Preservation Opportunities & Awards
PHLF: Antique Skyscrapers
Fancy a Tour of Antique Skyscrapers?
Pittsburgh author Mark Houser will offer tours of four historic skyscrapers on Mother’s Day weekend, Saturday May 10 and Sunday May 11.
Get high above the Golden Triangle and ascend to the top of four antique skyscrapers!
- Koppers Building – See all the way to Oakland from the 29th floor balcony of this 1929 Art Deco gem.
- Frick Building – Get a close-up view of the courthouse tower from the balcony of Henry Clay Frick’s rooftop Union Club.
- Oliver Building – Admire the intricate Beaux-Arts cornice by famous Chicago architect Daniel Burnham.
- Kaufmann’s Grand – Sweeping 360-degree vistas featuring the city’s very first skyscrapers.
At each stop on this Downtown walking tour, you’ll discover new views and perspectives while you hear entertaining and surprising stories about the people behind the buildings. Discover how they made their fortunes and left behind legacies in stone and steel for us to appreciate today.
Tours at 10:00 am, 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm both Saturday and Sunday.
PHLF: Preservation Month
Happy Preservation Month!
In May, we celebrate historic preservation because of its ability to improve the quality of the lives of people through saving buildings and places that are not only an important part of our cultural heritage, but can be the basis of helping renew communities for the future.
But even as we celebrate this National Preservation Month, our organization is concerned about the ongoing dismantling of federal historic preservation programs, and other support services that are vital to our socio-cultural life.
We have seen this in the decimation of funding for community development incentives, institutions of higher learning, libraries, museums, national parks, and public broadcasting. The loss of funding for these programs collectively affects all of us, including the preservation community.
Here in Pittsburgh, we have seen partner organizations including the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, the Carnegie Library of Homestead, and the Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka at St. Nicholas Church in Millvale— to name but a few— targeted for loss of critical funding that was dedicated to substantive historic preservation work.
Over the years, our organization has been intimately involved not only with these three organizations but many others caught up in this hollowing out of the capacity of non-profit organizations dedicated to improving the lives of people.
Our organization opposes these measures and we will continue to seek partnerships with other organizations, donors, members and friends, who, like us, believe that renewing communities and building pride is an important part of saving our city and region’s distinctive built environment— both because of its history and adaptation for use in the future.
PHLF: Landmarks Scholarship Program
Our organization is now accepting applications for our Landmarks Scholarship for high-achieving, community-minded, high school seniors in Allegheny County who will be attending college or university in the fall of 2025.
The deadline to apply is Tuesday, April 15, 2025.
Click here to download the application.
As part of the Landmarks Scholarship application, students are asked to describe in an essay a place in Allegheny County especially important in their lives; these essays–all archived at PHLF–show how our scholarship program has helped future preservationists, architects, designers, and planners realize their career dreams and remain connected to the Pittsburgh region.
This program is funded in part by support from the Brashear Family Fund and the Landmarks Scholarship Fund, including donations to the 2008 and 2014 Scholarship Celebrations, and from the Russell W. Coe Preservation Fund at PHLF.
The award of $6,000 is payable over four years to the recipient’s college or university, to be used for book and tuition expenses only.
PHLF: Fourth Avenue Historic District Walking Tour
Friday, October 18
10:00 am to 11:15 am
$20.00 per person
This tour is limited to 20 participants.
Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on October 17.
Click here to purchase a ticket.
The Fourth Avenue Historic District encompasses a remarkable variety of buildings. From a Greek Revival building of 1836, to cast-iron-front structures of the 1870s and 1880s, to a majestic quartet of early-20th-century skyscrapers, the district includes distinguished structures designed by more than a dozen eminent Pittsburgh architects.
The tour focuses on the portion of the District once known as “Pittsburgh’s Wall Street” for its concentration of buildings that served the financial and investment industries. We also will see how old buildings are being re-purposed for contemporary uses and explore PPG Place—the postmodernist “cathedral of commerce” that brings full circle the fascinating story of this narrow but mightily impressive street.
PHLF: Walking Tour of Strip Historic District
Saturday, September 21
10:00 am to 12:00 (noon)
$20.00 per person
This tour is limited to 20 participants.
Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on September 20.
Click here to purchase a ticket.
The Strip District is a vibrant amalgamation of Pittsburgh’s past, present, and imagined future. It is probably best known locally for food sellers and other businesses that reflect the neighborhood’s long immigrant history. In its 200-plus-year history, however, the Strip has been a site of industry, the region’s wholesale produce distribution hub, a center for nighttime entertainment, and, most recently, a home to Pittsburgh’s flourishing technology sector. The Strip’s ongoing evolution and changing demographics are mirrored in the architecture in this sprawling neighborhood.
