"Hanging Out There" On The South Side!

2300 Josephine St,  South Side

To say the Zielinski's home on the South Side is one of a kind ..... Well, that's quite an understatement.  Many houses cluster together on the South Side Slopes. Others perch like lone eagles. But only one -- a modern, five-story home -- is cantilevered over a glass manufacturing company at 2300 Josephine St. From sketch to reality, the project took three years. The homeowners, Bob and Kim Zielinski, supervised construction and moved in Jan. 1, 2011. From their bed, the couple watch lights twinkling on Mount Washington. From an outdoor deck, they stargaze when the Seven Sisters and Orion the Hunter appear.

The most striking aspect of the home, which sits atop their Emerald Art Glass business, is the framing of the living room view, visible through a 42-foot-wide wall of heated glass panels at the end of the cantilevered section of the house. The panorama stretches from Downtown's U.S. Steel Tower to the Cathedral of Learning in Oakland. Just below a strip of blue dotted with fluffy clouds, there's the city skyline, the green arch of the Birmingham Bridge and a foreground filled with rooftops of the densely populated South Side Flats. If Mr. Zielinski, a former Marine, wanted to feel as if he's king of the world, this space certainly achieves that goal.

A carpeted staircase leads from the living room to a kitchen trimmed in tan glass. Hugging the hillside, the kitchen has the feel of a cozy nest, while the living room extends over the steep slope like a long, slightly dangerous tree branch. The architect, Eric Fisher, designed a 65-foot-long cantilever. By comparison, Frank Lloyd Wright's cantilever for Fallingwater is a mere 141/2 feet. And where Fallingwater has a gushing waterfall rushing beneath, this house has only a set of railroad tracks.

The 6,900-square-foot home rests on a concrete block base that's about 40 feet tall. Anchoring it required sinking caissons 35 feet deep into two, 7-foot-wide holes, then reinforcing them with concrete, rebar and tubular steel. Sinking the caissons into the bedrock took about four weeks.

Many builders who saw the plans rejected the job. One insisted the Zielinskis hire a bridge engineer. John Schneider, vice president of Atlantic Engineering Services, Downtown, took on the task.  The biggest challenge was keeping the home from bouncing, to limit the vibration in the structure so that when people are out there on the deck or gathering in the living room, it doesn't feel uncomfortable from any movement.  Glass is a brittle material and it could break from too much movement. So steel trusses were used to provide stiffness and strength and there will be no bouncing even during a dance party.

The home's ground floor is a spacious garage with room for a Jeep Wrangler and an Arctic Cat used to plow the 200-foot- long driveway that connects with Greeley Street.  An elevator, accented in colorful floor tile, leads to the living quarters.

The Zielinskis envisioned a home above their business and photographed many mills along the Monongahela River. The couple poured plenty of their own labor into the house, plastering walls, building a staircase and placing the pavers for a spacious outdoor deck with a natural gas fire pit. At one end, they plan to install a 6-foot-wide, 20-foot-long vanishing-edge pool trimmed in 5-inch thick glass.  The architect's design includes plans for a green roof similar to one on his own house in Shadyside. Once the sedum and succulents grow tall on the roof, the greenery will match the slopes. 

At that point, the house will truly become almost one with its surroundings.


Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate
South Side

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