This Point Breeze North house slated to become historic landmark

In 1892 when Westinghouse Electric Co. was chosen to light the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Emil Keller, a young electrical engineer from Chicago, traveled to Pittsburgh to ask the company’s founder to hire him to be the man in charge of installing and operating the lighting.

George Westinghouse Jr. did hire Keller and the year after the fair, he became vice president and general manager of the Westinghouse Machine Company.

Keller moved to Pittsburgh, where he and his wife, Ella, designed and built the house at 201 N. Murtland St. in Point Breeze North. The house, which was completed in 1905, is in the process of being designated as a local historic landmark.

Last month, the Pittsburgh Planning Commission and the Historic Review Commission agreed to designate the house as a historic landmark. It is now up to City Council to make the final determination on the home, which Preservation Pittsburgh, in the historic nomination, describes as a combination of Prairie and Neoclassical architecture. On Oct. 3, the legislation for historic designation was read and referred to the Committee on Land Use and Economic Development by City Council.

When the house was built, most homes still had gas lighting fixtures, but Keller installed electric lights throughout the house, including eight lamps on the newel posts of the main staircase and eight hanging fixtures above them. The lamps have since been lost, but some of the overhead fixtures remain.

“Apparently it was lit up like the World’s Fair,” says David Fisher, the home’s current owner, who, like the first occupant, is also an electrical engineer.

The property had other modern conveniences, some of which are still modern.

For instance, the house has a tankless water heater. It is cast iron with a different design than the wall-mounted tankless hot water heaters of today, but it is made using the same principle, in that water is pumped through pipes that are heated by flames provided by gas jets. The water heater is still in operation.

The Kellers also installed an intercom system throughout the house with a dial so that users could pick the room they wanted to contact.

The house is nearly intact. The first floor is lined with paneling, bookshelves and fireplace mantels all made of mahogany. The kitchen still has the original cabinetry, but a previous owner installed a dropped ceiling and fake brick more than 40 years ago.

The electrical system is still the original knob and tube wiring, which is still protected from surges by a fuse box. And in the basement, there is a gauge to show how much fuel is in the buried gas tank the Kellers had for their cars.

Fisher, who has owned the house since 1981, has an affection for Keller. He is also an engineer with a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in computer science and is also focused on pushing the boundaries of technology forward.

Fisher and his late wife raised their six children in the house, but now he wants to downsize. However, he said he doesn’t want the house to be cut into apartments or demolished; instead, he wants to donate the building to The Westinghouse Legacy, a nonprofit that is being created to accept the house and restore it.

Regina Kakadelis, vice president of The Westinghouse Legacy, says there are hoops they still have to jump through before they can accept the gift.

She said the group’s nonprofit status still has to be approved by the Internal Revenue Service and the house needs a variance to allow for “Cultural Service” on the property, which is the designation for a museum or historical archive.

Kakadelis says the house is too small to operate as a standard museum and there would have to be too many people to keep it open for public museum hours. Instead, she says, the house will operate as an archive for Westinghouse-related research and research on the people who lived there, including Westinghouse’s son, George Westinghouse III. 

The building will also be used as a hub of innovation, documenting the innovations of 120 years ago but also innovative and sustainable technologies that will bring the historic home into the modern era.