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The Troy Hill Art Houses are among Pittsburgh’s biggest hidden gems and — according to founder Evan Mirapaul — also among its most misunderstood.
Each of the three single-family structures is a house-sized artwork — a multi-story walk-through installation to delight the eye and fire the imagination. The first house, German artist Thorsten Brinkmann’s “La Hütte Royal,” opened in 2013. It was followed by Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski’s “Kunzhaus” and Pittsburgh-based team Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis’ “Darkhouse Lighthouse.”
Together, despite limited, weekend-only by-appointment hours, the three houses have drawn several thousand visitors over the years, Mirapaul said. (He doesn’t keep close count.)
But while admission remains free, Mirapaul says he’s wary of overpromoting this unique attraction. That’s because while many visitors grasp the concept intuitively, others arrive at these Troy Hill doorsteps with unrealistic expectations.
For instance, some think they’re visiting a haunted house. Or that they’re attending a house tour such as community groups stage to promote their neighborhoods. Such misapprehensions can cause friction with the volunteer docents, he says.
Mirapaul, an art collector, conceived of the art houses after a 2006 visit to Naoshima, Japan’s famed “art island,” where a large corporation has made its art collection into a tourist attraction, including art houses by the likes of James Turrell and Tatsuo Miyajima.
“I just loved the idea that it was an artist working with an entire structure,” says Mirapaul. At the time, he lived in Manhattan. He began acquiring the buildings after moving back to Pittsburgh and settling in Troy Hill.
The art house idea was in some ways familiar in Pittsburgh, where Mattress Factory has long operated a Sampsonia Way annex that has hosted a series of whole-house installations. The Troy Hill Art Houses are unique in that they’re permanent artworks woven into the fabric of a neighborhood. And because Troy Hill sits out of the way for most Pittsburghers, the hilltop setting gives visitors that much more a feeling of discovery.
Take “Kunzhaus,” which Kusmirowski conceived, in part, as an homage to the Kunz family, which bought the place in 1896 and lived there for six decades. The association, granted, is loose, as Kusmirowski deploys a Smithsonian’s worth of found objects to create rooms 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 astounding and, it must be said, even redolent of a haunted house at times (though completely unoccupied).
“Darkhouse Lighthouse” is similarly memorable, though largely in a quieter way. Clayton and Lewis built a full-size, working lighthouse within the building at 1913 Tours St. That makes for some stunning sights indoors, but the ascent to the top floor might ultimately leave you in a meditative mood. (And it will inevitably recall to some visitors Robert Eggers’ hallucinatory film “The Lighthouse,” sans sea monsters.)
I’m deliberately scanting on details about the art houses because anticipation and surprise are crucial to enjoying them. I’m also looking forward to my first time seeing “La Hütte Royal.” But all art house fans can look forward to November, the planned opening date for the fourth house, Mark Dion’s “Mrs. Christopher’s House.”
