YPA Counts Down the Top Ten: #8 Gladstone School, Hazelwood

For the next several days, until May 21, YPA will count down its 2010 list of the Top Ten Best Preservation Opportunities on its blog. On Friday, May 21, YPA will host a Historic Preservation Month Celebration, "Old is the New Green," at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty, starting at 6:00 p.m.

Registration details are on YPA's website, http://www.youngpreservationists.org.

Since 2003, YPA has celebrated historic preservation with its annual list of the Top Ten Best Preservation Opportunities in the Pittsburgh Area. The list, compiled from nominations received from various individuals and organizations, is designed to encourage investment in historic sites throughout the nine-county southwestern Pennsylvania region. The list has been used by property owners to draw positive attention to their properties, raise investment funds, secure grants, and generate political goodwill for their historic sites.

The sites featured on YPA's list come from six different counties and include industrial structures, Main Street commercial buildings, schools, a train station, and a bridge. Main Street features prominently in the list, with four of the Top Ten sites being situated in an existing Main Street commercial district. The remaining six sites are within blocks of an existing Main Street community.

The criteria used to select the Top Ten List include the following:

1. 50-year Threshold (is it 50 years old or older);

2. Historic & Architectural Significance;

3. Threats to the Site;

4. Community Input; and

5. Feasibility of the Solution.

#8 Gladstone School, Hazelwood

Featured in YPA’s Preserve Pittsburgh Summit on April 10, 2010, Gladstone School sits in Pittsburgh’s neighborhood of Hazelwood, the cradle of the city’s founding. Gladstone was opened in 1914 and closed 87 years later, in 2001. When the school was closed, the site had long been the center of community activities and meetings.

With strong support from the Hazelwood Initiative, a local organization intent on revitalizing the suffering neighborhood as well as particular attention from the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, the Gladstone school is capable of being preserved and put to good use by its community.

A proposal put together by students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Remaking Cities Institute in 2008 presents a plan to use the lower building as a community center until the School District is willing to reinvest in the school which was renovated in the late 1990s and already possesses a pool, theater space, and gymnasium, probably within the next twenty years. The adjacent building, they suggest, could become space for artists to contribute to the community center’s programs for children, older youth and families.

On a larger scale, RCI’s project proposes an accessible green walkway called the Hazelwood Community Connector that blazes a welcoming path from Gladstone to Second Avenue, the commercial district of Hazelwood. The restored school buildings and Connector will feasibly attract residents who will in turn patronize the business district.