Apr 1, 2018 5 min read

Kathy Grant was a half-dozen steps inside 100 Ridge Ave., future home of a personal pride and joy.

“Little rooms,” she said, sighing briefly. “Unfortunately, this was once a medical facility.”

A colleague, Tom Cooper, explained that the building once served Veterans Administration patients, at a time when waiting rooms and offices were necessities there. But he agreed that spaces had to be opened up.

“We’ll knock down a lot of walls … and do remediation around the building to fix drainage,” he said.

As volunteers at the Duncan & Miller Glass Museum, they are accustomed to cramped conditions at 525 Jefferson Ave. in Washington, where decorative glassware pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries are displayed. So they are eagerly anticipating the crosstown move, which will provide five times as much operating space – and the ability to properly publicize the city’s profound history of glassmaking.

National Duncan Glass Society, a nonprofit based in Washington, oversees the museum and made its move from a 1,200-square-foot venue to one with 6,000 possible. The society purchased the one-story Ridge Avenue structure – previously occupied by Valley National Security – from G4 Holdings Inc. for $440,000. That money, Grant said, came from an anonymous donor, and is, she added, “the biggest donation we’ve ever had.”

She, Cooper, John Day and Cooper’s wife, Sherry, are society members who agreed to be interviewed at the Ridge site. They are leading the renovation, which they hope to complete by the end of the year.

“It will be handicapped-accessible, and we’ll have bus tours,” said Sherry Cooper of East Washington, a director of the museum. “The house on Jefferson is not handicapped-accessible and has minimal parking.”

“We have all of this history of glass, and we hope to capture it here,” said Day, current president of the national society. The Amwell resident detailed some of that history.

“Glass was once so important to the U.S. economy, perhaps more important than steel,” he said. “The first (labor) union was for glass. The first industry with competitive jobs was glass.

“At one point, more than 50 percent of the world’s glass came from the Pittsburgh area and Bellaire (Ohio) combined.”

Washington, of course, was once a focal point of this industry, beginning with Hazel-Atlas in 1870. Glass companies predominated in the city, to the extent that, according for Tom Cooper, every family in Washington had a relative employed in that business.

The current museum is the converted home of a former glassworker.

Duncan & Miller was but one of those companies. It began in the late 19th century, during – does this seem familiar? – a local gas boom.

George Duncan’s Sons & Co. was the first iteration of that firm, which incorporated in 1900 and was renamed Duncan & Miller Glass Co. D&M was a large complex, which operated until 1955 on a Jefferson Avenue site now occupied by Alpine Club Lanes.

The museum will be heading to its third home, all in the city. It got off to a modest start in 1975, in two rooms in the Lemoyne House, before moving to its current location in 1995.

Society members are proud of their glassware collection, but emphasize that their museum should be more than that.

“Right now, we have a static display of glass,” Tom Cooper said, “but that doesn’t tell the story.”

Telling that story is paramount, said Grant, of East Washington.

“Glass was the first major industry in this region,” said Grant, a society board member and editor of its quarterly journal. “To do the job correctly, we will have to stress the important role it played here and the history of glass overall.

“We are telling it through the lens of this one company, but we are telling the story of an industry.”

New name

Dupree’s Greenhouse & Florist on Route 88 in Union Township will undergo a subtle and clever name change April 8. It will become Dupree’s Root 88 Garden and Florist.

Michalle and Rich Cox took over ownership in July from Michalle’s father, the late Frank Cox. Michalle said that in the spring of 1968, when her dad was a real estate agent, he had the listing for a location that hadn’t been operational for a long time. She said her mother, Sandy, persuaded Frank to start this business. A half-century later …

Train gain

Gov. Tom Wolf last week announced the approval of $32 million for rail freight improvement projects across the state. One is partly in Washington County.

Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway Co. got $2.3 million to rehabilitate 18 railroad bridges on its Pittsburgh and Rook subdivisions. The rehab includes structural and deck work.