservation,” an all-ages event where people are encouraged to sketch, paint, photograph, sculpt, compose music about, dance on, just in general Art a Preservation-ready site. And this time, we’re going to be a part of OpenStreets PGH, a program put on by BikePGH where they close down a bunch of roads to car traffic and people are encouraged to do…whatever they want during it! So if you’re free July 31, come say hi and hang with us! We’ll be right around the star on this map.

Dormont Pool Party!

Who says preservation can’t be fun and relaxing? We’re planning on celebrating one of our proudest preservation victories with a pool party August 20 at the Dormont Pool, one of the largest and oldest public pools in the state. The pool was in continuous operation from the ’20s until around 2006, when upkeep and repair costs caused it to close indefinitely. YPA put it on its 2008 Top Ten Preservation Opportunities list, and since then, the pool has reopened, back and better than ever!

We plan to chill, read, swim, play board games (this may just be wishful thinking on my part), and just have a good time to celebrate the summer and the pool itself. Grab your suits and join us! Read more about the event at its Facebook page. And check out Friends of Dormont Pool for more information and history!

Well, that’s the events YPA Pittsburgh has coming up in the next couple months. As always, we’ll be advocating and educating people about preservation issues in Southwest PA, but these are a couple of the “special” get-togethers we have planned. See you there!

By Mike Panzitta – Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh

We love our historic districts for so many reasons, from their unrivaled architecture to their well-established communities to their human-scale intimacy. But there’s another thing we here at the Rust Belt Coalition love about our historic neighborhoods: the blue-collar tradition of the local tavern. And we feel that here in the Rust Belt more than any other region, the unpretentiousness, sense of community, and ubiquity of the neighborhood bars allow them to be meeting places welcoming to everyone.

Pittsburgh, as an old mill town, has no shortage of these taverns where you’d feel just as comfortable ordering a West Coast fancy beer as an Imp ‘n’ Ahrn. We’re going to look at a couple bars in Historic Deutschtown in Pittsburgh’s North Side that are upholding this great tradition.

 

The Park House is a Pittsburgh institution, and for good reason. Housed in an 1890s-era storefront in the main business district of Deutschtown, the bar has been continuously operating since the end of Prohibition. Though its narrow footprint makes for tough navigating when it’s packed, the small size of the bar lends to its local feel. And the place does get packed – One of the most well-known Park House tradition is the free bluegrass Wednesday with the Shelf Life String Band, which fills the bar each week.

Plus, Park House always has free popcorn and peanuts, which is awesome.

 

Max’s Allegheny Tavern puts the “Deutsch” in Deutschtown (and I can’t believe I just wrote that). Its German menu is well known in the city, and at least I can attest that their potato pancake reuben is out of this world. Max’s, with significantly more space than the Park House, has a more relaxed, sit-down vibe, and it’s definitely more of a bar/restaurant feel. But that doesn’t make it any less cozy or intimate…wooden booths, gorgeous stained glass light fixtures, and a working player piano give the tavern a welcoming and historic feel. Order their German beer sampler flight and you can’t help but think of the German immigrants who built the North Side and gave it that distinct feel you can’t find anywhere else in the city.

Allegheny City Brewing is one of the newest businesses putting up shop in Deutschtown. A brand-new brewery from a few Pittsburghers who spent some time in Colorado, ACB looks to have the potential (from the couple times I’ve been in their shop for tastings) to be a new anchor institution in the North Side. Their beer list is incredibly extensive and they have a real connection with the neighborhood and its history. They’re looking to open within a month or so, so keep an eye out!

The Rust Belt Coalition of Young Preservationists loves beer. And we (obviously) love historic districts. So you can imagine how excited we get when a historic district has a robust bar scene like Deutschtown in Pittsburgh. Be sure to hit us up next time you’re in town – we’ll show you around the neighborhood!