- Up next on "Keystone Stories," Old Spaces, New Places.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Welcome to "Keystone Stories."

Many of the buildings that we use today are serving a very different purpose than originally intended.

Here in Lewistown, that restaurant used to be a theater.

And this insurance office was once a drugstore.

Back in the 1930s, you would come here to purchase shoes.

Today it's where you buy coffee.

Let's take a look at other old spaces that have become new places.

(relaxed music) - There is a quality to taking the architectural distinctiveness of a building, and then somehow through some kind of alchemy, blending it with a new use that is exciting and different and memorable.

- Many buildings have important stories, and we have to figure out their history before we decide which are the ones that need to be preserved, and which are the ones that maybe we can let go.

(relaxed music continues) - The things that keep a community unique are these kinds of spaces.

So to preserve the uniqueness and the special qualities of a community, this is important.

(relaxed music) - We are sitting in Titan Hollow, which is the home to Mad McIntosh Cider and Alloy Kitchen.

We are a full-service restaurant and cidery.

- The facility itself in the early 1900s actually started as an automobile manufacturer, and they transitioned into brass.

And as a brass manufacturer, they were one of the leading manufacturers in the nation.

- The property, which many businesses called home over the years, shut down the bulk of its manufacturing in 2008.

- And when we moved in, it was 2020.

So it's 12 years of nothing.

The lockers were still filled with personal effects because they just closed the door.

- The owners brainstormed what kind of second life could the property have?

- The alternative was ripping it down and scrapping it.

Something I just couldn't believe I ever wanted to see happen.

So I just opposed it.

- I had brought my cider to a tailgate at a Penn State football game, and the tailgate was run by the owner of this building, Joe Leahy.

I was looking at putting a bid in on a vineyard in the Finger Lakes, and he said, "Well, before you do that, I want you to check out my factory."

So that Sunday after the game, I came down here and walked through this space.

Monday, when I headed back to New York, I effectively pulled my bid out of the Finger Lakes, sold my house, and moved down here during a pandemic.

- For many communities hoping to repurpose a building, organizations like Preservation Pennsylvania are an important resource.

- Preservation Pennsylvania is a statewide nonprofit.

We primarily do grassroots advocacy and legislative advocacy work across the state.

We get involved in all kinds of properties, from bridges to cultural landscapes to large farms.

There's a number of things that cause the loss of a building.

Demolition by neglect.

No one owns it, or the people that own it can't take care of it and eventually it just falls down.

It can be encroaching a development where commercial businesses are coming in and taking farmland.

Sometimes it's just the wrong building at the wrong place that doesn't have a viable use.

- Each year, Preservation Pennsylvania identifies different kinds of properties they deem at risk.

A recent focus of theirs was churches.

- Abandoned churches is not a new issue.

It's probably been a good 10 to 15 years where you've been seeing large-scale closures of churches.

Starting with the Catholic church where they announced the closing of a number of parishes in Johnstown all in the same year.

- Cambria City was the original immigrant neighborhood in Johnstown.

When immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came off the boat at Ellis Island, one of the first things that they did was to develop a ethnic parish.

And as a result, as recently as the 2000s, there were 11 ethnic churches in Cambria City alone.

The diocese was really struggling with trying to maintain these old buildings.

And so we started the Steeples Project as a campaign to repurpose these buildings and to turn them into cultural assets for the community.

- In 2011, the Steeples Project acquired three Roman Catholic churches: the Casimir Center, St. Columba, and the Grand Hall.

(gentle music) - The Grand Hall is a combination performing arts venue and also a special events venue.

It was built in 1907 and 1908.

It's highly resonant.

There are hard surfaces all over the place.

There are soaring arches that just splatter sound everywhere.

So there's a lot of things that don't work well in the hall.

But things that do work well in the hall include organ music, choral music, and unamplified instrumental music.

(lively orchestral music) - Historic preservation organizations are not against development.

We are not, despite what many people think, trying to keep everything the way it always was.

We don't need a school to always be a school.

We don't need a church to always be a church.

As long as the architectural importance is still there and the building is being reused and paying taxes or generating income, that's a win for us.

(audience clapping) (relaxed music) - The former St. Columba was a Roman Catholic Irish parish until 2009, and it has been vacant since then.

We are currently in the process of turning it into a performing arts venue with an emphasis on live theater.

