715 East Street is a three-story building along a major road in the North Side of Pittsburgh. It was originally three separate rowhomes with first floor commercial spaces. Over the years, the properties became intertwined, and additions distorted the building’s functionality and life safety. At the time of purchase, the property was sitting vacant, and the upper story apartments exited through a convoluted network of balconies, catwalks and stairs.
The project goals were to have a record store and coffee shop + bar on the first floor while maintaining the apartments above. This project may have been our most complicated code compliance ever, requiring trips to the building code board of appeals, breaking the project into phases, and reworking the building egress. The finished project featured light filled apartments with an interior exit stair, a record shop with custom record bins and sales counter, and beautiful bars and finishes for the coffee and bar sections.