Tag Archives: Pennsylvania

Quacking Up in Pittsburgh!

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A great thing to do if in Pittsburgh. Operational after the Duck Boat Tours in Boston were so popular,Pittsburgh has had much success with this tour as well.

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On the tour, they first talk about the skyline of Pittsburgh. It is  the second-largest city in  Pennsylvania, and is home to 135 completed high rises, 29 of which stand at least 300 feet tall. The tallest building in Pittsburgh is the 64 story US Steel Building, which rises 841 feet and was completed in 1970. The second-tallest skyscraper in the city is BNY Mellon Center.

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One of the things they also talk about is about the flood of March 17 and 18, 1936. The city witnessed the worst flood in its history when flood levels peaked at 46 feet. This flood became known as the Great St.Patricks Day Flood.

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Pittsburgh is also a city of many different styles of architecture. There are many beautiful old churches and office buildings and then many new “shiny” buildings. The cluster known as PPG Place is a complex   consisting of six buildings(and are the shiniest!) within three city blocks and five and a half acres. Named for its anchor tenant, PPG Industries, who initiated the project for its headquarters, the buildings are all of matching glass design consisting of 19,750 pieces of glass. The complex centers on One PPG Place, a 40-story office building. Groundbreaking ceremonies occurred on January 28, 1981. The complex buildings opened between 1983 and 1984. Total cost of construction was $200 million ($488.8 million today). The buildings were sold by The Hillman Company to Highwoods Properties in 2011.

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Once you have driven through the city quaking all the way, you dip into the  Monongahela River for a tour from the water. You first see the second of two “inclines”.The Monongahela Incline, built by John Endres in 1870, is located near the Smithfield Street Bridge. It is the oldest continuously operating funicular in the US. It is also one of two surviving inclines from the original 17 passenger-carrying inclines built in Pittsburgh starting in the late 19th century. 

Pittsburgh’s expanding industrial base in 1860 created a huge demand for labor, attracting mainly German immigrants to the region. This created a serious housing shortage as industry occupied most of the flat lands adjacent to the river, leaving only the steep, surrounding hillsides of Mt. Washington or “Coal Hill” for housing. However, travel between the “hill” and other areas was hindered by a lack of good roads or public transport.The predominantly German immigrants who settled on Mt. Washington, remembering the cable cars  of their former country, proposed the construction of inclines along the face of Coal Hill. The result was the Monongahela Incline, which opened May 28, 1870.Earlier inclines were used to transport coal in the Pittsburgh area.

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You next paddle by the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the University of Pittsburgh Panthers which is called Heinz Field ,and then by the beautiful Point State Park which was filled with strolling couples with small children.

 

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There are also many other ways to see Pittsburgh. Another popular one is to take an evening dinner cruise  on the Gateway River Fleet.

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Near the end of the tour the guides play a little game with you. They ask “how many bridges are there in Pitttsburgh?” Of course the answer is one that no one could even imagine….without bridges, the Pittsburgh region would be a series of fragmented valleys, hillsides, river plains, and isolated communities. A 2006 study determined that Pittsburgh has 446 bridges, and with its proximity to three major rivers and countless hills and ravines, Pittsburgh is known as “The City of Bridges”.

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Woodstone Barn Update

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The old boards, made of wooden sheathing, look pretty crazy from the exterior but the interior is really starting to take shape.The timbers are walnut,chestnut and oak and it is all starting to look like an old barn-which of course, it is!

The guys have been working incredibly hard despite the several feet of snow and very cold temperatures. Soon the boards will be covered in insulation(SIPS-Structural Insulated Panel Systems) on the exterior, and then a final wall will go up with shingles.

Massachusetts Groundhog??!

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So if it is not enough that we have now won the Super Bowl with the Patriots,we also now have our own groundhog  to predict the weather for the next six weeks! This is the story:

Ms. G’s Campaign for Massachusetts’s State Groundhog!

Longtime Boston TV Meteorologist Mish Michaels led the campaign to make Ms. G the State Groundhog for the Commonwealth. Ms. G’s official duties now include posting a forecast on February 2nd, Groundhog Day! Mish was joined on the campaign trail by her 8-year old daughter and her daughter’s classmates in Wellesley at the Hunnewell Elementary School.