The tour focuses on the Strip Historic District, which extends from 15th Street to 22nd Street, between Liberty Avenue and Railroad Avenue. Preservation and repurposing of historic buildings have been key to revitalization of the Strip in the last 20 years, and we will see how the mix of old and new — sometimes in the same structure — has brought renewed life to one of Pittsburgh’s most distinctive neighborhoods.
PHLF: Walking Tour of Bridges and River Shores
Friday, September 20
10:00 am to 11:15 aam
$20.00 per person
This tour is limited to 20 participants.
Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on September 19.
Click here to purchase a ticket.
Pittsburgh is a city of bridges: hundreds of them span our waterways, valleys, and ravines. Bridges offer changing vistas on the natural and manmade features of the cityscape, and in Pittsburgh, these works of artful engineering are a source of civic pride.
This tour takes us on a loop bounded by the north and south shores of the Allegheny River and by two of the Three Sisters bridges that cross it. Taking in public art and historic buildings along with bridges and the river, this tour reveals the dynamic relationship between humans and nature that characterizes much of the Pittsburgh region.
PHLF: Walking Tour of Vandergrift
Saturday, August 24
1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
$20.00 per person
This tour is limited to 20 participants.
Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on August 23.
Click here to purchase a ticket.
For as long as there has been industry in the United States, there have been company towns—that is, communities built by businesses. While many of the roughly 2,000 such towns built across the country were known for their abysmal conditions, Vandergrift, stands out for its exceptional history and design.
George G. McMurtry, who was president of Apollo Iron & Steel Co. and established the town in 1895, believed that good housing and a pleasant environment would ensure his workers’ loyalty and increase their productivity. To create a plan for “something better than the best,” as McMurtry described it, he hired the famed Olmsted family of landscape designers.
Join us to learn how the layout designed by Frederick Law Olmsted’s firm responded to both the landscape and McMurtry’s goals.
This tour will include insights from local business figures and residents of the community, leading us through this unique company town and discussing efforts to revive both the economy and community spirit.
The tour will wrap up at a new local winery built in a restored church.
PHLF: Preservation Advocacy & Tour Event
Featuring Easements as a Tool of Historic Preservation
Thursday, March 21, 2024
5:00 pm-6:30 pm
Mansions on Fifth Hotel
5105 Fifth Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15232
Fee: $20
This event is limited to 30 participants.
Click here to purchase a ticket
Join us at the historic Mansions on Fifth, a boutique hotel in the restored former McCook Mansion and residences in Shadyside, for a Preservation Advocacy reception to learn about the value of preservation easements as a critical tool in saving historic buildings.
Located in a stretch of Shadyside that was once famously known as Millionaire’s Row, what is now Mansions on Fifth Hotel was built in 1906 as the home of Willis McCook, a Pittsburgh lawyer and industrialist, who was Henry Clay Frick’s attorney. Designed by the Pittsburgh architectural firm Carpenter & Crocker, the house would go on to serve as a boarding house for many years before its complete restoration and conversion into a boutique hotel.
Join us to learn about our organization’s involvement in helping to save the building from demolition and the restoration of the main house and its sister building. The event will include a tour of the hotel, and you will also learn more about the use of preservation easements and how they can enable you to save and maintain your historic building. Our organization owns a preservation easement on Mansions on Fifth Hotel.
Hors d’oeuvres will be served.
Drinks and other refreshments available for purchase at the bar.
Downtown Walking Tour: Market Square Area
Friday, August 11
10:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.
$20.00 per person
This tour is limited to 20 participants.
Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on August 10.
Click here to purchase a ticket.
Ever since George Woods and Thomas Vickroy laid out the plan for the streets of Pittsburgh in 1784, Market Square has occupied an important place Downtown—geographically, economically, and culturally. In this area where the historic architecture meets recent construction, we will see how PHLF’s work has helped to revive a Downtown core that was once threatened by extensive demolition.
The tour includes residential, commercial, corporate, and hotel buildings, several of which the U.S. Green Building Council has awarded its highest certifications for environmental sustainability. Together, the sites on the tour demonstrate how the combination of historic preservation and thoughtful new development can create a livable urban environment.
PHLF: Downtown Walking Tour of Fourth Avenue Historic District
Saturday, July 15
10:00 am to 12:00 pm
$20.00 per person
This tour is limited to 20 participants. Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on July 14.
Click here to purchase a ticket
In 1889, Mary Schenley donated 300 acres of land to the City of Pittsburgh to create the park that bears her name. By the turn of the 20th century, the construction of other amenities transformed Oakland into Pittsburgh’s original cultural district.
This tour focuses on the section of Oakland that includes Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, and the main branch of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, which drew people from around the growing industrial city for respite, enlightenment, and aesthetic pleasure.
Stops at additional sites around these landmark institutions will reveal not only how the neighborhood has continued to evolve, but also the mix of features that still attracts people to Pittsburgh’s original home of culture.