Historic Site
Lenka Clayton & Phillip Andrew Lewis / 2021 / bronze / 16” x 96” x 0.5”
Historic Site is a brand new, 8-foot-tall cast bronze plaque, that will be installed on the façade of the 120-year-old building in which Gallery Closed is situated. This large plaque is a contemporary companion to a small existing bronze plaque on the building’s façade, commemorating its first use as an incline train station.
Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, whose studio is located in the building, spent a year researching everything that could be documented as having occurred on the site. The artists scoured all archives available to them, and spoke to experts including an anthropologist, two architects, several archivists, the author of the book on Pittsburgh inclines, a curator of the anthropocene, the director of the National Aviary, a big cat specialist, a botanist, a cinema historian, a city historian, an entomologist, a geomorphologist, a local historian, a curator of invertebrate paleontology, the official historian of Isaly's, two librarians and many neighbors, among others. Please scroll down for research process images.
The resulting information was compiled into a lengthy text that begins 600 million years ago and extends indefinitely into the future. The text was cast in bronze, taking its visual cues from the existing plaque, with the same typeface, format and material, and was even made in the same foundry, 34 years later.
The only known depiction of the Troy Hill Incline
The rear of the building when it was a silent movie theater
The Colonial Theatre
Seeburg Cinema Organ
Isaly's Deli and Ice Cream Shop
Interior of an Isaly's store
Rhoden's Home Bakery and Shep's Dry Cleaners
Rhodens Home Bakery
First Pennsylvania Savings Association
Danny DeVito, Jack Nicholson shooting Hoffa
Flat tire scene in Hoffa outside 1733 Lowrie
Receipt from Warhola Scrap Metal Yard
1733 Lowrie Street in 2020
building and land of 1733 Lowrie Street
Conversation with a geomorphologist
Research by a big cat specialist
Existing plaque on the building façade
Plaque material test
United Bronze foundry, Pittsburgh
collaborators and thanks
Albert Kollar, Nate Morehouse, Nicole Heller, Dr. Jan Janecka, Eric Lidji, Isalys, Jane Grindel, Colleen Corcoran, Jodi, Donald Doherty, Evelyn, Evan Mirapaul, Sybil Streeter, Patrick, Amy Covell, Barry Atkins, Ashley Mingus, James Kastner, Sean Carroll, Nick Chambers, Steven Latta, Brenda Hunda, Caitie Morphew, Jean Koch, United Bronze of Pittsburgh, Matthews International, Penn State Special Collections Library, the Heinz History Center, the staff of the Carnegie Library Allegheny Branch, and our many wonderful Troy Hill neighbors.