An office building on Greensburg’s Main Street that originally was Westmoreland County’s courthouse has regained some of its early 20th century appeal.
Owner Ryan Will renovated interior common areas of the four-story Coulter Building at 231 S. Main St.
“What we were looking to do was bring it back to the aesthetics and feel of when it was originally built,” said Will, a Bedford County native who is based in Colorado with his company, Keystone Real Estate. “It’s a beautiful old building, but it needed a bit of work in some areas.”
In addition to updating bathrooms and mechanical systems, Will stripped away carpeting in the first-floor lobby to reveal marble flooring dating to the Coulter Building’s 1901 construction. He took out drop ceilings, restoring the original height of hallways, and removed dark faux wood paneling from corridor walls, uncovering hidden architectural gems.
“We found these beautiful glass and wood interior windows that allowed light to pass through into the tenant spaces,” he said. “That was a pleasant surprise.”
Working with Greensburg architect Lee Calisti and contractor Vince Fontana Jr., Will adopted a two-tone color scheme for the hallways along with new suspended lighting. A combination of darker blue paint on the ceiling and upper portions of the walls and a cream-colored hue on the lower half of the walls is meant to draw the eye away from infrastructure that is now exposed on the ceiling, Calisti said.
Will has “brought a lot of the building back to its original splendor,” said attorney William J. Wiker, a longtime tenant who moved his office from the second to the fourth floor because of the renovation. “He’s kept a lot of the original architectural elements in the building and brightened it up substantially.”
As noted in Robert B. Van Atta’s “A Bicentennial History of the City of Greensburg,” the building originally was planned to house apartments. Instead, it was repositioned as the temporary home of county functions until construction of today’s Westmoreland courthouse was completed two blocks to the north.
Crews worked around the clock to have the Coulter Building ready in 49 days, Van Atta noted, after which it served as the courthouse until 1908. The building then began its ongoing function of housing offices on the upper stories and retail businesses on the first floor.
About half of the building’s 22,000 square feet is leased, and tenants include professional offices on the third and fourth floors and the women’s clothing shop Personalized Colors and Clothing on the first floor, Will said.
Will purchased the building in 2019. He said he invested several hundred thousand dollars in the initial renovation, with construction completed this spring.
“Because of the pandemic, it took a little bit longer,” he said.
He’s expecting to revamp the office space on the vacant second floor after he’s lined up a tenant.
“We have had some really good interest over the last couple of months,” he said. “We were in such a wait-and-see approach with covid. I feel we’ve kind of moved beyond that. People are interested in expanding their offices.”
Eventually, he would like to work on the building’s facade.
“Anything we would do, I would want it to be authentic to the historic nature of the building,” he said.
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A $10,000 G-Fund grant from the Greensburg Community Development Corp. helped defray a portion of the renovation costs.
Greensburg’s G-Fund grants are drawn from money generated through a local tax-break program. Developers who make substantial improvements to dilapidated commercial or industrial properties in Greensburg get a 10-year property tax break. They get a 25% tax break, with 10% of what they pay going to the city and 65% into the G-Fund.
To receive a grant, a project must “result in significant community and economic development impacts,” application guidelines say. The Coulter Building project qualified in part because of its contribution to historic preservation.
Other qualifying factors include job creation or retention, an increase in property values, tax generation, leverage of private investment and use of environmentally responsible, “green,” building elements.
“The businesses love it because they’re getting the tax abatement or a grant for a large development project,” said John Stafford, acting executive director of the development corporation. “For the city, it will improve the tax base over the long haul. It’s a win-win for everyone.”
Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jeff by email at [email protected] or via Twitter .