Preservation Opportunities & Awards
PHLF: Downtown Walking Tour of Fourth Avenue Historic District
Thursday, October 11
6:00 pm to 7:15 pm
$20.00 per person
This is an in-person tour and is limited to 20 participants.
(Tickets will not be available after October 10.)
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 area 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: The Historic Smithfield Street Bridge
We look at the Smithfield Street Bridge in our ongoing series, “Past is Present,” profiling the aesthetic beauty of Pittsburgh’s historic built environment. Through this series of vignettes featuring stories and a look at the history of buildings, bridges, and landmarks, we hope to give some insight into our city’s built environment and its rich architectural history.
This series was funded by a grant of the Colcom Foundation.
PHLF: Downtown Walking Tour of Bridges and Shores
Thursday, August 11
6:00 pm to 7:15 pm
$20.00 per person
This is an in-person tour and is limited to 20 participants.
(Tickets will not be available after .)
Click here to purchase a ticket.
You will receive a ticket with a QR Code by e-mail. Please PRINT and bring it with you for the tour.
Pittsburgh is a city of bridges: hundreds of them span our waterways, valleys, and ravines. Bridges offer changing vistas of 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 Pittsburgh.
Tour Meeting Point: Outside the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel, 107 Sixth Street, Downtown
Tour Ending Point: 107 Sixth Street
Please arrive 10 minutes before the start time in order to ensure that the tour gets underway on time. Dress for the weather (PHLF tours proceed rain or shine!), and wear comfortable shoes. By purchasing a ticket for this tour, you acknowledge that you are physically able to undertake the tour, assume all personal risk during the tour, consent to being photographed during the tour, and permit PHLF to use your image in our communications.
This tour is handicap accessible. Please notify us of your needs 2 Business Days in advance of the tour.
PHLF: Virtual Neighborhood Tour of Western Shadyside
Thursday, July 28
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Fee: $7.50
This tour will be conducted via Zoom Conference. Click here to purchase a ticket. You will receive an e-mail with a link to the Zoom event on July 28. (Tickets will not be available after 9:00 am on the day of the event.)
Please log in at 5:45 pm to allow us enough time to let you into the tour.
Shadyside is a veritable museum of the forms and styles of domestic architecture built in Pittsburgh’s East End between the 1860s and 1920s. This tour focuses on the neighborhood’s western part, bounded by North Neville Street and South Aiken Avenue. Learn how innovations in transportation, the growth of the middle class, and the initiative of significant people in local history combined to produce Western Shadyside’s stellar architecture.
Ranging across styles from the Second Empire to Arts & Crafts, the tour explores single-family and multi-family dwellings, individual homes and planned developments, and main streets and cul-de-sacs. A deeper look at a home featured in an early-twentieth-century memoir rounds out our excursion into this lovely neighborhood.
Because this is a virtual event, please disregard the QR code information in the ticket emailed to you.
PHLF: Walking Grant Street from Sixth to Liberty Avenues
Wednesday, July 13
6:00 pm – 7:15 pm
$20.00 per person
This tour is limited to 20 participants.
(Tickets will not be available after July 12)
Click here to purchase a ticket.
You will receive a ticket with a QR Code by e-mail. Please PRINT and bring it with you for the tour
This tour covers the northern half of a street the American Planning Association designated one of America’s Ten Great Streets in 2012. From the quintessentially Modernist U.S. Steel Tower to the elegant Beaux-Arts Pennsylvanian (formerly Union Station), and with glorious Art Deco gems in between, this part of Grant Street is populated by outstanding civic and corporate buildings.
Examples of adaptive re-use of historic buildings in this corridor demonstrate the economic value of historic preservation. Tour participants also will learn of the wide influence—sometimes explicit, other times less so—of businessman, philanthropist, politician, art collector, and Pittsburgh native Andrew W. Mellon on this important street.
PHLF: Sewickley Walking Tour
Saturday, July 9
2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
$20.00 per person
This is an in-person tour and is limited to 20 participants.
(Tickets will not be available after July 8.)
Click here to purchase a ticket.
You will receive a ticket with a QR Code by e-mail. Please PRINT and bring it with you for the tour.
Located 12 miles west of Pittsburgh, Sewickley is nestled between hills to the north and the Ohio River to the South. Taking its name from the Native American word for “Sweet Water,” Sewickley was incorporated as a borough in 1853 and dubbed “the Queen of Suburbs” by one writer in 1895.
