Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette In 1996 John Murdock nominated the Syria Mosque site as historic. City Council agreed. Click photo for larger image.

Post-Gazette stories described John Murdock as a "self-styled preservation gadfly," and with good reason. To friend and foe alike, he could be a giant pain in the posterior, and proud of it.

Wherever there was a preservation battle to be fought, Murdock was Johnny-on-the-spot, a grandstander and showboater in the finest tradition. Except he always had the goods to back it up -- the facts, the figures, the history, whatever he needed to prove his case.

Murdock, who died March 25 of congestive heart failure, in his Friendship apartment , was a big man with unruly white hair, a booming, cigarette-deepened voice and a wry wit. All were tools he put to good use at public hearings, where his testimony could trigger rolling eyeballs, smiles, belly laughs, admiration and applause. His well-turned phrases were those of an English and Latin teacher, which he was in the 1960s. Often they were delivered in fiery orations worthy of a Bible Belt preacher; in fact, he was a former seminarian and devout Catholic who knew canon law better than some priests. He would have loved the serendipity of passing on Good Friday.

To Murdock, who was 72, the salvation of Pittsburgh's historic architecture, from high-style churches to common row houses, was serious business, and he conducted it with the same intensity, thoroughness and flair that he brought to his part-time, paying job as organist at two Presbyterian churches in the East End.

His passion and forthrightness made him a controversial figure within Preservation Pittsburgh, the group he co-founded in 1991 after the demolition of Oakland's famed concert hall, the Syria Mosque.

"He may have not always followed the niceties of parliamentary procedure or worked through traditional channels, but he knew the people to speak to so that things would be done," said member Tom Josephi.

"We would always sort of hold onto our chairs when John began to make a tirade," said Bob Gangewere. "He would get so caught up in what he was arguing that he would lose his sense of proportion. But even though he was angry, he was always civil or mannered in a very respectful way."

Those same qualities, of course, made him a reporter's delight. If Murdock was at a public hearing (often in his "National Register of Historic People" sweatshirt), you knew it wouldn't be boring and you'd leave with at least one decent quote.

At a 1993 City Council meeting, he compared the city's billboards to "the plague of locusts that descended on the pharoahs in Egypt."

In 1999, he compared the mayor's plan for razing historic buildings for the Fifth and Forbes redevelopment project to "the Luftwaffe's plan for bombing Coventry, England," or what the Allies did to Dresden, Germany, in World War II.

Murdock's role as citizen activist also led him to the preservation movement's front lines. In the wee, dark hours of Aug. 27, 1991, Murdock and three others put themselves between a bulldozer and the Syria Mosque. The Four Mosqueteers were hauled off to jail, but their stand galvanized the preservation movement. It was in the slammer that Jim Ferlo, then president of City Council and one of the Mosqueteers, turned to Murdock and said, "What this town needs is a Preservation Pittsburgh."

"He was fearless in the face of political odds and intimidation," said architect Rob Pfaffmann, president of Preservation Pittsburgh. "He kept us honest and at times saw things that others did not see or did not have the time to see."

Like the time in 1995 when he stopped a crane and bulldozer that had begun to chew up a row of townhouses on Penn Avenue in Garfield by asking to see a valid demolition permit. It was the turning point that led to their eventual purchase and restoration by the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. and Friendship Development Associates.

And who but John Murdock would have the chutzpah to nominate a parking lot as historic? That's what he did in 1996 when he nominated what preservationists had been calling "the hole in the doughnut" -- the parking lot left by the demolition of the Syria Mosque, which was surrounded by the Oakland Civic Center historic district, approved after the Mosque's demolition. City Council agreed the lot should be part of the district, so anything built there would need Historic Review Commission approval.

Murdock didn't win all his battles; he nominated the University of Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Hall as a city historic structure and it was later demolished. But St. Nicholas Church on East Ohio Street, which he nominated with three parishioners, stands now with historic designation, its demolition no longer the inevitability it once seemed.

Growing up in Scranton, Murdock learned to play the piano and was the star soprano in the boy's choir of St. Peter's Cathedral until his voice changed. He was the oldest of five children and "a wonderful extemporaneous speaker," recalled his sister, Mary Grace Sloan of Kensington, Md. "If you had an argument with him, it was always a very big argument and he usually won."

Friends will remember him at a memorial service at 11 a.m. April 16 at Fourth Presbyterian Church, 5450 Friendship Ave., where he had played the organ. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions to Preservation Pittsburgh.

Murdock didn't own a car; he walked, took the bus or rode with friends. In early January he was hit by a bus, which precipitated his decline.

"He would never let up, even when his health was failing," Gangewere said. "He was unrelenting."