Lawrenceville Antique Shop More Like History Museum

Large collection of old beer bottles

Al Stidle opened Scavenger's Antique Shop in Lawrenceville in 2003 when his collectibles threatened to overrun his Mt. Oliver house. His wife happily approved.  Though most antique shops resemble boutiques with their high prices and occasionally highbrow staff, Scavenger's is more rustic, more unpredictable -- kind of like a scene from the popular television show "American Pickers" on the History Channel.  Stidle's father, who raised his family in a brick Troy Hill home the family still owns, got him started as a picker.

Antique pickers -- like "American Pickers" stars Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz -- travel dusty back roads in search of valuable items stashed in barns or forgotten in dark attics. They pick the most collectible pieces, negotiate a price, and then sell them to antique store owners at a profit.  Stidle takes a different tack: He finds pieces he likes -- at flea markets, yard sales, following tips from friends -- then adds them to his personal collection.  Less than 15 percent of his picked items are in the store, he said. The rest sits in storage units and garages.  He focuses on Pittsburgh-region memorabilia.

A personal favorite of Stidle's, an old Duquesne Pilsener sign, hangs on the wall behind the counter at Scavenger's, but it is not for sale at any price. However the shop is full of other things that are.  Stacks of lumber and stairway banisters ripped out of homes built in the 1800s occupy dusty corners; old, obscure sports memorabilia cover walls; creaky furniture is piled to the rafters. Store hours are fluid, and most prices are unlisted and negotiable. However some items, particularly Pittsburgh beer memorabilia, might never leave the store.

Al has many other "favorites" that he will sell.  Like a montage of Homestead relics with an asking price of $300. The 4-foot-long, 2-foot-wide picture meshes old matchbooks and union stickers with a panoramic photo of steel mills.  There is also a beer bottle Al views as a piece of history.  It was brewed at St. Vincent Brewery, which closed in 1898, and bottled in the South Side at the old Lascheid Bottling, owned by the family of former Pens and Pirates organist Vincent Lascheid, who died in 2009. The bottle is still full.

Stidle was lured into a life as a picker by his father who repaired washers.  His dad always found himself in people's basements and always ended up coming home with something.  One day, he brought home a small slot machine, buy instead of cherries and lemons, its images were of cigarette brands, including Camel and Lucky Strike. If the same brand matched up three in a row, a token dropped out, good for a free pack of smokes at the bar.  "It fascinated me," Stidle said. "When I moved out, I took it with me."

And the rest is history.  Pittsburgh history that is.  Which can be found in abundance at Scavenger's Antique Shop,  3533 Butler St, in Lawrenceville.


Lawrenceville
Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

Panello Boutique in Lawrenceville

Panello Boutique has opened on Butler Street in Lawrenceville, just in time for the holiday shopping season.  Located at 3703 Butler Street, the shop features women’s clothing from small and independent designers, including jackets, blazers, jeans, accessories, and handbags.

Boutique items are offered at a lower, more affordable price point than many other boutiques. Most clothing items are under $100, and jewelry, both new and vintage, ranges between $14 and $75.  In addition to clothing and jewelry, Panello is currently carrying screen-printed iPad cases, and Pittsburgh-themed t-shirts designed by Julie Dinardo.


Lawrenceville
Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

PG Renovation Contest: Small Project Category Runner Up

Tim & Katy Jones in their Lawrenceville home.

Dining Room

Bathroom

Tim and Katie Jones weren't afraid of an old fixer-upper in Lawrenceville. He's a structural engineer and construction manager for Massaro Corp. and she's an electrical engineer for D&D Engineering. Throw in the fact that he grew up helping his parents restore an 1860s farmhouse in Ross, and you've got the perfect couple to tackle a 1901 brick rowhouse on 42nd Street. But all that training and know-how doesn't help much in the middle of the night when you have to shuffle through a century of soot and dust to get to the bathroom.

For five months, the Joneses lived amid the debris of their three-story stairway, a project that began one weekend when they and friends stripped a Dumpster full of plaster from the walls -- and also a third-floor ceiling topped with a 2-inch layer of soot.

In 2005, he was living in Squirrel Hill, she in Shadyside. They couldn't afford a house in either of those neighborhoods, but Lawrenceville seemed like a good fit.  The house on 42nd St was one that could be lived in while they renovated ... room by room.

In May of 2005 Tim started with the living room, dining room and kitchen, living alone on the second floor. Katy moved in in February 2007 just before the dirty work began on the stairway, followed by the master bath and entire second floor.

