Buffing a gem
Heinz Hall to get $3 million in facade work
Heinz Hall, the opulent concert venue that is home to the Pittsburgh Symphony, is about to become even more polished.
The Downtown landmark is set to undergo a multimillion-dollar facelift, including the restoration of 160 pieces of the terracotta facade and the replacement of 32 windows.
And to make it all sparkle, new LED fixtures will be added — the same type used to light the Empire State Building in New York City.
Tom Pierce, senior architect for MCF Architecture, told city planning commission members during a briefing Tuesday that the work is expected to start in June and be completed in September, with no sidewalk closings or disruptions to the Heinz Hall schedule. Scaffolding will be in place during that time.
The goal is to restore the facade to its original form dating back to 1927 while installing more efficient windows that maintain the historic accuracy of those in place when Heinz Hall was born in 1971.
“Essentially, we’ve taken on [in] this project, I think, a pretty significant effort to try to replicate the existing conditions,” Mr. Pierce said.
His firm was the same one involved in the conversion of the former Lowe’s Theater into the 2,675-seat Heinz Hall after the movie house closed in 1964. The concert venue was a gift to the Pittsburgh Symphony Society from the Howard Heinz Endowment.
Mr. Pierce said the rehab will involve a “significant terracotta remediation job.” MCF is working with Boston Valley Terra Cotta, which he described as a manufacturer of historic terracotta, on that part of the improvement campaign.
Boston Valley has cut out pieces of the Heinz Hall terracotta that it will make molds from and replicate to match the original.
In all, 160 pieces of terracotta throughout the facade will be remediated, including cornices, scrolls, and other decorative forms.
“It’s a range,” Mr. Pierce said, noting that the pieces generally are quite small, not exceeding 24 inches in size.
While terracotta replacement can be costly, the goal with the Heinz Hall work is to “ensure the safety and longevity of the historic facade,” he stressed.
Windows to be replaced involve those on both the Sixth Street and Penn Avenue sides of the building.
When the structure was converted to Heinz Hall, the original windows were switched out to those of a style “more representative of something that you would find in Venice, actually,” Mr. Pierce said.
Those single-pane windows are the ones being removed. They will be replaced with highly efficient, thermally broken windows matching the profiles and dimensions of the originals.
To ensure accuracy, MCF is working from the same drawings used to design the windows installed during the conversion, Mr. Pierce said.
The final piece of the restoration involves the lighting.
While the exterior lights have been updated and modified throughout the venue’s history, the new ones will be four to 10 times more efficient and will provide a clarity and crispness that will be “very striking in the evening,” Mr. Pierce said.
“It’s a balance between trying to create the clarity and not being overly theatrical,” he said.
He added that the 17 fixtures being installed for the lighting are the same type used on the Empire State Building.
The Pittsburgh Symphony, the Heinz Hall owner, is undertaking the renovations at a cost of $3 million. It is in the process of raising funds for the work.
“The emphasis is on leaving a legacy for the next 50 years,” Mr. Pierce said.
Planning commission members are expected to hold a hearing and vote on the improvements in two weeks.
The last time the symphony did exterior work at Heinz Hall was in 2010, when it renovated the Garden Plaza.
Two years ago, it underwent $3.5 million in renovations to the inside of Heinz Hall, including painting the lobbies, upgrading the box office and ticket lobby, adding the accessible doors, rehabbing the maestro’s suite, guest conductor and artist dressing rooms, as well as the Dorothy Porter Simmons Regency Rooms, and replacing the loading dock roof.
Also Tuesday, the commission was briefed on plans for the 305-unit apartment building to be constructed in the parking lot directly across from PNC Park on the North Shore. The 11-story complex will front West General Robinson Street near Federal Street. Developer RDC and Alco Parking president Merrill Stabile are partnering on the venture.