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WHEREAS, Chatham Village, a cooperative residential community in the Mt. Washington Section of the City of Pittsburgh, is celebrating their 75th Anniversary with various events held throughout 2007; and
WHEREAS, Chatham Village lies within the "Penn's Woods" tract of land granted to William Penn by King Charles II of England in 1681; the land and much of the surrounding area was later purchased by Major Abraham Kirkpatrick, a Revolutionary War officer and Pittsburgh alderman, from the Penn heirs; and
WHEREAS, Major Kirkpatrick's granddaughter, Maria Louisa Bigham, eventually was bequeathed a section of the hilltop property including the Village acreage, where she and her husband Thomas crowned the wooded rise with a spacious home in 1843-44; and
WHEREAS, the mansion and surrounding property, now known as Chatham Village, were retained by the Bigham family until 1931, when Pittsburgh's Buhl Foundation purchased the holdings as an experiment to provide high-quality housing in a garden setting for middle-income families and provide a reasonable return to the Foundation; and
WHEREAS, Chatham Village was originally the inspiration of Dr. Charles F. Lewis, the first director of the Buhl Foundation, and consists of 216 residences; the first 129 units were begun in 1932 and an additional 68 units opened in 1936 with the final stage being a three-story apartment building with 19 apartments which opened in 1956; and
WHEREAS, in 1960, the Buhl Foundation sold the village to the residents who had formed a cooperative; and
WHEREAS, on April 7, 2005 Chatham Village was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior National Parks Service as a nationally significant historic place possessing exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States; and
WHEREAS, on Saturday, June 16th there will be a "Homecoming Day" Celebration, with former residents from as far away as Mi...
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