The tour focuses on the commercial and residential neighborhoods of the Borough’s Third Historic District, in central Sewickley. Here you will see excellent examples of many of the architectural styles popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including work by a number of regionally and nationally important architects who lived and worked in the area.
Featuring places of worship, civic buildings, and handsome homes, the tour will demonstrate why this historic community continues to delight.
PHLF: Virtual Tour of Sewickley
Thursday, May 19
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
$7.50
This tour will be conducted via Zoom Conference.
Click here to buy a ticket. (Disregard the QR code in the confirmation email) You will receive a login e-mail on May 19.
Please log in at 5:45 pm to allow us enough time to let you into the tour.
Located 12 miles west of Pittsburgh, Sewickley is nestled between hills to the north and the Ohio River to the South. Taking its name from the Native American word for “Sweet Water,” Sewickley was incorporated as a borough in 1853 and dubbed “the Queen of Suburbs” in 1895. The tour focuses on the commercial and residential neighborhoods of the Borough’s Third Historic District, in central Sewickley.
Here you will see excellent examples of many of the architectural styles popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including work by a number of regionally and national important architects who lived and worked in the area. Featuring places of worship, civic buildings, and handsome homes, the tour will demonstrate why this historic community continues to delight.
PHLF: Virtual Tour of Automobile Row
Thursday, March 24
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Fee: $7.50
This tour will be conducted via Zoom Conference. Click here to purchase a ticket to RSVP. Disregard the QR code in the confirmation email.
You will receive an e-mail with a link to the Zoom event on March 24. Please log in at 5:45 pm to allow us enough time to let you into the tour.
Hidden in plain sight on Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh’s East End is the riveting history of the City’s role in the automotive and petroleum industries. From East Liberty to North Oakland, the boulevard—part of the historic Lincoln Highway—is home to buildings that served and housed many elements of these two industries as they evolved symbiotically to create America’s automobile culture.
The tour will both trace the architectural manifestations of this story and explore the ways in which old buildings have been repurposed for the most contemporary of uses, from the arts to advanced medical research and innovation.
PHLF: Defining Architectural Excellence
Architects, Eric Fisher & Art Lubetz
Tuesday, March 15
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Fee: $7.50
This lecture will be presented virtually via Zoom. Click here to purchase a ticket to RSVP. Disregard the QR code in the confirmation email.
You will receive an email with a link to the Zoom event on March 15. Log-in at 5:45p.m. to allow us enough time to let you into the event.
Everyone believes that architecture should be “good”. Yet what does that phrase even mean these days? The profession is in a poor place despite the rare exceptional new building that proves the rule. Architects design just two percent of all American houses these days. And, all around Pittsburgh, mediocre new buildings that are designed by architects have come to blight our urban landscape. How can that be considering that there are now so many rules for determining what constitutes design excellence?
Near the end of the first century B.C.E., the Roman architect, Vitruvius, suggested that buildings should exhibit “Firmness, Commodity, and Delight.” In this lecture, Pittsburgh Architects Eric Fisher and Art Lubetz consider and define what makes a building great today. A central focus of their discussion will be the questions:
“What values should contemporary architects bring to the table as they design?” and “What qualities should these buildings possess?”
PHLF: Virtual Tour of Fourth Avenue Historic District
Thursday, February 24
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Fee: $7.50
This tour will be conducted via Zoom Conference. Click here to purchase a ticket to RSVP. Disregard the QR code in the confirmation email. You will receive an e-mail with a link to the Zoom event on February 24. Please log in at 5:45 p.m. to allow us enough time to let you into the tour.
When Edwin Drake invented a device in 1859 to efficiently extract oil from the earth in Titusville, PA, the flood of oil money spurred a building boom on Pittsburgh’s Fourth Avenue. By the late 19th century, the street became known as “Pittsburgh’s Wall Street” for its concentration of buildings that served the financial and investment industries.
From a Greek Revival building of 1836 to a majestic quartet of early-20th-century skyscrapers, the Fourth Avenue Historic District includes distinguished structures designed by more than a dozen eminent Pittsburgh architects. In addition to exploring the history of these buildings, the tour also will reveal how they are being re-purposed for contemporary uses to sustain this narrow but mightily impressive street.