Crews have to be meticulous in re-roofing this landmark
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“I wonder how they did this safely 130 years ago?” said Chaz McNulty, surveying his workers perched on the roof of the historic Allegheny County Courthouse on Grant Street in Downtown Pittsburgh.
Cuddy Roofing Co. is replacing part of the building’s roof, and the steep grade — at 60 degrees — means everyone working has to be tied off, and scaffolding is built every few feet.
Mr. McNulty is president of Cuddy, which has a $10 million contract with the county for work on the courthouse, one of the last works of major architect Henry Hobson Richardson. It was completed in 1888, and the contract specifies that the same baked clay tiles be used, from Ludowici Roof Tile.
The building was roofed in a highly time-consuming fashion: each tile, less than a foot across, is individually wire-tied to the metal beams that form the ribs of the roof. From the inside of certain parts of the sixth floor, where the roof acts as the wall, twisted copper wires are visible every 2 or 3 inches. It was done that way
because the prior courthouse had burned down, so when the Richardson structure was built, flammable materials like wood were avoided.
“There must have been 100 guys working on this roof,” Mr. McNulty said, vs. the 25 he has working there five days a week.
“Downtown traffic is the biggest challenge,” Mr. McNulty said. “We’ve put up scaffolding to protect pedestrians. Normally we would throw stuff down and drive it away daily, but now we have to send a crane up every Saturday to remove it.”
Because of those challenges, Cuddy is not replicating the tiling process, instead taking a more conventional route. Workers are attaching plywood boards to the metal rafters as a substrate on which to nail the new tiles.
Everything that is removed is replaced and waterproofed the same day, Mr. McNulty explained, to keep the building watertight and insulated. They are most of the way through the first of three phases, the Ross Street side of the building’s roof, he said.
Mr. McNulty said his company, owned by the Scalo development group, had never done a historical renovation project like this one. The Cuddy Roofing contract also includes repointing the masonry, with workers replacing all the exterior mortar. A slightly different color is visible on the new mortar.
The firm’s contract does not include the interior roof, overlooking the courtyard, the roof of the attached former jail, where Alexander Berkman was held after his attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick, or the Bridge of Sighs between them.
The Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail has been on the National Registry of Historic Places since 1972 and was one of Mr. Richardson’s most important works.
Maureen Meister, a Boston-area art historian and former Pittsburgh journalist who wrote about Mr. Richardson in her book “Arts and Crafts Architecture,” said, “Richardson stated he expected he would be remembered for the courthouse. It was not finished at his death — he knew he was dying — and he thought his reputation would stand on it.” Mr. Richardson died in 1886, two years before the building was completed.
Kenneth Breisch, an art historian at the University of Southern California who wrote a book about Mr. Richardson’s influence on American public libraries, said he “was one of the most prominent architects in the United States.”
Mr. Richardson was one of the first American architects to study in France, where he became a proponent of the 11th-century Romanesque style, Mr. Breisch said. Mr. Richardson’s adaptation, characterized by large round arches, central towers and rough-cut stone, became known as Richardsonian Romanesque and is on prominent display in the courthouse.
The Grant Street entrance, with its three towering arches leading into a grand lobby, would have greeted visitors with a powerful effect, but a lowering of Grant Street in the early 20th century means that nowadays, visitors enter through what was once the basement. A different stone color still clearly delineates the current and former ground floors.
“What he really was trying to do was create a style of architecture that was appropriate for America in the 19th century,” Mr. Breisch said.
Ms. Meister differentiated Mr. Richardson’s style from the preceding era.
“The Victorian period, the architecture had more discrete forms, was more picturesque, and had more variegated silhouettes. Pulling masses together was something he did well, which gave them a power,” she said.
The courthouse was “more severe and austere in a lot of ways,” Mr. Breisch said.
The steep roof contributes to the effect, with the steeper angle making the building appear more compact, only broken up by the tower. Over a quarter of the building’s height is roof, at 100 feet from the ground to the gutter, and 60 feet from the gutter to the top. Even the gutters were determined by that steep angle: Mr. McNulty said they have double the volume of normal gutters.
Some of Mr. Richardson’s works, such as Boston’s Trinity Church, his first major commission, use smaller, multicolored cuts of stone, “to create abstract ornaments or horizontal bands,” Mr. Breisch said. The difference with the courthouse, Mr. Breisch hypothesized, might have been a desire for the jail — the current Family Court — to appear imposing. Monochromatic stone also would have held up to Pittsburgh’s air pollution, as well.
The effect of time and pollution is visible with the reroofing: the new roof tiles are bright orange, whereas the old ones are nearly black.
“They’re dirty,” Mr. McNulty explained succinctly.
According to Ms. Meister, the courthouse represents a transitional point for American architecture, as Mr. Richardson passed the torch, with his death, to Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, three members of his firm. That firm eventually became today’s Shepley Bulfinch and is responsible for such buildings as Stanford University’s first quadrangle, the Art Institute of Chicago, and more recent buildings such as the Harvard Innovation Lab.
Construction was supervised in Pittsburgh by another group from Mr. Richardson’s firm, Longfellow, Alden and Harlow, who went on to design Pittsburgh landmarks such as the Carnegie Institute and the Duquesne Club, said Ms. Meister, who worked at The Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the 1970s.
Mr. Breisch said Mr. Richardson’s impact is also seen beyond those who worked directly for him, in “dozens and dozens of county courthouses,” among other buildings.
“It’s something to be proud of, working on something so historic,” Mr. McNulty said.