The brief, consequential Jewish history of 200 Ross St.

The next time you’re entering the Parkway East from Crosstown Boulevard, glance to your right just as you’re taking the curve of the on-ramp. You can see a nice view of a historic building at 200 Ross. St., currently known as the John P. Robin Civic Building.

ACTION-Housing recently purchased the vacant, 13-story building for $4 million. It’s planning a $55 million renovation that would create 68 new affordable housing units.

When the deal was announced last month, a bell rang in my head. I vaguely recalled that the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh had once occupied the building. It turns out that the building played a short but crucial role in the history of the organization.

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The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s records at the Rauh Jewish Archives contain a comprehensive index of its board of trustees meeting minutes from the late 1940s into the mid-1980s. A quick review showed an intriguing listing for “J&L BLDG.”

The architectural firm MacClure & Spahr designed 200 Ross St. for Jones & Laughlin Steel Company in 1907. With the opening of Gateway Center, J&L announced plans in early 1952 to leave 200 Ross St. for the glimmering new office complex near the Point.

The move sparked a downtown real estate shuffle. The Community Chest of Allegheny County left its longtime home at the old City Hall at Smithfield Street to purchase half of 200 Ross St. It went looking for partners to purchase the other half. The Pittsburgh Housing Authority and the Urban Redevelopment Authority soon joined on as tenants.

As these deals were underway in February 1952, beloved United Jewish Fund worker Emanuel Spector died unexpectedly. His friends in the Jewish community created the Emanuel Spector Memorial Fund with a $250,000 goal for developing a “living memorial that will represent everything fine in our way of life that Mr. Spector stood for.”

Although not mentioned publicly at the time, it appears that the group considered using the funds to build a new headquarters. The Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the United Jewish Fund were occupying a floor of the Sheraton Hotel downtown, and other Jewish communal organizations were spread around Oakland the Hill District.

Edgar J. Kaufmann sat on the Emanuel Spector Memorial Committee and also on the board of the Community Chest. Instead of new headquarters, he recommended that the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies pool $200,000 from its endowment and from the Emanuel Spector Memorial Fund to purchase three floors of the former J&L Building.

The Federation of Jewish Philanthropies ultimately purchased just the 11th floor using its own funds, bringing along the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Council on Jewish Education. Spector was instead commemorated with an award, still given today.

The relationship between the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the Community Chest was long and intricate. Bertha Rauh was a leading advocate for the creation of the Community Chest in the 1920s. The Federation of Jewish Philanthropies joined in 1932, as a local banking crisis was creating challenges for community service agencies.

Over the next 20 years, though, Jewish philanthropy drastically expanded. The unfolding chaos in Europe created new demands, leading to the formation of the local United Jewish Fund in 1936 to address overseas needs. These needs only grew with World War II, the creation of displaced persons camps, and the establishment of the state of Israel.

In those years, the United Jewish Fund was also being asked to address local Jewish communal needs not covered by the Community Chest. These included refugee resettlement, education, recreation, marketing and paying down on capital projects.

This split created odd arrangements. For example, the Irene Kaufmann Settlement and the YM&WHA had similar programs. But the former was a Federation agency supported by the Community Chest, while the latter received support from the United Jewish Fund.

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, the annual Community Chest allocation was falling increasingly short of the needs of Federation of Jewish Philanthropies beneficiaries. The agreement with the Community Chest didn’t allow for supplementary fundraising, which meant Jewish agencies were having to cut services, defer expansions, and run deficits.

One possible solution was to revise the Community Chest agreement. In a proposal from September 1951, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies began renegotiating its Community Chest agreement with the goal of allowing supplementary fundraising.

Another possible solution was merging the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the United Jewish Fund. These conversations had begun locally as early as the mid-1940s but really gained momentum between late 1948 and early 1950, amid growing budget shortfalls. There was concern, though, that a merger might pull funds away from Israel.

Similar conversations were happening all over the country. By the early 1950s, Pittsburgh was one of the few large communities that hadn’t yet merged its Federation and its Fund.

The Federation of Jewish Philanthropies approved a merger in principle in late January 1952 and moved into 200 Ross St. that May. Some trustees felt that sharing an office building with the Community Chest could only help with all these ongoing discussions.

The Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the United Jewish Fund ultimately merged in early 1955 to create the United Jewish Federation. Following the merger, the Community Chest began providing direct payments to seven United Jewish Federation beneficiaries through a newly formed advisory committee. In 1956, the Community Chest joined the United Fund, which later became the United Way. As part of that new arrangement, the Community Chest no longer operated its own annual campaigns.

The United Jewish Federation convened a building committee in October 1956. With the demolition of the lower Hill District, Jewish Family & Children’s Service, the Hebrew Burial Association, the Hebrew Free Loan Association and the House of Shelter left their longtime home at 15 Fernando St. in February 1957. Now they needed a new home, too.

The United Jewish Federation finally sold the 11th floor of 200 Ross St. to the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 1958 and dedicated its new building at 234 McKee Pl. in Oakland in early 1959, bringing to a close a consequential decade in UJF history. PJC

Eric Lidji is the director of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. He can be reached at rjarchives@heinzhistorycenter.org or 412-454-6406.