Artist turns derelict building into golden house

Photo: Dee Briggs Studio

"This house is not special, nor were the people who lived here, Dee Briggs tells CityLab. "They were no more special than you or me. This just happened to be the history of the house next door to where I live."

The artist, who moved back to her home town of Wilkinsburg after living in New York for several years, noticed the empty house next door to hers was much older and, after originally buying it to create a green space in the town, decided to do something different.

"There are houses in the same condition all over this neighborhood," Briggs says, "and other neighborhoods across the region—all with personal histories.

"The inside was full of discarded items, which set my mind to thinking about the lives of the people who had lived there."

To communicate that past to the wider world - after teaming up with an architectural historian - she painted the entire property gold and launched a website: The House of Gold project.

"Hi," reads the site. "I'm the house on the corner of Park and Swissvale Avenues in Wilkinsburg—the one by the bus stop. Most houses can't talk but thanks to people who care about me I have a voice. In 1875, Caroline Richmond owned this land. She and her husband David, who was an ice man, built me and their lives on this lot…"

Alongside the voice given to the derelict structure, Briggs has mounted a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a "gentle demolotion" of the property, which would take the building apart piece by piece, slowly, trying to reuse as much material as possible to build a coffee shop on the site.

"Yesterday I caught three teenage girls from the neighborhood taking their picture in front of it," she adds. "I take that as a good sign."