Brake House Lofts offer industrial look in the Strip District
Saturday, December 14, 2002 at 01:00PMPittsburgh Post-Gazette - December 14, 2002
By Gretchen McKay
Eve Picker had nothing more than a pleasant evening of Shakespeare in mind when she attended the opening night of Quantum Theatre's "The Merchant of Venice" in August 1999. Instead, she got inspiration for her next big project.
The play was being staged at the former Kerotest Manufacturing building in the Strip District, an abandoned factory that Picker, president of no wall productions inc., had always admired. But it wasn't until Picker, who specializes in adaptive reuse of old buildings, spent a few hours inside the grimy four-story brick structure that she realized the building's potential.
The Urban Redevelopment Authority, which had purchased the turn-of-the-century building several years earlier, was hoping to sell it to a high-tech business. Picker had a better idea. Drinking in its oversized windows and beautiful pine support beams and columns, "I thought, 'What a great space for lofts,' " she recalls.
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