On Friday July 9, the Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission held a hearing
to consider the nomination of the Pittsburgh Wool Company as a City of
Pittsburgh Designated Historic Site. Despite the fact that the Pittsburgh
Wool building was built in 1883 and is an outstanding example of nineteenth
century industrial architecture (the building's brick facade retains fading
signage from its builder, tanner James Callery, whose company sold the
structure in 1918) and despite the fact that the site has been occupied by
the leather industry since the 1840s, the chairman of the Historic Review
Commission, John DeSantis, stated that the Pittsburgh Wool Company building
is "an unremarkable" structure and it does not warrant preservation under
the city's historic preservation ordinance. "This is a basic warehouse
building undistinguishable from a thousand other buildings in the city,"
DeSantis said.
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review <http://triblive.com/news/pwool0710.html>
reported that "DeSantis criticized Kumer for seeking the historic
designation to bolster his negotiating position. He also told Kumer that
several dedicated individuals, including representatives of the Pittsburgh
History and Landmarks Foundation, gave of their time to plead his case."
DeSantis called the nomination of Pittsburgh Wool as a historic site --
which would protect it from demolition to make way for the City of
Pittsburgh to lease the land it plans to condemn through eminent domain
proceedings to the H.J. Heinz Company for use as a warehouse -- "an abuse of
the nominating process." DeSantis added, about the people involved in the
effort to preserve the Pittsburgh Wool Company, "I regret they've been
misled by [Pittsburgh Wool owner Jeff Kumer]."
The Pittsburgh Wool Company is the last operating wool pullery in the United
States -- for more information on what a wool pullery is and site-specific
history, see the paper at
http://davidsr01.home.mindspring.com/pgh_wool.pdf -- and the owners, Roy and
Jeff Kumer, are the second and third-generation wool pullers who own the
company. Because the City of Pittsburgh has stated that no federal funds
(and ostensibly, no federal permits) will be used in the condemnation
proceedings and site development, the Pittsburgh Wool Company has no
protection under the National Historic Preservation Act. The only way to
save this invaluable, nationally significant historic resource is to
convince the City of Pittsburgh and the Heinz company that they should
re-evaluate their development plans. Yesterday's action by the Pittsburgh
Historic Review Commission was a blatantly political abuse of a local
historic preservation law.
Contrary to the unsubstantiated charges by the Historic Review Commission
chair that Pittsburgh Wool's owners are only interested in preserving their
building -- and by extension, in preserving the history of the industry they
represent -- as a matter of convenience to save their business, there is
more than ample public evidence that the Kumers have been very interested in
preserving their family's heritage and the heritage of the anachronistic
traditional industry they represent. Since the summer of 1996 when I first
met the Kumers, I have conducted more than a dozen hours of oral history
interviews with them, generating more than seventy pages of transcripts.
Owner Jeff Kumer has allowed me unrestricted access to the company's books
(a complete set of ledgers, journals and day books) and files. In 1997, the
Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania's magazine, _Pittsburgh History_,
published an article I wrote on the history of Pittsburgh's leather
industry; the cover illustration was a photo of sheep pelts in Pittsburgh
Wool ca. 1930s loaned by the Kumers, along with other illustrations for the
article. Also in 1997, I wrote an feature on the Pittsburgh Wool Company
for the _Pittsburgh Post-Gazette_ and Jeff Kumer allowed a photographer to
tour the plant and shoot art to accompany the article. In September 1998,
the local PBS affiliate (WQED; http://www.wqed.org) taped a documentary on
the Pittsburgh neighborhood where Pittsburgh Wool is located. Again, Jeff
Kumer -- to promote the preservation of his family business and the
knowledge of his industry -- generously spent an afternoon with the film
crew giving them a tour of the plant and allowing them to shoot the entire
facility. The documentary's producer, Rick Sebak, found the business so
intriguing that he cut the footage from the 1998 show, _North Side Story_,
to form the basis for a completely new documentary on surviving Pittsburgh
landmarks.
It is inconceivable, considering the amount of time that Jeff Kumer has
spent assisting to document the history of his business and the leather
industry in general, that a city official could claim that the move to
preserve the building was motivated by the imminent threat posed by the City
of Pittsburgh and Heinz.
The City of Pittsburgh and the Heinz company need to be convinced that the
Pittsburgh Wool Company is indeed a unique historic resource worth saving.
Please help to save this traditional family business. For more information
on the Pittsburgh Wool Company and the historic context of Pittsburgh's
leather industry, please feel free to visit my website. Then, write to City
of Pittsburgh officials and to Heinz to help preserve this important part of
our industrial heritage.
Addresses and telephone numbers and e-mail (when available) for the City of
Pittsburgh are:
Tom Murphy, Mayor
Mayor's Office
414 Grant Street
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15219
Phone: (412) 255-2626
Fax: (412) 255-2687
Mayor's office e-mail: [log in to unmask] or
[log in to unmask]
John DeSantis, Chair
City of Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission
200 Ross Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
phone: (412) 255-2243
Angelique Bamberg
Historic Preservation Planner
Pittsburgh Department of City Planning
200 Ross Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
phone: (412) 255-2243
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Contact Heinz at:
Anthony J.F. O'Reilly, Chairman of the Board
William R. Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer
H.J. Heinz Company
P.O. Box 57
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15230-0057
Phone: (412) 456-6014
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Also, please write to the editorial boards of the two Pittsburgh daily
newspapers:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
34 Blvd. of the Allies
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
Fax: (412) 391-8452
Email: [log in to unmask]
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Letters to the Editor
Tribune-Review
622 Cabin Hill Drive
Greensburg, PA 15601
Fax number for letters is: (412) 838-5171.
E-Mail address: [log in to unmask]
Thank you, in advance, for your patience with this long post (and with
previous posts) and thank you for your help to preserve the Pittsburgh Wool
Company.
David S. Rotenstein, Ph.D., RPA
(disclaimer: the comments presented in this email are my own and do not
reflect the opinions of the University of South Carolina or the State of
South Carolina)
__________________________________________________________
David S. Rotenstein, Ph.D., RPA
Curator of Research and Folklife
McKissick Museum
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
E-mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
Business Website: http://www.cla.sc.edu/MCKS/
Personal Website: http://davidsr01.home.mindspring.com
Phone: (803) 777-7251
Fax: (803) 777-2829
__________________________________________________________
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