In collaboration with the city agency property owners, Preservation Pittsburg listed the building on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021 and as a City of Pittsburgh designated historic structure in 2020.
HISTORY
Constructed in 1907, the Jones & Laughlin Building was the headquarters of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company, one of the largest steel producers in the United States. Founded in 1853 as an iron manufacturer on the South Side, the company transitioned into steel production and built blast furnaces and vast mills on both sides of the Monongahela River and in Aliquippa.
Much of the block between Ross Street, Second and Third avenues, and the Pennsylvania Railroad—whose tracks ran along Try Street at the rear of the block—had been owned by Jones & Laughlin since ca. 1880. Taking advantage of the railroad, the company erected a two-story, neoclassical, iron-clad office building and warehouse on what is now the parking lot behind 200 Ross Street by 1882. The company also held title to the northwest quadrant of the lot, which contained a 40’ wide brick building with a central light well. On the southwest quadrant of the block stood several smaller brick buildings owned by various others.
By about 1900, the company had demolished the northwest building and acquired the southwest buildings except for a three-story double house facing Second Avenue owned by members of the Robinson family. These hold-outs may have helped determine the height and footprint of the new Jones & Laughlin Building, which would not have been able to extend deeper into the block due to the location of the Robinsons’ houses. The previous Jones & Laughlin building underwent demolition after the new one opened; it appears together with the new building in a ca. 1908 photograph but not depicted on the Hopkins historic property map of 1910. By the 1920s, Jones & Laughlin had finally cleared the Robinson houses, and three narrow sheds—one frame and two iron-clad—stood on the warehouse site behind the Jones & Laughlin office building.
Jones & Laughlin designed the steel structure of its office building at its Keystone Works structural plant, which moved from the South Side to Second Avenue in the Hazelwood portion of the facility in 1908. The company engaged architects MacClure and Spahr to design the building’s exterior skin and interior spaces. This firm, founded by Boston architects Colbert A. MacClure and Albert H. Spahr, came to Pittsburgh around the turn of the 20th century and designed many prominent commercial and residential buildings for wealthy Pittsburgh clients. The firm was active between 1901–1922. The builder of the Jones & Laughlin Building was the A. & S. Wilson Construction Company. The A. & S. Wilson Construction Company completed the original eight-story building at 200 Ross Street by 1908.
In the first decades of the 20th century, the Jones & Laughlin Company underwent a tremendous expansion of its steel mills and production. Their office building reflected the company’s prosperity and expansion as well. The company commissioned the additional of five stories to the Jones & Laughlin Building in 1916. This addition—also designed by MacClure and Spahr with structural steel plans by the J&L Keystone Works—was constructed in 1917. The addition included the luxuriously- appointed paneled boardroom on the 13th floor, in which Jones & Laughlin made decisions about the future of the company.
Jones & Laughlin management relocated from 200 Ross Street to more modern accommodations at Gateway Center in 1952. In the meantime, the sector of downtown between Grant and Ross streets south of Fifth Avenue had become the government center of the Pittsburgh region. The trend began with the construction of the massive and highly-visible Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail, completed in 1886. The Allegheny County Morgue joined this complex in 1902 on the current site of the Allegheny County Building. The City-County Building reached completion in 1917, and in 1929, the county moved the morgue to its present location to accommodate the construction of the County Building, completed in 1931. Thus, the presence of government offices in the blocks near the Jones & Laughlin Building was well-established by the time the company vacated the building in 1952. The city government had outgrown the City-County Building on Grant Street, and city officials saw the opportunity to purchase a ready-built office building nearby rather than acquire land and build a new one.
The City of Pittsburgh and a pair of quasi-governmental city agencies—the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh (URA) and the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh (HACP)—purchased the building from the Jones & Laughlin Corporation in 1952. They renamed it the John P. Robin Civic Building after the first executive director of the URA, who led the agency’s efforts to implement Renaissance I in the 1940s and 50s. The URA and HACP occupied the upper floors of the building and shared the lower floors with city personnel and nonprofit agencies working for the betterment of the city’s future. For some years, the building’s other major tenants have been the Department of City Planning and Bureau of Building Inspection (now Department of Permits, Licenses, and Inspections). Past nonprofit tenants have included the United Way of Allegheny County (formerly Community Chest of Allegheny County) and the Jewish Philanthropies of Pittsburgh.
QUICK FACTS
200 Ross Street was established as the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company in 1907.
Most significant interior spaces—the first-floor lobby and 13th-floor boardroom (the Wherrett Room)—remain intact.
MacClure & Spahr architectural firm was active from 1901-1922.
First architectural commission was the 15-story Keystone National Bank on Fourth Avenue between Wood and Smithfield Streets (now part of the National Register-listed Fourth Avenue Historic District).
Keystone National Bank Building and the Diamond Bank Building (1903) at Fifth and Liberty Avenues, were early Classical Revival skyscrapers in downtown Pittsburgh.
Jones & Laughlin Building is a high-quality, high-integrity example of the Jacobean Revival Style of architecture applied to a major commercial building.
A subtype of the Tudor Revival, the Jacobean Revival style in the United States recalled English residential architecture of the early Renaissance.
Sector of downtown between Grant and Ross Streets south of Fifth Avenue became the government center of the Pittsburgh region.
BUILDING PHOTOS
Photo credits include Angelique Bamberg of Clio Consulting, Historic Pittsburgh, and Wollman and Inman, Portraits in Steel.
LANDMARKS LECTURE: People & Places
On February 17, 2022 as part of our Landmark Lectures: People & Place series, we presented a virtual talk on the former Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building and steel heritage. Our featured speakers were architectural historian Angelique Bamberg and Ronald Baraff, Director of Historic Resources and Facilities, at Rivers of Steel Heritage Corporation.
GRANT SuPPORT
The nominations and lecture were supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. To read the nomination for local historic designation, click here.