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| 641 Linden Ave in East Pittsburgh |
Dan Riccobon purchased the former Emanuel Lutheran Church in East Pittsburgh in 1998 and slowly but surely turned it into his home and studio. A retired Woodland Hills art teacher, Mr Riccobon has done most of the work himself, acting as architect, contractor, carpenter and interior designer. The renovation work ahs been varied and wide-ranging, from removing the rotting steeple to building the bathroom and kitchen to painting the ceiling of the nave, on his back on a scaffold, with the constellations and the creatures that inspired them.
The congregation that built Emanuel Lutheran Church pretty much lived and died with the Westinghouse plant just across the street. Westinghouse Electric built its primary plant in East Pittsburgh in the Turtle Creek Valley in 1895, making electric railway motors, generators, switches and other railway equipment. Two years later, German immigrants founded Die Reformations Gemeinde and built a frame church on a narrow, elevated triangle of land on Linden Avenue, then a bustling commercial street. In 1923, the church was demolished and the triangle leveled to build the new brick church. The congregation sold the building 75 years later, a decade after the Westinghouse plant closed in 1988.
For a dozen years Mr. Riccobon had a studio in Oakland, where he worked on sets and costumes for the late Don Brockett's productions (Mr Roger's Neighborhood). For Mr. Riccobon, the best part of having home and studio in the same building is not the easy commute but having work in progress so close at hand. There's an advantage to "being able to look at what you're working on as you walk by, rather than leaving it and not beginning to think about it until you see it again," he said. "As an artist, about 80 percent of the work you do is thinking about it, judgmental things, rather than the actual painting."
The 12-year renovation process had its drawbacks but also had some advantages. "It allowed me to live here and get a feel for what I needed," he said. "If I hadn't, it would have been a disaster. I had thoughts of putting in a second floor. What I finally decided I should do is make everything look like it belonged here in the beginning. Nothing's nicer than these giant ceilings."
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