East Liberty Valley Historical Society

8 billion radios in homes and cars started in our Pittsburgh neighborhoods 100 years ago. https://www.calvarypgh.org Westinghouse KDKA Radio, which still broadcasts, reported the Nov 2020 election results. Then, its second broadcast went outside the company to broadcast religious music. Calvary Episcopal Church celebrates the 100th anniversary today at 10:45 EST ( 15:45 GMT, 16:45 ECT) by singing the same choral music. Join! Please share! ... Bob Dilts Patricia Lowry Justin Greenawalt See more

In Memoriam: The Hiland Auto Company (1906-2020) After standing for 114 years, the Hiland Auto Company--the Grande Dame of Centre Avenue--has been demolished. Designed by eminent Pittsburgh architect James T. Steen for Dr. George A. Urling of the Hiland Auto Company, the building was one of the earliest automobile garages and showrooms in East Liberty. It was also the earliest known, extant, purpose built automobile-related building in Pittsburgh. ... The Hiland Auto Company did not go quietly. In 2019, the East Liberty Valley Historical Society, in partnership with Preservation Pittsburgh, prepared a Historic Resource Survey Form for the PA State Historic Preservation Office in an attempt to have the building determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. That attempt was ultimately for naught. With the State Historic Preservation Office stating that the building lacked integrity (a claim we disagreed with), a bid for City Historic Designation was all but guaranteed to fail. And so, we suffer another incremental loss of East Liberty's historic built fabric. A nibble here. A nibble there. In times like these, we remember the ever-poignant words of Ada Louise Huxtable, "We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tin-horn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed." Historic Resource Survey Form available here: http://www.eastlibertychamber.org//HRSF%20Hiland%20Auto%20

When she left Pittsburgh in 1906, Willa Cather moved to New York; this webinar explores her time there. Today at 6; free but register with your name and email address.

On any normal first Wednesday of September, we'd be eagerly anticipating the first Friday of September and kicking off our fall lecture series. But in these so-not-normal times, we are putting our in-person Marilyn Evert Memorial Lecture Series on hiatus with hopes of being back in the chapel of East Liberty Presbyterian Church by spring 2021. Stay well, everyone. We look forward to seeing you next year.

So wraps another season of Friday night ELVHS talks -- just not the season we anticipated. My speakers committee co-chair Lu Donnelly and I would like to thank ELVHS president Justin Greenawalt for stepping ably and admirably into the breach with three fine, well-researched talks you can still watch here on our facebook page. We did manage to get the first of our four originally planned talks in before lockdown. We thank James Jaap for his impressive and convincing new lecture on Pittsburgh influences in Willa Cather's "My Antonia," and we thank Jan Kurth for reporting on it in Print (story below). We're not sure yet what's happening with our fall season, other than we hope to have one in some form or other. We do know we miss seeing you and that we'll keep you posted. ~ Patricia Lowry

This Friday, join the East Liberty Valley Historical Society for the third installment of its digital Lecture Series. In this all-new presentation, Society president and architectural historian, Justin Greenawalt, will profile the history and development of Pittsburgh's most thrilling cliff-side highway: The Boulevard of the Allies.