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You are here: Home / Historic Preservation / The Ladies’ GAR Home in Swissvale: How would you repurpose this building with a Civil War history?

The Ladies’ GAR Home in Swissvale: How would you repurpose this building with a Civil War history?

May 31, 2017 Lindsay

This postcard of the GAR Home is available for sale on Ebay.

This spring the Post-Gazette published an article about the Ladies’ GAR Home in Swissvale. (“Diana Nelson Jones’ Walkabout: Swissvale home has history on its side, but little else” Post-Gazette, March 13, 2017). The online version of the article doesn’t have a photo, but I knew that if this building was visible from the train, it was worth learning more about.

It is so oddly ob­scure that a very ob­ser­vant and his­tory-lov­ing Barry Al­fonso, a writer who lives in Swiss­vale, saw it for the first time on an Am­trak train. The tracks pass along what used to be the front gate.

The Ladies’ GAR Home — GAR stands for Grand Army of the Re­pub­lic — was built for in­di­gent fe­male fam­ily mem­bers of Union Army vet­er­ans. The orig­i­nal struc­ture was a 12-room home built in 1890 that burned down in 1900. A 53-room fa­cil­ity was built to re­place it. In 1937, a 30-room ex­ten­sion was built.

Mr. Al­fonso con­tacted the Pitts­burgh Post-Ga­zette hop­ing to give it some ex­po­sure in case some­one with ex­tremely deep pock­ets might con­sider a fu­ture for it. That’s un­likely, though. Bor­ough man­ager Clyde Wil­helm said liens go back to 2003.

Photo credit: Love Place Photography

More photos of the GAR Home in Swissvale are available from Love Place Photography here.

Ever since I read the article about this building, I have been thinking that there has to be use for this historic building. Before the LGAR moved to a new facility in Turtle Creek in 1996, this building was home to some 80+women.

Could this become offices? Artists studios? Micro apartments? A hotel? If it could be saved, what would you like to see in this building in the future?

 

Did anybody hear anything about plans to develop the #GARhome in #Swissvale. #GrandArmyRepublic #LadiesOfTheGrandArmyRepublic #NineteenthCentury

A post shared by J. Malls (@jmallspgh) on Jun 25, 2014 at 10:29am PDT

Location of GAR Home in Swissvale

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Filed Under: Historic Preservation

About Lindsay

Lindsay has been writing about Pittsburgh since 2005. She likes pretzels from the Pretzel Shop on Carson St., used book stores, her rollerblades and she hopes to learn to skateboard someday soon.

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