The Granite Building at 313 Sixth Ave, which has been vacant since at least 2017, was damaged by a water pipe that burst in the building on Saturday, Jan. 25.
Leaking water seeped out of street-level windows, as well as out of a vent near the fourth-floor story and down a bay window from the third-floor story onto the sidewalk, causing the sidewalk around the Sixth Avenue entrance to be completely iced over.
The Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire was called to the building around 1:18 p.m. for a water condition check at the building. At that time, noises that sounded like water gushing inside the building could be heard on the Sixth Avenue side. While it is unclear when a pipe burst in the building, a loud alarm could be heard going off inside when water was gushing through the windows. It is also unclear if the alarm was either a burglar alarm or a fire alarm.
Around 1:22 p.m., water was shut off to the building but was still leaking out over an hour later. Exact details on the damage are unknown, but pooled water could be seen in the lobby of the building and the wooden doors to the elevators in the lobby were warped.
The Granite Building is owned by “GRANITE BUILDING ACQUISITION LLC.” The group bought the building for roughly $1.8 million on May 7, 2021, according to the Allegheny County Real Estate portal. Very little information is available about the current owners other than their address listed on the Allegheny County Real Estate portal – 824 Liberty Ave . The Granite Building is assessed as mixed use.
The Liberty Avenue address only contains apartment units and no offices. Attempts to reach a person associated with the LLC at the location given were unsuccessful.
Originally known as the German National Bank, the Granite Building was constructed in 1889 and went under several renovations inside from the 1930s until the 1990s. The upper floors were abandoned, and the last recent use of the building was as a Sally Beauty Supply store on the street level. That store closed in 2017.
A historical landmark in the “Golden Triangle” right next to the Duquesne Club, the Granite Building has been in a back-and-forth motion between revitalization and abandonment. Before being sold in 2021, the building was owned by Holly Brubach, a writer and philanthropist who was once a New York Times style editor.
Brubach bought the Granite Building in 2005 and had plans to turn it into apartments during an early residential boom in Downtown at the time. However, the Great Recession in 2007-2008 put a pause on those plans.
Then, Brubach unsuccessfully tried to secure bank funding to turn the building into a boutique hotel in 2014. Despite a $2.5 million grant for the building by the Peduto administration as reported in NextPittsburgh in 2014, it wasn’t enough to convince banks to fund the $38 million project. If funded, it would’ve opened in 2016.
In a 2019 interview with the Pittsburgh Business Times when she decided to put the building up for sale, Burbach said she was regretful that neither project happened because of the financial circumstances.
While it is unclear how bad the water damage was, it is possible that the building may take more to restore due to the amount of water present.
