Pittsburgh home tours open doors on lush interiors
Homeowners from two Pittsburgh neighborhoods are proudly showcasing their houses in annual home tours that are coming up in the next few weeks: the Mexican War Streets House & Garden Tour and the Shadyside House Tour. Both are self-guided, raise funds for the sponsoring organizations and their local projects, and show homeowners what they can do with their own houses.
Mexican War Streets
Shara Gleason Fisher calls her Mexican War Streets neighborhood the saving grace of her life in Pittsburgh, an area she wanted to leave while living in the South Hills.
She married her husband, Chad Fisher, in 2008 at the Inn on the Mexican War Streets and fell in love with the charm of the historic North Side neighborhood. The couple's second home in the Mexican War Streets, one of 11 houses and three gardens on a tour Sept. 14, stands only a few blocks away from their original one. And they love the social neighborhood and its history.
The Fishers moved into this North Avenue home, built in 1890, in December of 2011. Although the house was not a fixer-upper, Horn Corp., one of the tour's sponsors, did a remodeling, particularly of the bedrooms on the second and third floors.
“We just wanted to make it essentially ours,” says Chad Fisher, 40, an insurance salesman originally from Steubenville, Ohio.
The living room, which faces North Avenue, has a baby grand piano, a Victrola phonograph from an antique store, and other decor and furniture surrounded by denim blue walls. Decorations such as framed paintings of Saturday Evening Post covers provide a nostalgic feel to the home, while modern touches — like a giant walk-in closet with a television in the master bedroom and a fancy jacuzzi-style bathtub — provide balance.
Most of the first floor has hardwood, while much of the second and third floors have wall-to-wall carpet. Wall colors change from room to room, in shades including gray, red and blue. The dining room has a long, dark pine table with six leather chairs, and a fourth-generation china cabinet. A stained-glass, churchlike window adorns the midway landing of the main staircase, where several framed photos of Mexican War Streets tour posters from previous years hang.
The second-floor bedrooms include a boyish room with sporting decorations. Chad Fisher's kids from a previous marriage — Madelaine, 14, and Samuel, 11 — stay at the house many weekends. The giant master suite on the third floor includes an ethanol fireplace and black satiny curtains that cover the big windows overlooking North Avenue. The Fishers' sociable dog, an Olde English bulldog named Hunley, will be greeting visitors on the house tour, which they call an important and beneficial event.
“It's a huge fundraiser,” says Shara Gleason Fisher, 39. The native of Mooresville, N.C., works in retirement planning. “I think the biggest things is the historic preservation of these houses. You just can't put a price on that because they don't make them like that anymore.”
Mexican War Streets House & Garden Tour is from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 14. Admission is $20, $18 in advance or $15 for groups of at least 10. Tickets can be purchased the day of the tour at a booth on Monterey Street at West North Avenue. Details: mexicanwarstreets.org
Shadyside
Diane and Aldona Zilinskas, identical twins, share a lot more than the same genes: The 63-year-old pair now share a Shadyside house, one of seven on the Sept. 21 annual Shadyside House Tour.
The Zilinskas, both retired pharmacists and Mt. Oliver natives, moved into the house this summer after the death of Aldona Zilinskas' fiance, Christopher G. Allen, a contractor who had remodeled the Shadyside house they bought in 2000. The Zilinskas sisters lived with Allen in a 22-room house in Maryland, but after his death from a heart attack, they decided to move back to their hometown and share the house together.
They have the whole first floor and basement to themselves, and tenants rent the two apartments upstairs. The house has a sophisticated, social look with several big-screen TVs — even in the bathroom, where you can watch TV while taking a bath in the jacuzzi tub.
The kitchen has a big bar with black granite counters, and it sits between the living room and Aldona's spacious bedroom. The bedroom has a king-size bed surrounded by aqua-blue walls and two big Palladian windows with frosted glass. Diane Zilinskas has turned the finished basement into her bedroom.
“It's a sports bar, really,” Aldona Zilinskas says about the house, where they often host people for fun both inside and outside. They have a front garden and porch filled with mums this time of year, and a back deck with a lot of chairs and tables.
“We love to entertain,” Diane Zilinskas says.
The sisters say that the tour should give people ideas for how to maximize use of a seemingly limited space. They will see “how simply you can live with just three rooms,” Diane Zilinskas says. “Especially when you get older, it's convenient.
“You don't have to have something really big to be comfortable,” she says.
The Shadyside House Tour is from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 21. Admission is $25, $20 in advance. Tickets are available at Eureka! Chocolates & Gifts, 735 Copeland St. Details: shadysideaction.org
