Imagine living in an apartment in an old church that houses a chandelier and pipe organ donated by Andrew Carnegie, eating at a restaurant in the lobby of a 105-year-old train station decorated with marble or drinking beer made inside a brewery that was raided by the feds during Prohibition.

In the next few years, those could all be possibilities.

Pennsylvania recently announced tax credits for the 2020-21 fiscal year for the owners of 27 historic buildings that are actively being restored and rehabilitated. Six of the buildings that will receive the credits are in Allegheny County, and their owners have some interesting plans for their futures.

Finding home in a church

First United Presbyterian Church of Braddock sits on a sloping hillside. It is adjacent to the Carnegie Free Library of Braddock, which was being expanded at the same time when the red-brick church was constructed in 1893.

The church had an active congregation until 2017, when the handful of remaining members reached out to the Mon Valley Initiative and asked the group to take over the property. The Initiative works to provide affordable housing and stabilize the neighborhood around the Carnegie Library, according to its communications manager, Jason Togyer.

“(The church members) were very clear that they did not want to see it fall apart into disrepair (and) become a blighted, abandoned building,” said Dave Yargeau, the real estate developer for the Mon Valley Initiative. “They cared about it for too long to have it just fall apart, which is unfortunately what happens with a lot of church buildings when they close. There’s just not many uses for them.”

Wood-framed windows peek out into the nearby streets, letting in natural light through stained-glass windows. The large chandelier and the pipe organ inside the sanctuary space were donated by Carnegie, the 19th-century steel baron.

But although the original stained glass, pipe organ and chandelier are striking, what is even more interesting about the building is its style of architecture. It was built in the Akron-auditorium plan style, with a large sanctuary space separated from smaller Sunday school classrooms by rolling partitions that can be lifted for larger events.

It is a specific style of architecture that is almost only seen in Presbyterian churches, according to Yargeau. He said that of the buildings in this style still remaining, not many have been well preserved.

“(The building) is like a child to me at this point,” Yargeau said. “I have a set of keys. Whenever I have friends or family come into town, I always go and show off my church, like, first thing, even though it’s not actually mine.”

The Mon Valley Institute has determined to not let the building fade into memory, and the historic preservation tax credits help the organization to do that, as it makes up a “significant portion” of its construction budget, according to Yargeau. The project received a $255,000 tax credit allocation, a government news release said.

The Mon Valley Initiative intends to construct mixed-income housing inside the historic structure. The group plans to make four of the units affordable to tenants at or below 80% of the area median income, and the other four will be rented at market rate, Yargeau said.

Half of the units will be in the basement, which opens up to the outside as the building slopes away from the hill, leaving access to natural light. Those apartments will be a combination of one- and two-bedroom units.

The next three will be on the main floor. Two of the units will also have loft spaces, one will have a small chandelier and the one that houses what used to be the sanctuary will have the organ and chandelier donated by Carnegie as fixtures. However, the organ will be inoperable so as not to disturb neighbors.

The last unit will be a one-bedroom on the mezzanine level, which used to be a chorus loft. Although some stained-glass panels were stolen from the lower floors, the unit on this level will have access to a large stained-glass window.

“There is a demonstrated need for quality housing in that valley. There’s a demonstrated need for affordable housing. And when you have the chance to make something that is unique, that is, you know, out of the ordinary, I think it’s gonna be a really good project,” Togyer said.

Although the coronavirus pandemic slowed its plans, the Mon Valley Initiative hopes to begin construction in 2022 or 2023. Anything that was considered sacred or was liturgically related was taken by the Presbyterian Synod, distributed to other churches or congregations, or stored in the denomination’s archives, according to Togyer.

train station getting repaired

Another building that is undergoing an unusual transformation with the help of the tax credits is Wilkinsburg’s Pennsylvania Railroad Station. The tax credit allocation is $300,000.

Vacant since 1965, the building has been in a “critical state of disrepair” for the past 20 years, according to Tracey Evans, executive director of the Wilkinsburg Community Development Corp., which is helping rehab the space.

The completion of the station in 1916 prompted three days of celebration, with 100,000 people joining in on the festivities, according to information on the corporation’s website. However, 100 years later, the building lay abandoned with very little roof and the terrazzo and mosaic tile floors damaged by water, leaves and snow.

“The Wilkinsburg train station has always been a project that the community has looked at and hoped to have restored (and) rehabilitated for decades and decades,” Evans said.

The organization began to do just that when construction started in 2017.

Marble that had been held up by corroded copper wire fell to the ground over time and fractured, Evans said. To repair this, she said, the group ordered replacement marble from the same quarry in Italy where the original marble came from in 1916.

Among other aspects of the restoration process, the organization had paint chips analyzed so that the building could be repainted using its original colors. Replicas of original light fixtures were also ordered.

“Everything is as close as possible to the original building,” Evans said. “It’s a symbol of what was … and it is a symbol of revitalization for the community.”

The group is finishing up its historic retouchings, and Evans said the group wants to have a ribbon-cutting in September.