Letters to the Editor

You and the Heinz Architectural Center are doing a service to the region by highlighting Manchester, and I hope you will continue to do so for other communities.

I presently live in Belgrade, Serbia, and when I return home to Pittsburgh I'm stunned at what a gem we have here, especially in communities such as Manchester that still have many homes and buildings that need attention.  I'm pleased that the structures are still in place, which even while empty speak of character and a sense of place, and I hope that renovators arrive before wrecking balls. Our descendents will thank us for stewarding these areas through hard times, more significantly as clues to the character of the people who have passed this way than for architectural value.

I wander the neighborhoods of the East End, from the Hill through Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, East Liberty, Morningside, Highland Park, Larimer, Squirrel Hill and Homewood. My favorite houses were there a decade or more before the rest—many old wooden-frame homes, sitting sometimes higher and farther from the street than their urban neighbors, sometimes in vinyl and weedy disguise.

I'm looking forward to the Heinz Center continuing to explore Pittsburgh's communities, and to reading about it in Carnegie Magazine.

—Michale Staresinic, Highland Park

Reply from Curator Dennis McFadden of The Heinz Architectural Center

Additions and Corrections