Mish first met Ms. G, a resident of Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, back in 2007 while working with Mass Audubon on stories for WBZ related to the environment, weather, and climate change. Mish encouraged the Mass Audubon to host an annual Groundhog Day event featuring Ms. G. In 2008, Ms. G posted her first forecast on February 2nd. A star was born! In fact, Ms. G has had better local forecast accuracy with her “shadow/no shadow” forecast than Punxsutawney Phil way down in PA. It is Ms. G’s local weather expertise that inspired Mish to take on the role as Ms. G’s campaign manager.

In early 2013, Mish met with Wellesley Representative Alice Peisch to discuss the road ahead for Ms. G. The goal—not only to have a groundhog with local forecast expertise, but to encourage students to study weather by making Ms. G the official State Groundhog. Representative Peisch crafted language for the proposed bill, H.2864.

The Ms. G Bill was debated by the Senate on Thursday, July 17, 2014 and was overwhelmingly passed. First grade students from Hunnewell Elementary who helped lead the campaign were on the floor of the Senate to be part of this historic vote. Once the bill was passed, the students were treated to a standing ovation and many “high fives” by Senators.

On Monday, July 21, 2014, the Ms. G Bill passed both final House and Senate votes and on Thursday, July 31, 2014, Governor Deval Patrick signed H.2864, making Ms G the Official Massachusetts State Groundhog. Congratulations to the second graders at the Hunnewell School in Wellesley for their successful legislative campaign which started when they were in kindergarten!

You can buy Mish’s book on Amazon.com.

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Progress at Woodstone

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The red cedar roof (we looked at both red cedar and Alaskan yellow cedar but decided the red cedar was better with the colors we have picked for the house)is going on so we are good to work inside all winter…. but most interesting has been watching the 200 year old barn from Pennsylvania start going up.The Colonial Barn Restoration company worked for weeks piecing the bents together and then last Sunday they started putting them up.

The bent is the unit of barn timbers running from front to back. If a barn has four bents, it has three bays. Barns were easily enlarged by adding more bents on either end to lengthen the barn.

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Hart Associates

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Of course the first thing you want when building a house is a great architecture firm.We were lucky-we already knew Jen Hart of Hart Associates and knew that she really likes what we like:to make a new house look old. Jen’s touches and thoughts will hopefully lead our house to look like it was always there when people drive by- they will think it is a farmhouse  built a century ago. Jen and  her team are also very involved with the barn and reconfiguring that when the frame arrives from Pennsylvania.

The foundation for both house and barn are in-next step is to start the framing for the house. Then it will get very exciting!

Construction Begins At Woodstone

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Using a backhoe and a bulldozer, the crew clears the site of rocks, debris and trees for the house and the septic system. The crew levels the site, puts up wooden forms to serve as a template for the foundation, and digs the holes and trenches. Footings (structures where the house interfaces with the earth that supports it) are installed.

The hole is dug for the full basement, the footings are formed and poured, and the foundation walls are formed and poured. The area between them is leveled and fitted with utility runs (e.g. plumbing drains and electrical chases).

After the concrete is cured, the crew applies a waterproofing membrane to the foundation walls; installs drains, sewer and water taps and any plumbing that needs to go into the basement floor; and backfills excavated dirt into the hole around the foundation wall.

This next week will be exciting as the lumber is being delivered and the walls will start going up. The barn foundation is also being poured this week and the old barn form from Pennsylvania will arrive early next week.

Woodstone Barn

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The next piece was figuring out how and where to get an older barn and be able to relocate it to our property. Quite by chance we located a company that does exactly that. Colonial Barn Restoration-check out their website,it is amazing what they can do to a barn!They have located a barn for us from Pennsylvania-3 miles from where my husband grew up,so it is very special.

