Helped create quirky North Side house called Randyland

July 12, 1958 - Jan 10, 2019

Despite a chronic shyness that kept him out of the public eye, David Paul Francis McDermott is remembered on the city’s North Side as a friend to people in need.

A professional caregiver, “Mac” was also a reliable project manager who downplayed his role in creating Randyland, an iconic home and ever-changing art piece that has garnered global attention.

Mr. McDermott, 60, died Thursday of prostate cancer.

Born and raised in Vandergrift, Westmoreland County, Mr. McDermott attended an alternative school for children with special needs. In the 1970s, he served overseas in the U.S. Navy. His career as a caregiver eventually led him back to military personnel for eight years as an aide at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Oakland.

In the mid-1990s, Mr. McDermott was living with his partner Randy Gilson, a freelance gardener and collector of items that had been thrown out as trash on the North Side. When the city announced plans to demolish a house at 1501 Arch St. in the Mexican War Streets neighborhood, Mr. Gilson borrowed $11,300 and bought the house, opening a new door in Mr. McDermott’s life.

“This house was a healing process for both of us,” Mr. Gilson said. “I thought of painting it in weird colors. Mac didn’t agree. But as the work continued and we were solving our disagreements about the house, we were solving our disagreements with each other and it just brought us closer.”

With its clashing psychedelic walls and oddly painted tables and chairs, mannequin heads, garden statuary and recycled odds and ends, the house attracts crowds as if a paint bomb went off there. Bugs and butterflies buzz dinosaurs on the home’s exterior. When the weather is right, a line forms outside a large courtyard, which is open to the public daily from 1 to 7 p.m.

“Mac was such an introvert,” Mr. Gilson said. “He told people he didn’t know anything about it, that he was just a worker, but he was very much involved. He built walls, painted, organized. It was my thing and then it was our thing, but it became the people’s thing. It will never be done. It’s a new museum for Pittsburgh.”

Mr. McDermott’s prostate cancer was in remission in 2017 when supporters of Randyland raised $20,000 on a crowdsourcing website to fund a bucket-list vacation that took Mr. McDermott and Mr. Gilson to the Grand Canyon and Los Angeles.

“Together 20-some years and we’d never had a vacation. When I heard what they’d done for us, I was shocked,” Mr. Gilson said.

After their return to Randyland, Mr. McDermott worked less. Foo Conner, for three years the co-director of Randyland, said that with Mr. McDermott’s help, Mr. Gilson’s investment has likely appreciated. The house hasn’t been assessed, he said, but neighboring homes that went for $20,000 in the mid-1990s are worth $500,000 now.

Mr. McDermott, whose brother, Ron McDermott of Vandergrift died of cancer last month, is survived by his mother, Mary McDermott of Vandergrift; another brother, John of Vandergrift; and two sisters, Kathleen McDermott of Vandergrift and Linda McDermottWalters of Champion, Somerset County.

Mr. Gilson said there will be no winter memorial for Mr. McDermott, who was cremated.

“In the summer, when it’s nice we’ll have some kind of Mac Day,” he said.