This is a historical space as far as the federal government is concerned, which means that we have to be very sensitive to maintaining what they call the character-defining features of this space.

- Reusing a church is challenging because by the time it's for sale, it already has a lot of maintenance issues: large roofs and steeples, you have to get specialized contractors to deal with stained glass.

Plus, it's large open space, so it takes a little creativity.

But I'm continually amazed by how creative developers and owners of buildings are.

- Often, one of the first steps in repurposing a property is dealing with the wear and tear of many years of neglect.

- When I first got here, I'd love to say that it was love at first sight.

It wasn't.

It was dirty, it was filthy.

There was grime and metal shavings and everything was black.

But the bones were here.

The windows, the rivets in the I-beams, the rusty wall.

Rust I often say is my favorite color because it has so many different depths to it.

So the space started speaking.

- A lot of the equipment that was put in place, even the wall that's behind me, is a reuse of equipment that was gonna go to the scrap yard.

- I went into the boiler house and effectively put my sticker on everything that I had an interest in.

(gentle music) We took the pilot controllers which we now call the robot wall.

The guys came down the grange: "You put 'em on upside down."

And I'm like, "Do not change them.

They're funnier that way.

They look like robots."

- The folks at Titan Hollow were not the only ones who started out with a mess on their hands.

- We're here in what they call the bird cage of the Old Stone Jail in Ebensburg.

The jail was built in 1872, and it kind of cemented Ebensburg to be the county seat.

It's a very imposing building.

The impression is to put forth the idea of a fortress and a castle.

It's just really meant to tell people we're in charge here.

- I worked in this old jail for 16 years.

At that time I was a sergeant, a training sergeant.

There were probably 380-some inmates when I first started.

And it was an absolute nightmare trying to figure out where you're gonna house everybody.

It was terrible.

- After 125 years of operations, the jail closed in 1997 due to overcrowding.

- Without heat in the building for many years now, everything is just deteriorating.

The paint's coming off the walls.

I mean, the condition of this place right now is deplorable.

- The most important thing when you're going to take on a preservation fight is to figure out what the win is before you even start.

Is your win stopping the project?

Is your win finding another use for the same building?

Is your win buying the building and doing something else with it?

- In early 2022, a developer bought the jail.

The price?

$1.

- The owner is trying to get the building up to code and then see what happens.

I personally am an artist, and I wouldn't mind having a a studio space in one of the jail cells.

I mean, there's tons of possibilities.

But it needs a lot of work.

- I'd like to see something happen with this prison because there's so much history.

But it's an uphill battle for anybody.

(relaxed music) - The success of preservation happens at the local level.

You have to be an advocate.

- For the Steeples Project, community support is vital.

During the early years, we had some very generous grants from local corporations and also from local individuals.

Now the challenge is to find that support elsewhere.

- Most people don't have the resources, so we talk about where could the money come from?

Is there a reuse that could involve historic tax credits?

If it does become a nonprofit, what does that kind of grant funding look like?

- We actually got a renewal grant for about $2.5 million.

So the price that we bought it for was low, but we ended up having to spend a million dollars to clean it up.

(relaxed music continues) - It's gonna be an increasing challenge for us because our plans are pretty ambitious.

It's a multimillion dollar project.

And so I'm gonna have to get better at this game.

- The game's a marathon.

So I've gotten a little bit more patient now over the years and understand the processes.

But you don't do anything overnight.

- It takes an average of seven years to save a property.

It's a slow build.

And eventually you'll start to see changes happen.

You'll start to see the local officials maybe listening a little more closely when people stand up at the public comment period of a meeting.

And you'll start to see more people wanting to get involved.

- A lot of people poured their heart and soul into this facility.

And I think it's just amazing when you get people in that have a vision and can execute and won't quit.

- The day that brought me to tears was the first day we had live music.

(upbeat music) It was real, and people were dancing and drinking and eating and laughing.

That was the moment.

- To see a space suddenly come to life and see people enjoying themselves, finding value out of being in that space, it's worth the effort.

It's worth the frustration.

It's worth it.

(audience clapping) - Thank you.

- Adaptive reuse is the term given to the repurposing of old buildings.

Our next two stories come from communities who are actively reusing structures that have been around for nearly 100 years.

- Hi, my name is Mark Shaw.

I want to talk about the buildings in Jersey Shore, the way that they've been preserved and repurposed.

