Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall patrons can own pieces of its history again this year. This time it’s selling wooden balcony seats that have been removed for more comfortable replacements that will be installed this summer.
This Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. the seats will be available for purchase in the Music Hall parking lot in Munhall. The cost – two for $50, cash only. And it’s cash and carry with no delivery available, according to a “fire sale” flyer.
And if you’re interested, don’t delay: Last year’s sale of about 400 of those wooden seats ended at 2:30 p.m. on the first day. Patrons and concertgoers traveled from Cranberry, Washington, Pennsylvania, and beyond to buy them.
After the venue’s final concert until September – the Allman Betts Band – wowed the crowd last Friday, work started this week to remove the seats and prepare for the sale. The venue has to go dark while the seat installation and other work take place.
Executive Director Carol Shrieve said six high school students, including her son Cullen, pitched in and helped contractors remove the seats in the extremely hot weather. Mostly football players, they came from Point Breeze, McKeesport and the Steel Valley area to haul them from the balcony and down into the parking lot. They also took broken seats to the Dumpster, getting it all done in two days. Then they helped prepare the area for the contractors to start their work, pulling up nails and bringing in wood supplies.
The Music Hall’s Facebook page fans posted some memories of attending concerts there, with a number asking that some be saved as a historical remembrance and others recalling how hard those wooden seats could be on their rear ends. The new ones have cushions on the seats, with the rest still made of wood with black metal ornamentation reminiscent of the originals.
Joani Perenyi Kury posted, “This makes me sad. As it was one of the last with the original seating. The hat hangers underneath. My grandmother used to perform on that stage back in the 1920s, and it gave me a special feeling, knowing that people who sat in those seats watched my grandmother perform.”
“My butt thanks you,” Willian Harbadin wrote. Andi Luketic Cartwright added, “I’m 5’8” and my husband is 6’1,” and we had to sit sideways. So glad they changed them.”
The venue has 1,045 total seats. The balcony had 455 seats originally, and with the new seats it will have 433 plus two ADA plus companion seating. It will lose only 12 affixed seats.
The work is part of the Carnegie of Homestead Library’s multiyear capital campaign, and the library fully funded it. This phase included $275,000 for the seats, plus more for some fire suppression work and some new balcony lighting. Before, Shrieve said, the balcony only had reflective tape on the stairs. “It will be safer,” Shrieve said. Three state grants covered the needed sprinkler system.
Money raised in the sale will help defray costs, as will a drive for patrons and donors to sponsor seats. The balcony seats can be sponsored for $250, and Shrieve said it can be paid in installments if necessary. The $1,000 and $750 sponsorship levels have been sold out; a few $500 seats remain. Each sponsored seat will have an inscription of the donor’s choice on a name plate placed on the arm of one or more of the new seats for the life of the chair, according to the website.
And those balcony seats may have been hard on rear ends, but Shrieve said they have been popular. “A lot of people already had requested seats in the balcony to sponsor,” she said.
The Music Hall concert revenue accounts for about 47% of the library’s budget. In the 2024-25 season, Drusky Entertainment booked 80 concerts in it. When Shrieve started as executive director, “a good year was 32 concerts.”
The Music Hall is in demand because it’s the fourth largest venue in the region, and its size and the fact that Drusky brings concerts and performances by artists who appeal to all age groups. The average audience for most of the offerings fills between 700 and 800 seats, Shrieve said, meaning the venue is always close to being sold out.
The new seats will arrive in the second or third week in July, the executive director said. Thankfully, they have been manufactured in the U.S., so no issues arose over the changing tariffs levied on goods from overseas by the Trump administration. The carpeting that had been selected would have been subject to increased tariffs, but Shrieve said finding a close alternative already in the U.S. avoided that.
When the library unveiled its capital campaign in 2017, all the phases totaled $14.7 million. Shrieve, who had served on its board before becoming executive director, said it is at about $15 million, just about on target.
Like any other long-term project, plans had to shift and items had to be removed. Right now the library is busier than ever, Shrieve said, with residents enjoying last year’s completed renovations of the “stacks” area, installation of sensory-friendly meeting spaces and an archive room, air conditioning, new carpeting, upgraded restrooms, and exterior waterproofing and stair repairs.
The library’s meeting rooms on the first floor had an overhaul, and that is important because they are popular, too, the executive director said. It has the largest gathering spaces available to the community that are not tied to a bar, restaurant, church or hotel. Some groups by their mission can’t meet in those, and costs can be prohibitive.
Next year an old boiler underneath the Music Hall space will be removed and make way for a dual-purpose meeting space. Shrieve said the next phase of work also includes a more accessible green room for performers. That work will begin in January with a completion date of December, although she thinks it might be sooner.
Next on the wish and fundraising list is to upgrade the stage lighting and add an elevator to that green room, which Shrieve estimates will cost $3 million. The cost may seem high, but the savings with more energy efficient and modern lightning is an important consideration.
Another important item on that list is a locker room and athletic club renovation. “They need a lot of love,” she said, as well as modernization. They like the rest of the building components date back to the 1900s.
The Music Hall generates revenues mainly from the fees associated with the events, as performers earn 100% of the ticket sales, Shrieve said. This year it had to raise some of its fees to keep up with expenses, the first time that happened in six years.
She is grateful for the revenue, as all proceeds benefit the programming the library offers. “Other libraries can’t do that,” Shrieve said. “It helps take our programming to another level.”
The planning, fundraising and management of all this can be taxing, but Shrieve said, “It’s worth it. It’s great.” She hears from Eighth Avenue restaurant and business owners, as well as some from adjacent communities like Braddock, how their business increases when concerts are scheduled.
Right now the first two concerts set to welcome in those new balcony seats is Tower of Power on Sept. 12 and Molly Tuttle on Sept. 13. But watch for a possible surprise concert, a returning favorite, who may be performing the first full week in September.
Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she's currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.