Reacquainting Pittsburgh's youngsters with "Uncle John" Brashear will begin in the same North Side factory where the renowned optics expert toiled over precision mirrors and lenses for Gilded Age telescopes.
Historian and musician Lisa A. Miles wants to transform Brashear's vacant Perrysville Avenue factory into a temporary classroom to teach about the scientific achievements of Brashear, who died in 1920, and contemporaries such as astrophysicist Samuel Pierpont Langley.
"It would be a creatively infused environment that would give kids a sense of the history that happened there," Miles said. "The laboratory has such significance, but it has been overlooked."
Brashear, whom children dubbed "Uncle John," developed a mirror-silvering technique in 1880 that made telescopes more powerful. Pittsburgh public high schools in Sheraden and Beechview are named for Langley and Brashear.
Brashear was acting chancellor of Western University of Pennsylvania -- now the University of Pittsburgh -- from 1900 to 1904. The Allegheny Observatory then was being relocated from its original site by Brashear's factory and home near what is now Triangle Tech, to its current spot in Riverview Park.
Miles has secured a $5,000 Buhl Foundation grant and support from the Sarah Heinz House as part of her fundraising effort to help ready the former factory for visitors Nov. 22.
During the three Saturdays before the factory visit, Miles has planned learning field trips to other historical "hot spots" of old Allegheny City, including the lost cotton mill worker neighborhood of "Hopeville," the former Robert McKnight Mansion and traces of the Venango Trail. She expects to lead at least 20 children from Northview Heights and 15 adult mentors on some of the field trips.
Miles said each is a history lesson for children about Allegheny City, which was annexed as Pittsburgh's North Side in 1907.
Buhl Foundation President Fred Thieman said Miles' unique quest is an extension of her Buhl-supported history book "Resurrecting Allegheny City: The Land, Structures & People of Pittsburgh's North Side."
"Her passion and her commitment to the topic and the kids is wonderful," he said. "It just seemed to be a really neat way to blend history and community pride."
Except for a large wooden desk Brashear is thought to have used, few artifacts of his work remain in the 122-year-old factory, Miles said.
But simply being immersed in the place itself could inspire youngsters to actually listen and learn to a history lesson, said John Mattie, education manager at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh
"It's very visceral," said Mattie, who leads architectural tours of the Buhl Planetarium and old Allegheny Post Office. "We're enveloped in the textbook. It's very different to talk to a kid about what a Corinthian column is or what an impediment is, but here you can see it or touch it."
Similarly, Miles hopes to see the factory one day become a museum to showcase the history of astronomical observations of sunspots, the moon, Halley's comet, star distances and other stellar sights captured by the telescopes of Allegheny Observatory, where Brashear served as interim director.
Janet Gunter, a member of the Perry Hilltop Citizens' Council, said if the factory building could be turned into a museum, it could give people a reason to visit the neighborhood, move there and improve its spotty housing stock.
"It is such an important building for Pittsburgh that we really should do all we can to preserve it regardless of its use," she said.
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