Here is an excerpt  from their website describing what they do:

As the price of land rises, people in this area subdivide their land into smaller and smaller lots. We have been involved with a number of projects where an antique barn was located on a subdivided lot. The owners wanted to keep the barn with the original house on the property so we moved the barn over on the same property. Since then we have learned the ins and outs of moving buildings and have moved several. Moving buildings in one piece is very economical. The state of Massachusetts even takes down power lines for free to help facilitate the move.Often times our clients want to move a barn frame a long distance or there are too many trees in the way to move it to its new location in one piece. We have lots of experience taking apart and reassembling barns in new locations.When we take a barn completely apart we have a chance to inspect every structural element and make any needed repairs. We can also make slight changes to the frame to satisfy building code restraints or change the layout slightly for modern uses. We have a design and engineering team to help make these changes.We often use reclaimed lumber for repairs so that they are not as apparent.

 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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I  was out in Pittsburgh visiting my son and future daughter- in- law in  this past weekend. We took the “Just Ducky Tour” and learned a lot about this great city.

Pittsburgh has 446 bridges, and with its proximity to three major rivers and countless hills and ravines, Pittsburgh is known as “The City of Bridges”. That is 3 more than Venice, Italy! It is also surprisingly hilly-there are two verniculars that you can take up the side of the mountain to get great views. There is PPG Place-called “the crown jewel of the Pittsburgh skyline”. It is a 6 building complex,complete with an outdoor skating rink,adjacent to Market Square.

Rich and productive, Pittsburgh was also the “Smoky City,” with smog sometimes so thick that streetlights burned during the day as well as rivers that resembled open sewers. Civic leaders, notably Mayor David Lawrence elected in 1945, and Richard Mellon, chairman of Mellon Bank, began smoke control and urban revitalization, also known as Urban Renewal projects that transformed the city.

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the steel industry in Pittsburgh began to implode along with the deindustrialization of the U.S. Following the 1981–1982 recession, for example, the mills laid off 153,000 workers. The steel mills began to shut down. These closures caused a ripple effect, as railroads, mines, and other factories across the region lost business and closed. The local economy suffered a depression, marked by high unemployment and underemployment, as laid-off workers took lower-paying, non-union jobs. Pittsburgh suffered as elsewhere in the Rust belt with a declining population, and like many other U.S. cities, it also saw flight to the suburbs.

Top corporate headquarters such as  Gulf Oil(1985), Koppers (1987), Westinghouse (1996) and Rockwell International (1989) were bought out by larger firms, with the loss of high paying, white collar headquarters and research personnel (the “brain drain”) as well as massive charitable contributions by the “home based” companies to local cultural and educational institutions. At the time of the Gulf Oil merger in 1985 it was the largest buyout in world history involving the company that was No. 7 on the Fortune 500 just six years earlier. Over 1,000 high paying white collar corporate and PhD research jobs were lost in one day.

Pittsburgh is home to three universities that are included in most under-graduate and graduate school national rankings, The University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University.Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh had evolved in the mid-20th century along lines that followed the needs of the heavy industries that financed and directed their development. The collapse of steel put pressure on those two universities to reinvent themselves as research centers in science and technology which acted to pull the regional economy toward high-technology fields.

Beginning in the 1980s, Pittsburgh’s economy shifted from heavy industry to services, medicine, higher education, tourism, banking, corporate headquarters, and high technology. Today, the top two private employers in the city are the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center(26,000 employees) and the West Penn Allegheny Health System(13,000 employees).

Present-day Pittsburgh, with a diversified economy, a low cost of living, and a rich infrastructure for education and culture, has been ranked as one of the World’s most livable cities. The Pittsburgh diaspora that left the area during the Steel Crisis and comprise Steeler Nation, supporters of the Pittsburgh Steeler football team, celebrate an industrial city and ethnic culture that no longer exists; according to one scholar, “The blue-collar Pittsburgh that you see flashed on the screen during games exists only in Steeler bars and in the visitors’ parking lot during tailgate parties!”

-excerpts from Wikepedia

Gettysburg, PA 150th year Celebration

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After surviving one of the American Civil War’s pivotal battles 150 years ago, the Pennsylvania borough of Gettysburg once again faces invasion.

The community about 125 miles west of Philadelphia is readying for as many as 4 million visitors during its commemoration of the clash between Union and Confederate forces in July 1863, and the landmark presidential speech in November of that year as the war raged.

