Glass Wall Museum was ‘labor of love’
McKamish marketing consultant Fred Perrotta speaks at the opening of the Glass Wall Museum display in the lobby of the Iceoplex at Southpointe. The Glass Wall shows the history of the Southpointe property.
A preview of Southpointe's Glass Wall Museum.
Anyone in the area’s business community recognizes Southpointe as a highly successful business park that serves as the center for the region’s booming Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction industry that’s leading the U.S. energy revolution.
But Fred Perrotta wants to remind people the 825 acres of Southpointe has a history that dates to the late 1700s, when it was the home and farm of a veteran of the American Revolution.
On Wednesday, Perrotta showed off the Glass Wall Museum inside Southpointe’s Iceoplex, an illustrated timeline of the property that originally was the home of Col. George Morgan.
The 18-month project, which Perrotta, of Oakdale, described as “a labor of love” from numerous sponsors, an advertising agency and a graphic design firm, gives a sweeping view of a highly historic property.
The wall, which stretches across exterior glass panels of a room in the southern end of the Iceoplex, depicts the property’s history in illustrations, portraits and photographs beginning with Morgan’s 1796 farm known as “Morganza.” It follows with the property’s division into smaller farms and its 1873 transition into a Pennsylvania reform school, also referred to as Morganza, its later incarnation as Western State School and Hospital and a panoramic photo of the final construction of the Southpointe II business park and accompanying Town Center.
Perrotta, 77, said the culmination of the project is his “last hurrah” in noting Southpointe’s long, pre-commercial and institutional history.
Several years ago, he pitched the idea of a Western Pennsylvania Cultural Center to be based in the park, which died for inability to receive funding. He also headed an effort to save the former Western Center administration building, but was trumped by the timeline for Mylan Inc. to build its new world headquarters on the site.
But on off the new Glass Wall Museum, Perrotta declared success.
“The third time’s a charm,” said Perrotta, an engineer who is semiretired, working as a consultant for McKamish, whose Pittsburgh office provides contracting and project management services for the power and industrial markets.
Perrotta, who declined to provide the cost for the wall, credited a number of people and companies that sponsored the project, including Consol Energy, which recommended its advertising agency, Pittsburgh-based Brunner Works, to complete the design of the wall. The historical information was researched and compiled by Washington County Historical Society Executive Director Clay Kilgore.
The installation of the Glass Wall Museum was completed by imaging and graphics company Printscape.
In addition to Consol, sponsors also included Beaconsfield Financial Services, Bella Sera, Burns & Scalo Real Estate, Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, Iceoplex and the Washington County Historical Society.