What I have found really interesting about Jersey Shore is that the community has found ways to preserve itself.

For instance, the Victoria Movie Theatre is now a church, and what was a church is now our public library.

Also, the original public library is now the Susquehanna Valley Frame Shoppe.

Our original Broad Street School is now the Broad Street Apartment complex, which is a phenomenal place for people to live.

And the high school, the original high school for the town, which then became the middle school where I grew up and I went to middle school, now houses 12 apartments, 18 businesses, is one of our two grocery stores.

Lingle's Market is the bulk of that building, and has a daycare center in the basement which has 120 kids.

I think it says a lot about the original construction, that these things were built to last.

Also, when you build a town alongside a river, you gotta build them solid.

You gotta build things sturdy, because it has to be able to withstand the flooding, the things that come through on occasion.

So it says something not only to the structure of the buildings, but the tenacity of the people that put them up.

Another thing that I love about our community is the stores, the shops, the way that they cater specifically to individuals.

When you go into those stores, they know you by name.

One particular example is the Jiffy Market downtown.

It's actually located on Canal Street, because Jersey Shore was originally built along the canal.

So as a canal town, everything congregated around that.

But what I love about going in there is, again, they know you by name.

They know all of their customers.

They take care of people.

And it just means so much that they also give back to the community.

I was born in Jersey Shore.

And like some of the other families around here, I'm the 11th of 13 children.

It's a farming community, and we grew up working on those farms.

You put your blood, sweat, and tears into the community, and the community gives back.

So it's a wonderful place to grow up, and it's where I'm raising my children today.

- My name is Josh Burnt, and I'm here to talk to you about the Eureka.

This building has more characteristic than anything new you could ever imagine to build.

Everything about it.

It's part of the heartbeat of the town.

It's always been here.

It's always been a cool building.

And I'm just the fortunate one now to be able to get my hands on it and make something cool out of it.

But at one time it was a company store that was from 1876 to 1961, Berwind-White Coal Company owned it.

and they eventually sold it to Salinas, a furniture store.

And they had it till the recent years till I acquired it from them.

It started off by remodeling a building next door, which I did that to kind of have a good time and do some fun things with it.

And then it just kind of bled over onto a whim.

And the next thing you know, we're remodeling it and making it into a venue.

It's all different types of events now.

It could be weddings, birthdays, anniversaries.

We would be having our own parties as well to close in the times that it's not being used, in hopes to keep expanding and make the business better off.

Currently, we are working on our liquor license for the basement where we are going to be remodeling and turning into a winery.

I really enjoy this community.

There's a lot of really good people here.

And everybody's putting their heart into changing our town to make it a great place to live.

I really believe to be a part of a community, the best thing you do is be part of it.

If you don't like something, be proactive: change it.

Move forward, move for the better, and work together as a team.

And that is currently what is happening in our community today.

All of our organizations are coming together with the Household Revitalization Association, and we are looking to really grow our area in a positive fashion.

Even during the time of the pandemic, we were able to come together.

DiamondBack in Philipsburg, the YMCA, and the Eureka all came together, and we had a huge food bank next door that fed 400 families a week.

It was the greatest thing ever.

And it was all we could do to keep up, but people were so thankful for that.

- Repurposing old buildings is not limited to businesses and community centers.

These next two stories feature a house of worship that became a home, and a home that became a public art project.

- So we are at the St. Matt's Church in Baileyville.

The church is quite old.

It was built during the 1860s.

And it was a Presbyterian church for many years, for about 100 years.

(relaxed music) A great bit of our family history is here, and that's why I love it so much.

So our grandparents were married here.

My brother and his wife were married here.

I was married here.

Both my nephews were married here.

So we just have such great history in this place.

- The church came into our possession in 1964.

The congregation had dwindled down to about five or seven participants.

And then eventually, they decided to put it up for auction.

So our grandparents bought it in 1964 for about $4500.

Lo and behold, my parents were going through a divorce in 1968, and my dad needed a place to live.

And his parents agreed to let him buy the church.

- And then the decision was made that we were gonna move in with our dad into this place.

- The door is original.

This is the original door.

These are original doors.

Other than that and the beams, a lot of it has been modified.

Yeah, 100 and some years take their toll.

- About 15 years ago, my brother went and said, "Hey, we gotta sell this place or fix it up.

It's falling apart again."

He said, "Listen, let's keep it in the family and let's make it as good as we can."

