No one was injured after emergency responders worked quickly to knock down a fire at the Westinghouse Arts Academy building in Wilmerding on Friday afternoon.
When Pitcairn police officer Kyra Haile arrived just before 1:30 p.m., smoke was pouring out of a top-floor window, she said.
In the few minutes it took for the first fire crews to arrive, smoke had begun coming from any opening it could find in the roof, Haile said.
“Within seconds, the roof was covered in black smoke,” Haile said.
Firefighters from more than a half-dozen companies converged on the former general offices of the Westinghouse Air Brake Co., commonly called Westinghouse Castle, on Commerce Avenue, putting the fire out in about a half-hour, Haile said.
“The fire started accidentally in the attic, according to the fire marshal, but it’s still under investigation, and probably will be by the county and insurance as well,” said developer Joe Lawrence, a partner with Westinghouse Castle LP, the group that is renovating the Romanesque/Renaissance Revival building that had fallen into disrepair over the years.
More than $1.5 million in grant funding from Westinghouse and the Allegheny Foundation is going toward the building’s renovation, in order for it to become the future home for the Turtle Creek Valley Arts organization and serve as an expansion of the Westinghouse Arts Academy.
“Luckily school just got out, and it looks like they’ll be back in operation in the fall,” Lawrence said. “We’ll have the roof patched within the next few days. The disaster restoration is being provided by ServPro out of North Versailles, and we’ll have the water starting to dry out in the next couple of hours.”
Lawrence said the academy’s equipment and offices, and all of the historic portions of the building did not appear to have sustained any water, smoke or fire damage.
“There’s lots of water,” he said. “But the floors are all either marble or new concrete, so thankfully there’s not going to be a lot of water damage.”
Patrick Varine is a TribLive reporter covering Delmont, Export and Murrysville. He is a Western Pennsylvania native and joined the Trib in 2010 after working as a reporter and editor with the former Dover Post Co. in Delaware. He can be reached at pvarine@triblive.com.