In 1871, George Westinghouse bought a property in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood that would be his home for the next 50 years.
He built a mansion called Solitude, where he would conduct experiments, dig a gas well and create a personal laboratory as he became a flourishing inventor and engineer.
Now, Pittsburgh City Council has granted historic designation to Westinghouse Park, the 10-acre green space that once was his home.
“I hope more and more Pittsburghers learn about the transformational things that happened on that site and why it’s not just a park, but it’s truly a historic site for the world,” Councilman Khari Mosley, D-Point Breeze, said.
Westinghouse — a Civil War veteran born in Central Bridge, N.Y. — received his first patent for a rotary steam engine at age 19. Two years later, he and his wife moved to Pittsburgh, according to a historic designation nomination letter prepared by Preservation Pittsburgh and The Westinghouse Legacy.
At Westinghouse’s Pittsburgh home — which was demolished in 1919 — the inventor drilled a gas well in his back yard to experiment on controlling the flow of gas, the nomination letter continued. He would eventually create inventions for using gas to light homes, businesses and streets and patent a system of gas pipelines.
Westinghouse erected a private laboratory at the site, connected to his home by a brick tunnel. There he invented a transformer that revolutionized how electricity could be distributed.
While most council members supported a historic designation for the site, Councilman Bob Charland, D-South Side, did not.
“The park is already protected by the nature of being a park in the zoning code,” he said. “When we make things we own historic, we now can’t have them updated and modernized with the needs of the city as we grow.”
Charland said he was generally “skeptical” of historic designations, which create hurdles for any upgrades that will now need approval from the Historic Review Commission.