- So he with a couple other guys rebuilt this place.

- I'm a builder, a builder-designer without the degrees, without the letters.

- And he built this place to last another 100 years.

I mean, he really did an amazing job.

- The beams above the ceiling line are all original.

The only thing they were were stained.

- How old would they be, Lee, the originals?

- I'm sure some of the timber that was growing would've probably been when the country was founded, in the end of the 1700s.

And they're still straight and true.

They're all solid.

- I don't think he knew it was gonna take years of off and on work.

He just said, "Well, when you get it done, I guess you get it done."

So a good partner to have.

- I like to get things done, move on.

He's much more deliberate and wants it done correctly.

And that's why we work well together.

'Cause we always say, "He's the brake.

I'm the gas."

And you need both of them.

- You want to do some changes, but you don't wanna strip out all the integrity that was in the place originally.

You don't just wreck it all and go in another direction.

- Dad put his mark on this place, and then really you too, which is really cool.

- The problem is he wasn't very patient.

So when he would paint a piece of lumber, he would not wait for it to dry.

He'd have you put it up with fingerprints on it.

So a lot of the old stuff in here as I got to work on it was cool, because I'd come back across things with his fingerprints on it, and he left his marks all over the place.

- My brother really did an amazing job.

And I think that was very cathartic for him.

He and my dad were very close.

It's not just a building.

It's a project that will probably never be completed.

- I think the building and we are inseparable.

I really do.

I think we're pretty much ingrained into the dowels and the mortise and tenons of the building at this point.

I think we're part of it.

And what'll happen down the road, I have no idea here.

I just hope someone cares about it.

- This old building is not done.

And I think there aren't many places like this anymore.

And that's our story to tell.

I think there's a lot more stories in this building.

- Hi, I'm Benjamin Phil.

I'm gonna tell you about the Crooked House project.

The Crooked House project is a sculpture.

It's a sculpture of a house.

I bought the place in 2002.

This was an early settlement house.

It was really cute.

It had a lot of history to it.

It was intriguing to me.

And then also it was dirt cheap.

I picked it up at an auction.

I had originally purchased it to restore it.

But after about one summer working on it, I realized it could not be restored and I stopped that process.

I was in graduate school for architectural studies, and I was also interested in the fine arts.

And I worked through that.

And then I decided, well, why don't I take on this house as a art project.

So there was this very convoluted path back to that.

And it was just a very simple, formal interpretation of the original house.

I'm taking a mold of the original front of the house.

I cut the entire front off of the house with a system, a scaffolding system so that I could move it offsite, and then spray a molding material on top of it.

And then with that mold, I'll reverse that and then fill that up with concrete.

So I'll have this panel that measures 16 feet by 23 feet.

That's just the impression of the original house.

So the glass isn't clear, but rather it's smooth concrete.

The wood is not wood anymore, it's concrete.

But you see the pattern of that wood.

And the material that I'm using for the molds picks up every hairline detail.

And there's four panels.

Each side returned five feet.

And then the roof, there's a panel, just a portion of the original roof that's been molded.

And it's 15 tons of concrete.

The fireplace, that was something that was discovered in the restoration of it.

It was hidden behind layers and layers.

So it was in the corner of the room.

The front of it, it's around nine feet wide.

And once I started digging it out, you just get fascinated by it.

It's an archeological find.

I ended up thinking about that as part of the sculpture.

And then there's also the park that surrounds it, Homecoming Park.

And the fireplace is a hearth.

At the time, we would sit around the fireplace and stay warm, have conversations.

But I really saw it as an anchor to the project.

So that was restored.

And that will be used outside.

When the project's complete, I want it to be available for the public.

It's a community project and it's public art.

This is a project about not just the house, but the home and the people that lived in this home and everybody's home.

But it was more about just the idea of a home.

Why just memorialize Benjamin Franklin's home or somebody that's very famous, but rather just the home.

It's an intimate space.

It's a subject that's common to everybody.

It's a public artwork.

It's a community project.

It's right in the community.

I see fireside conversations, talking about places that we've experienced, or why we save things in our attic.

That was a conversation that came up the other day.

Art is important in our everyday life.

It shouldn't be just in the gallery space, but out there where we pass by it every day.

- Thanks for joining us on "Keystone Stories."

(relaxed music) (relaxed music continues) (relaxed music continues) (relaxed music continues)