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The Troy Hill Art Houses are among Pittsburgh’s greatest hidden treasures and, according to founder Evan Mirapaul, also one of its most misunderstood.
Each of the three single-family homes is a house-sized work of art – a multi-story, walk-in installation that delights the eye and inspires the imagination. The first home, “La Hütte Royal” by German artist Thorsten Brinkmann, opened in 2013. It was followed by “Kunzhaus” by Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski and “Darkhouse Lighthouse” by Pittsburgh-based team Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis.
Despite limited weekend hours, which are by appointment only, the three houses have attracted several thousand visitors over the years, Mirapaul said. (He doesn’t keep an exact count.)
Although admission remains free, Mirapaul is careful not to over-promote this unique attraction because while many visitors intuitively understand the concept, others arrive at Troy Hill’s doorstep with unrealistic expectations.
Some people think they are visiting a haunted house, for example. Or they are taking a tour of a house organized by a community group to promote their neighborhood. Such misunderstandings can lead to friction with the volunteer museum guides, he says.
The idea for these art houses came to art collector Mirapaul after a visit in 2006 to Naoshima, Japan’s famous “art island”, where a large corporation has turned its art collection into a tourist attraction, including art houses by artists such as James Turrell and Tatsuo Miyajima.
“I just liked the idea of an artist working with an entire structure,” says Mirapaul, who was living in Manhattan at the time. He began acquiring the buildings after returning to Pittsburgh and settling in Troy Hill.
The idea of an art house was somewhat familiar in Pittsburgh, where Mattress Factory has long operated an annex on Sampsonia Way that has featured a series of installations throughout the house. The Troy Hill Art Houses are unique in that they are permanent works of art woven into the fabric of a neighborhood. And since Troy Hill is off-the-beaten-path for most Pittsburghers, its location on the hill gives visitors an even greater sense of discovery.
Take “Kunzhaus,” for example, which Kusmirowski conceived in part as a tribute to the Kunz family, who bought the house in 1896 and lived there for six decades. The connection is loose, though, as Kusmirowski uses a Smithsonian museum’s worth of artifacts to create spaces inspired by everything from the Cold War and 1960s visions of the future to a dead dog, a house fire, and even Pittsburgh’s Center for PostNatural History. It’s kind of amazing and, it has to be said, at times even reminiscent of a haunted house (though it’s completely uninhabited).
“Darkhouse Lighthouse” is similarly memorable, though mostly in a quieter way. Clayton and Lewis built a full-scale, fully functioning lighthouse in the building at 1913 Tours St. That makes for some stunning sights inside, but climbing to the top floor might ultimately put you in a meditative mood. (And it will inevitably remind some visitors of Robert Eggers’ hallucinatory film “The Lighthouse,” only without the sea monsters.)
I am deliberately holding back on details about the arthouse cinemas, because anticipation and surprise are crucial to cinema enjoyment. I am already looking forward to my first visit to “La Hütte Royal”. But all arthouse fans can look forward to November, the planned opening date of the fourth cinema, Mark Dion’s “Mrs. Christopher’s House”.
Further information about the art houses can be found here.
