Students at North Hills High School have rebuilt a sign welcoming visitors to the Perrysville neighborhood of Ross.
The new sign on Route 19 at Atlantic Avenue, outside the building previously home to T&M Hardware and Vater’s Hardware, was unveiled Wednesday.
The store is in the process of becoming a showroom for JP Paracca Flooring.
Ross and North Hills officials and representatives gathered for the unveiling.
Students in James Meininger’s advanced home maintenance and construction class rebuilt the sign at the township’s request. They started in early April and finished it the first week of May, working on it around their other projects, he said.
When the township approached the school about doing the sign, Superintendent Patrick Mannarino thought of Meininger’s class because they had done a smaller welcome sign for West View last year.
“Projects like this are about much more than the district rebuilding a sign. It’s about giving our students the opportunity to give back to the community,” Mannarino said. “This is a historic sign, and now our students are part of that sign’s history. We absolutely wanted to be part of this effort because it gave our students the chance to create something lasting in the community — something they can take pride in knowing they built themselves.”
Ross Commissioner Bill McKellar said the wooden sign — made of white pickets with red letters spelling “Perrysville” across it — had been there for 25 to 30 years.
Replacing the sign is part of the township’s revitalization of the area, which has included a new gazebo, efforts to fill vacant storefronts and, coming soon, new street lamps, McKellar said.
While the school was given the old sign to take measurements, Meininger said there wasn’t much of it besides a couple of letters that could be reused.
“We had to pretty much rebuild the entire thing that they gave us,” he said. “It was pretty dilapidated. It was dry rotted. Some of the letters were missing or broken off. Parts of the fence pickets were missing or broken off. All kinds of moss and stuff was growing on it. It was in bad shape.”
The new sign was made to look like the old one as much as possible. It’s made from pressure-treated lumber and painted and sealed with exterior white stain that should not need to be touched for six to 10 years, Meininger said.
“It should last a long time,” he said.
A total of 15 students, all seniors except for one junior, worked on the sign. Their names are on a plaque attached to the back of the sign.
Meininger said everything went as planned and the new sign came together smoothly.
“It looks awesome,” he said before the unveiling. “Everyone who’s seen it has been blown away by it.”