While the walls were open, the Joneses also seized the opportunity to put in new plumbing and add central air conditioning. They had Wahl Heating & Cooling do the work, adding air returns to help the system work more efficiently.  Exposing the brick in some rooms was a contemporary feature the couple favored, but they were careful not to do it on an uninsulated exterior wall. The staircase wall is shared with a neighbor and was a good candidate. The couple sealed the brick and mortar with a non-gloss sealer so their clothes wouldn't pick up crumbling mortar on the way up the stairs.

One of their most beautiful projects was the master bath. Featuring an early 1920s look, it has white wainscoting, a radiant-heated, black-and-white tile floor and a clawfoot tub they found on Craigslist.
Tim is also very proud of the front staircase, which had no banister or newel post when he bought the house. After he and his wife found an appropriate newel post at Construction Junction, they had Kellner Millwork of Lawrenceville make a matching handrail and banister.

The couple said their goal was to both update the house and restore it, giving it back the look and feel of a house built at the turn of the 20th century.  They think they've accomplished that goal.

Lawrenceville
Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

PG Renovation Contest: Large Project Category Runner Up

Atticus and Garry's Lawrenceville Home

Atticus & Garry in the Studio

Kitchen

Living - Dining Room

Conceptual artists Garry Pyles and Atticus Adams, renovated their Lawrenceville studio/home so as to dramatically display their whimsical artwork which features everyday materials like wire, plastic and metal mesh.  Once inside, you realize that their home actually spans two adjoining buildings. They live mostly on the upper floors and rent out a one-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot space on the first floor.  The former machine shop on the left still wears its original 1954 brick, while the balloon-frame 1890s grocery on the right, in a playful nod to Lawrenceville's industrial past, is faced in corrugated galvanized steel. But what really earned the home the title of runner-up, large project category (more than $50,000), is the 6,000-square-foot interior.

A celebration of light and air, with long, exposed beams and ductwork, the loft-style home is a modern artist's dream: big, but not gigantic, with lovely bones just aching to be revealed.  But when they purchased the two buildings four years ago for $150,000, they were jam-packed with so much ... stuff that the pair had a winding path of only about 18 inches to get around. Scrap metal, old store fixtures, work benches, framing lumber, metal shelving, machinery -- you name it, the former owner had collected it and stacked it from floor to the ceiling.  It took the men a year and a half just to empty the space. More than 100,000 pounds of scrap metal went to a recycling facility, and they also filled an entire Dumpster with screws and bolts. Other items ended up on Craigslist.
 
Some improvements, including the rubber roof, are brand-new or second-hand discoveries from Construction Junction (doors and windows) or Craigs­list (the mid-century cherry-red fireplace in the corner). Many more are creative repurposings of items and materials they uncovered during the clean-up. A 20-foot-long work bench, for instance, was refashioned into kitchen cabinets; metal shelving they discovered in the rafters was turned into open storage units with all-thread bolts and washers hung from the joists; teak paneling from a steel company's boardroom decorates a wall in the foyer and was used to build a small deck off the kitchen. They also built a pavilion in the living room from old 2-by-4s and laid a floor of 2-by-6-foot pieces of hickory that came out of a steel mill in Follansbee, W.Va.

One no-brainer was the 3.5-by-9-foot kitchen island, which the previous owner made from maple salvaged from a bowling alley. You can still see the pin holes in the corners. Another was the six-burner Imperial commercial range hidden under piles of junk.
 
Financing proved to be a bit of problem, as it was tough to get lenders to understand the project and how someone could live in an industrial space. Even today, says Mr. Adams, people want to put in applications for the restaurant they thought the men were going to build.

Visual artists need plenty of space to create, so when designing their studio in what had been the second floor of the grocery, they had Lawrenceville contractor The Christie Group remove a walled staircase to the attic and build a new one, without hand rails. The master bedroom, which adjoins a private bath with concrete floors, is on the first level, off the front door. A second bedroom at the rear of the house, used by Mr. Pyles' youngest son, has a ladder to a sleeping loft.

The home is intentionally unpolished, with some of the repurposed materials begging for a good coat of decorative makeup or perhaps even a wall to keep things out of sight. The water heater, usually a hidden mechanical, stands out in the open in the pantry, and even the new ducting is exposed. But that suits its occupants just fine.

"Most people like things buttoned up," says Mr. Pyles, "but I like things unfinished."


