Volunteers clear out and secure August Wilson's boyhood home
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Lou Kavulic, of Green Tree, a volunteer with RenewPittsburgh, boards up the windows of the historic August Wilson House in the Hill District during the organizations clean-up of the property yesterday.
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Household contents from August Wilson's boyhood home helped fill a Dumpster yesterday. Fifteen volunteers cleared the house of decades of musty, rusty leavings and boarded up the windows that had been open to weather and weeds.
The late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright grew up on the second and third floors of the back end of 1727 Bedford Ave. His nephew, Paul Ellis Jr., bought the building in 2005 and applied for its historic status, which Pittsburgh City Council granted in March.
Renew Pittsburgh rallied volunteers for a three-hour blitz to clear out and secure the building and the one beside it, a former watchmaker's shop. Mr. Ellis bought that in 2003. Both are in severe disrepair.
Yesterday's labor, worth 15 aching backs today, was a bare-minimum first step in a more than $2 million project.
"The important thing was not to lose any more structural integrity," said Bryson Datt, the project manager for Renew Pittsburgh.
Mr. Ellis, an attorney, said he had been trying to buy his uncle's former home for years. When a bank foreclosed on the owner of the house, Mr. Ellis got it for about $25,000 -- the critical middle piece of a three-property plan he envisions.
Rob Pfaffmann and Associates produced a feasibility study for the project with a $35,000 grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation. Mr. Ellis said the buildings have to be stabilized and then rehabilitated for artists and writers to work in, live in or use as a retreat.
He said he has interest from foundations and is coordinating his efforts with the August Wilson Cultural Center.
Dan Holland, founder of the Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh and a Renew Pittsburgh volunteer, said the Young Preservationists will replace the historic marker that was damaged and removed to the Zone 2 police station.
Next to the Wilson home, a side lot of chest-high weeds, vines and junk trees is cleared now, making the greenspace component of Mr. Ellis' plan easier to imagine. The Pittsburgh Housing Authority owns the lot now.
"This is just the first step" of a big project, said Kevin Acklin, the executive director of Renew Pittsburgh. He said nothing that ended up in the trash bin could have belonged to the Wilson family because all of it was of more recent vintage.
Walking from room to room, he pointed out rotting wood, bricks moistened and crumbled from rain, soft places in the floor and pink wallpaper covered with little flowers that had been weatherbeaten into leathery peels.
In the empty room that once was the kitchen, with puzzle pieces of plaster crunching under his feet, he said, "It's a thrill for us to have even a small impact on what someday could be a great attraction in the city."
First Published August 10, 2008 12:00 am
