Our business is headquartered in the historic Thaw Mansion, a substantial and serious Gilded Age townhouse built of brick and red sandstone on Lincoln Avenue in the area of Pittsburgh's North Side known as Allegheny West. 930 North Lincoln Avenue is one of many Victorian palaces that originally lined the avenues of Ridge, Brighton and North Lincoln. And the families of millionaire industrialists residing within gave life to those houses at the turn of the century while legions of servants and coachmen attended to their needs, their grounds, and their carriage houses.
One such family was that of William Thaw Sr., a leading industrialist and philanthropist. Synonymous with industrial wealth and power in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Thaw name appeared on many social agendas of that day with the likes of Carnegie, Frick, Mellon, Jones and Laughlin.
Thaw, a prominent Pittsburgh name synonymous with industrial wealth and power in the second half of the nineteenth century, appeared on many social agendas of that day with the likes of Carnegie, Frick, Mellon, Jones and Laughlin.
The Thaw name was also celebrated in a wealthy, influential district on Pittsburgh's North Side known as Allegheny West. Victorian palaces lined the avenues of Ridge, Brighton and North Lincoln. And the families of millionaire industrialists residing within gave life to those houses at the turn of the century while legions of servants and coachmen attended to their needs, their grounds, and their carriage houses.
Number 930 North Lincoln Avenue was one such house. The Thaw Mansion, as it is known to this day, was built of brick and red sandstone by William Thaw, Jr., a leading industrialist and philanthropist.
But scandal eventually soiled the name. William's son, Harry K. Thaw, worked hard to develop a reputation in New York as a millionaire playboy with a taste for the toasts of Broadway — the beautiful show girls who brought excitement to the musicals of the early 1900s. Evelyn Nesbit, herself a native Pittsburgher, was the most renowned of all, the model which Charles Dana Gibson turned into the world's standard of female beauty and grace — the Gibson Girl.
Young Harry was terminally smitten with Evelyn. He rushed her off to Europe. It may — or may not — have been a Grand Tour. But it was certainly a grand tryst. And at the end of it, Harry and Evelyn were married.
Young Harry was also terminally daft. He suffered from fits of jealously and suspicion. He began to investigate Evelyn's life as a sixteen-year-old chorus girl appearing in a musical which featured the famous Florodora Sextet. And he learned about her alleged affair with Stanford White, one of the country's best known architects, whose major works have since become national landmarks — the Washington Square Arch, the Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, Pennsylvania Station and the Dakota Apartments. It was in his elegant apartment in the Dakota that Evelyn, in a room decorated in red plush, perched upon her red velvet swing.
(This tale — particularly the following juicy scene — was not overlooked by Hollywood. At least two major motion pictures deal with the the gaudy lives of Harry and Evelyn — "The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing," starring Joan Collins in 1955 and "Ragtime," adapted from the book by E.L. Doctorow, starring James Cagney in the 1980s.)
The year is 1906. Harry is tormented and unhinged from his discoveries. The place is the rooftop café of the old Madison Square Garden. It is a building White has designed. Harry has made Evelyn confess to her relationship with the architect.
Harry approaches White at his table. Pulls out his revolver. And shoots his wife's former suitor in the head at point-blank range. While the dinner crowd gasps, a nearly incoherent Thaw shouts, "You've ruined my wife!" Or was it, as some spectators claimed afterwards, "You've ruined my life!"
The trial which followed made front page headlines for months. Evelyn appeared as a witness for the defense, probably saving her husband. She told of how she had inflamed Harry's passions by revealing the secrets of her early indiscretions with White. The first trial ended in a hung jury: the second acquitted him. And history was made in the field of jurisprudence. For the first time, the defense in a murder trial entered a plea of not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
Meanwhile, back in Pittsburgh seventy years later, insanity of a more permanent sort marked the purchase of the aging Thaw Mansion by the principals of Vance Wright Adams And Associates. Years of owner apathy and neglect had left the North Side neighborhoods looking tired and dilapidated. Many of the mansions had been turned into rooming houses, disturbed, some claimed, by the ghosts of the coal and steel barons who had built them.
VWA wanted to restore Number 930 North Lincoln, not gut and modernize it. The renovation began in January 1981. The principals determined on a budget, then set about to save as much of the original structure as possible.
The interior woodwork and paneling in the dining room was painted over and defaced through the years. It was carefully stripped and refinished and now serves as the main conference room.
While planning other phases of the restoration, VWA registered the mansion with the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, and the structure was duly declared a historic landmark.
Work continued. Rumor had suggested that the ballroom (which now houses the design staff) originally featured rare inlaid woods and a finely painted frescoed vaulted ceiling, but were disguised by seven coats of paint.
Layer by layer, the paint was removed from the woodwork. Finally the inlay began to reappear. But the paint has taken its toll. The panels and molding, created from African Mahogany, were destroyed. They would have to be duplicated.
A tree which matched the grain and texture of the original wood was located and purchased in Africa. Transported to Louisiana, it was kiln dried, sent to Georgia where it was cut and molded to specification, then shipped to Pittsburgh for installation.
The frescoed ceiling could not be salvaged. There was too much water damage and structural deterioration. Some of the arched frescoes, each with a different musical symbol, could be saved, however, but not before muralists deftly applied oil paint to extensive surfaces within the arches.
And so the work will continue. No one knows for sure if the spirits of the Thaws — William, Harry and Evelyn — ever roam the old house. If they do, they must be friendly, and they must be content with the new life purpose which the old home now embraces.
