Standing in front of an old Victorian home not too far from Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus, Alaina Hession surveys the unkempt surroundings. Where to start cleaning up? The master's student at the Heinz College chooses to go to work on the side yard. In the first 10 minutes, she and the other volunteers fill a dumpster with trash. For the next few hours, the plan is to continue pulling weeds and picking up trash, rusty nails, fallen tree limbs, and plenty of other debris from the yard.
Hession's muscles start to ache, but she tries to ignore her discomfort as she chats with her Heinz College classmates, three of whom joined her for the cleanup of the once meticulously kept property that was built in 1894. In all, about 100 volunteers from the community are working on the long-vacant home. There was a time it housed Mary Cardwell Dawson who, in 1941, started the nation's first black opera house, the National Negro Opera Company. She managed a music school out of the house as well. Years later, Pittsburgh Pirates baseball legend Roberto Clemente lived there. There is talk that the city-designated Historic Landmark may one day be a center for the arts in Pittsburgh's Homewood neighborhood, but on this day it's simply a mess.
Hession learned of the preservation plans after meeting Pittsburgh-based Young Preservationists Association President and Carnegie Mellon alumnus Dan Holland (HS'91, HNZ'02). He had represented his organization at the Hamburg Hall Public Service Day. Hession tracked him down afterward to offer to volunteer with his group, and that's when she learned about the upcoming cleanup day. Coming from Brockton, Mass., she says she had no idea there was an historic opera house so close to campus. Of course, the students from western Pennsylvania had no idea, either.
After four hours of work, Hession and some of the others look at what they've accomplished. The lot is cleared, the lawn mowed, the bushes pruned, and the home's front stairs shored up. "We took a house that was in disrepair and returned the lawn and outside to a much more normal state," says Hession. Her aches and pains, she says, were definitely worth it: "Volunteering is a good way to connect with the community and see different parts of Pittsburgh."
-Jonathan Barnes (HS'93)