Lawrenceville
Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

New Plan For The Allegheny Riverfront

The City of Pittsburgh just released a 20-year blueprint for transforming the Allegheny riverfront corridor from a faded industrial relic to a boom town, with new housing, businesses, industry, transportation connections and a complete environmental makeover. The 77-page "Allegheny Riverfront Vision Plan" describes the 2,000 acres stretching from the fringe of Downtown Pittsburgh to Highland Park as prime for development, with an abundance of vacant and underused property.  The report, by a consulting team led by Perkins Eastman Associates, follows nearly two years of studies and meetings with property and business owners, residents, community leaders and nonprofit organizations.

The plan envisions five "layers" of development moving away from the riverfront, with the more intensive changes nearer the river, including residential development, walking and bicycle trails, trees and a riverfront populated with green spaces and affordable housing alongside new industries.  Pedestrians and cyclists are encouraged and are separated from heavy vehicular traffic.  The redevelopment corridor stretches from 11th Street on the fringe of Downtown to Washington Boulevard on the edge of Highland Park.

Suggested transportation improvements are:  a commuter rail line stretching along the current Allegheny Valley Railroad right of way, connecting Greensburg and Arnold with Downtown Pittsburgh; a "circulator" trolley that would move people through the Strip and to Lawrenceville, with a later phase going into Oakland; and a "green boulevard" through the heart of the redevelopment that would accommodate multiple forms of transportation.

The earliest development activity is likely to be on property in the Strip District owned by the Buncher Co. and currently used for parking.  It is one of the nation's premier development sites and apartments, an office building and a parking garage were possible.  Already happening is the conversion of the old Armstrong Cork factory into apartments and the Otto Milk building into condominiums.

Allegheny Riverfront Plan
Highland Park
Lawrenceville
Strip District
Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

Got A Sweet Tooth? Check These Bakeries Out ....

Bakery Goodies

Pittsburgh has an amazing number of stand-alone bakeries with an incredible variety of sweet and savory treats. In fact, the Steel City has so many bakeries that it's impossible to mention them all.  Here are a few that are delightful:

Better-Maid Donuts, West End
1178 Steuben St
Pittsburgh, PA 15220

(412) 921-9526

Old-school cake-like doughnuts, some filled with cream, others topped with various glazes. Plain doughnuts are light on the sugar and taste almost savory, which makes them a pleasant contrast to a sweet glaze. Seasonal doughnuts like pumpkin. The shop opens at 6 a.m. daily, but closes as soon as they're sold out -- often as early as 9 a.m.

Food Glorious Food, Highland Park

5606 Bryant St

Pittsburgh, PA  15206

412-363-5330

A Saturday-only bakery with an incredible array of pies, cakes and dessert like the over-the-top marjolaine, a flourless hazelnut and almond cake layered with chocolate, praline and vanilla buttercreams and covered in a thin layer of ganache. Savory favorites include thick focaccia topped with artichoke hearts or whole black olives.  The bakery opens at 10 a.m.; go early for the best selection and prepare to wait in line.

During the rest of the week, they run a cooking school. Check out the class schedule on their website.

Jean-Marc Chatellier's French Bakery, Millvale

213 North Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15209
(412) 821-8533

Try a sweet brioche in the morning, an intricate slice of opera cake for an indulgent afternoon snack or a family-sized quiche for a light, easy supper. Trendy and traditional go hand-in-hand like the variety of of-the-moment macaroons.

Vanilla Pastry Studio, East Liberty

6014 Penn Circle South
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
(412) 361-2306

Watching the bakers at work through a large glass window as you survey the goodies before you:  Granola, scones, muffins and, of course, cupcakes. Don't miss the lemon, which manages to capture the flavor and brightness of the whole fruit. Also wonderful .....The pineapple quick bread has chunks of roasted pineapple infused in the cake.

La Gourmandine, Lawrenceville

4605 Butler St
Pittsburgh, PA 15201

(412) 682-2210

An incredible variety of traditional French pastries, chocolate eclairs and lemon tarts.  La Gourmandine also offers a number of lunch options, including sandwiches on crusty baguette, individual quiches, and, more recently, soup with a freshly baked roll.

Sustenance Rustic Craft Bakery, Strip District 

Pittsburgh Public Market
Smallman and 17th Street
Pittsburgh PA 15222
412-251-4333 
A healthier spin on sweets (whole grain flours, etc) that taste as delicious as their less-healthy counterparts.  Maple shortbread, fig bars, grains of paradise cookies and coconut cashew cookies made with cashew butter, quinoa flour and agave nectar. According to Ms. Lewis, some people love it, others take one bite and know it's not for them. The Sustenance booth at the Pittsburgh Public Market is open during all market hours.

Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate