The first house you see when you roll up Brighton Heights Boulevard from Route 65 is Ed Gergerich’s imposing Tudor, where he resides with his daughter Anna. So it’s fitting that his house is featured, once again, on this year’s Brighton Heights House Tour, sponsored by the Brighton Heights Citizens Federation. The self-guided tour of nine houses and one garden will be held Saturday, Sept. 7, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $25.
Brighton Heights, the northernmost neighborhood in the city of Pittsburgh, will have eight homes and gardens open to visitors on the self-guided tour. The area has a rich selection of architecture, with buildings from the 1800s through the 1950s. The tour gives a good cross section of what makes the area unique — loads of diversity, both in architecture and inhabitants.
Gergerich’s home, which was built by Dr. Joseph E. Andrews, a prominent Pittsburgh dentist, and his wife, Kathryn, in 1929, was constructed at the same time as a sister home directly next door. The homes share a driveway. Gergerich’s home was featured on the first Brighton Heights House tour in 2006.
Gergerich, who grew up in Lawrenceville and Shaler, and his late wife, Suzan, already had a home in the neighborhood but decided to look at the house on a whim when it went up for sale. They fell in love with it, though at the time, Gergerich relates, all the walls were painted a stark white, camouflaging the intricate wall trim and crown moulding throughout.
Seeing the potential, the couple bought the house and began transforming it into their own. Only the third owner of the property, Gergerich has resided here for more than 41 years.
The structure is effectively a grand home, scaled down in size. It contains all the bells and whistles of some of the larger architecture in the neighborhood but also manages to be a very livable space. Visitors enter into a front hall replete with a circular staircase. To the left is a spacious living room with a grand mantel and a lovely illuminated built-in cabinet. Ornate wall trim is complemented by an eclectic selection of furnishings. Chinese artwork, brought back from a trip the couple made to China, populates the walls.
The dining area features a stunning silk rug hung on the wall, also brought back from their Asian trip, and another built-in cabinet. The color selection for the walls and moulding, long changed from white, were made with the help of Gergerich’s daughter Maura, an architect. Gergerich, a retired traffic engineer who also dabbles in local theater and takes care of the community flower gardens just across the street from the home, is a hands-on owner, doing many of the updates and painting himself.
The kitchen is one area where he deferred to a professional, and again his daughter Maura helped. The update mirrors the tall cabinets originally in the space, but the addition of white tile, set in a herringbone pattern on the walls, refreshes the area without stripping it of its original personality.
When asked what he’d like to say about his well-loved abode, treasured by three families, Gergerich simply says, “It’s a great house.” He motions to a picture that belonged to his grandparents, hung just inside the door. The Polish inscription reads: Boze Blogoslaw Nasz Dom — Bless This House.
The house tour, the 18th annual one, starts and ends in Legion Memorial Park (at Brighton Road and Davis Avenue), where a Molly’s Trolley will be available for tourgoers. From noon to 8 p.m., the Brighton Heights Citizens Federation will be holding a Summer Series event at the park with Allegheny City Brewing, featuring food trucks and other vendors and a Brighton Heights Ale that the brewery made for the occasion.
To get tickets visit https://www.brightonheights.org/news/2024-house-tour/.
Susan Banks was a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who was on strike from October 2022 until she retired at the end of 2023. Email her at klebergardens@gmail.com.