Source:Razing
Mel Seidenberg. "Razing of old homestead starts 'New Hill' project: First of 1,300 houses to go tomorrow." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 30, 1956, p. 32. Newspapers.com 90818742.
A battered, old house, classed as "unfit for human habitation," will have an hour of glory tomorrow as the first of some 1,300 structures to disappear from the blighted face of the Lower Hill District.
This particular house, at 1206 Epiphany Street, was chosen for two basic reasons as the spot for the official start of demolition operations in the 95-acre area to be cleared and rebuilt into a civic-sports center.
First, it is close to the geographical focal point of the redevelopment area. Secondly, it typifies the declining condition into which many houses of the Lower Hill have fallen.
At 11 a. m., city, county, state and Federal officials will gather at the house to seal its doom with appropriate eulogy and predictions for a slumless future.
Then, as professional house wreckers move in to erase it from the site where it has stood some 90 years, they will adjourn to the William Penn Hotel for a luncheon wake.
The public ceremony gives the little house, a two-and-a half story affair, its first opportunity—and last—to climb out of oblivion. Judging from the scarcity of historical information about it, nothing of note ever happened to it before this.
From Civil War Era
It seems to have been built sometime after the Civil War on what then was Franklin Street by one Benjamin P. Kane. He died in 1878 and the property, left to his heirs, was then valued at $6,225.
In the era when the Hill District thrived as a residential area, it stood inconspicuously with the other middle-class homes like it. Virtually nothing is known about its occupants and it made no dent on history until 1948, when the City of Pittsburgh took it over in lieu of delinquent taxes.
A bit more, however, is known, from deed books, about the land it occupies.
Deeded by Penns
It was part of an original area of 16 acres and 40 perches, "beginning at an elm by the side of a road" (Old Greensburg Pike), deeded by the Penns in 1785 to George Irwin.
In 1806, John and Henry Irwin laid out the area in a plan of lots, including the one on which the house was later built.
Stephen Colwell, for whom the Hill's Colwell Street was named, bought it in 1835. It was transfered [sic] to William Arthurs, who in turn sold lots 146 tnd [sic] 147, including the one in question, to Joseph Cust.
Benjamin Kane, whose biography also is missing, bought the lots in 1840. It is possible he built the house before the Civil War, but more likely that construction started afterwards.
The house at 1206 will be the only structure to be razed singly. Demolition operations in the future will be done on a block-by-block basis, as groups of properties are acquired.
Among the visitors expected here for tomorrow's ceremony are three Federal officials.—Urban Renewal Commissioner James W. Follin, David M. Walker, regional administrator for the Housing and Home Financy [sic] Agency, and Oakley Hunter, general counsel for the H&HF.