‘‘In 1863, we had more than 165,000 uninvited guests come to town. At least this time around, we got the chance to plan,’’ Randy Phiel, a commissioner of surrounding Adams County, said in an interview. ‘‘This is our Olympic moment.’’

The anniversary of the war’s bloodiest battle, coupled with the Oscar-winning 2012 movie ‘‘Lincoln,’’ will bring Piotr Narloch and five pals from Krakow, Poland, to help reenact part of the fighting. The commemoration has tour operators and travel sites touting the borough of about 7,600 residents as one of this year’s top destinations, according to Carl Whitehill, a spokesman for the Gettysburg Convention and Visitors Bureau.

‘‘We’ve been planning for this anniversary for several years and we’re hoping things go smoothly,’’ Whitehill said. ‘‘But 4 million is a pretty substantial number for a town of our size.’’

The estimated 15,000 Civil War reenactors on hand this year, while smaller in number compared with the millions of tourists, will stand out with their rifles, pitched tents, and campfires on farms near the battlefields. They’ll include Narloch and his Polish friends.

The group will travel 5,000 miles to stage the July 2 Culp’s Hill assault by the 14th Louisiana Infantry Regiment, a Confederate unit largely composed of Polish immigrants. They’ll join other history buffs at the Bushey Farm outside Gettysburg starting June 27.

‘‘It will be my great honor’’ to represent those who tangled with Union soldiers in the July heat, Narloch said by e-mail. ‘‘We can’t wait to see the thousands of reenactors, hundreds of horses and cannons at Gettysburg.’’

The epic battle began as Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania during the war’s third year. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was beaten back by the Union’s Army of the Potomac led by General George G. Meade, a Pennsylvanian. Meade defeated a desperate charge by General George Pickett’s men on the last of three days of fighting, which left more than 50,000 combatants dead, wounded or missing.

One reenactment will use almost 70 cannons, according to Thomas Alexander, a retired Maryland police officer who leads the Confederate artillery for reenactments planned on two farms north of Gettysburg. To prepare, Alexander said he has studied the terrain to position the guns for engagements such as the Union advance into the Wheat Field and the Confederate flanking move at Little Round Top, both on the battle’s second day.

‘‘We’re trying to make sure it represents, as closely as possible, what took place while giving spectators a chance to safely see the action,’’ said Alexander, a member of the Second Maryland ‘‘Baltimore Light’’ Artillery. ‘‘It takes a lot of time and planning to get it right.’’

Assembling a historically accurate uniform and gear, including a rifle, can cost as much as $2,500, said William Coe, whose namesake ancestor was among Gettysburg’s casualties.

Reenactments provide living history, said Coe, who portrays Sergeant William W. Coe in the 21st North Carolina Infantry. Coe, 53, said he moved near Gettysburg from Cinnaminson, N.J., in December 2011, to be close to where his namesake was wounded in the charge up Cemetery Hill.

The men in the re-created units come from across the country and 16 nations, including Britain, France, Sweden, and Romania.

David T. O’Daniel, a member of the 69th Pennsylvania ‘‘Irish’’ Volunteer Infantry Regiment, will be growing out his gray beard and dyeing it red so he can more accurately resemble Color Sergeant David Kinairy, who carried one of the unit’s green battle flags during the third day of combat.

‘‘I’ll be going to Gettysburg to fight the rebels and stack them like cord wood, because that’s what we do,’’ O’Daniel said in an interview. ‘‘We’re the Irish,’’ he said, displaying a green-and-blue tattoo with the unit’s crest.

O’Daniel is a descendant of Cyrus O’Daniel, a corporal in the regiment known as the ‘‘Rock of Erin.’’

New Oxford, Pennsylvania

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If you are in Gettysburg visiting the battlefields, take a 9 mile detour on route 30 east to New Oxford PA. There are great antique stores(the prices are fantastic) and there is the Christmas Haus. If you are in the mood to stock up on German smokers,nutcrackers,pyramids and ornaments-you are in the right place.You can also order their wonderful imports online.