University Times

Pitt’s senior administration grabs most of the headlines. The faculty here get noticed when they bring in research dollars, win teaching awards or publish in their fields.

But behind the scenes, University staff, some 7,000 strong across five campuses, often toil in jobs ranging from the mundane to the esoteric.

This is one in an occasional series profiling University staff, providing a glimpse of some of the less recognized employees whose primary business is making Pitt work.

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Carpenters Harry Zaremba and Rusty Kucsmas look over some library chairs awaiting repair in Pitt's Melwood Avenue cabinet shop.

From the refinished pews in Pitt’s stately Heinz Chapel to the wood-framed banks of TV screens in the William Pitt Union’s busy elevator lobby, Pitt’s carpenters are quietly leaving their mark across the University with craftsmanship that often is destined to outlive the makers themselves. Integrated into every corner of the campus, their work is seen by many, yet often goes unrecognized as the handiwork of Pitt employees.

“People think we’re just framing [walls],” said carpenter Harry Zaremba, who works in the cabinet shop. However, the carpenters’ work goes far beyond simple hammering and nailing. Much of the carpenters’ time is spent on repair and safety-related projects, but they also undertake the fabrication and installation of a wide range of decorative and functional items, working not only in wood, but also in metal, laminate and other materials.

Although the Pitt police are in charge of key control for University buildings, it’s the carpenters who make the keys and keep tabs on them. The carpenters handle hundreds of lock changes and installations each year, working both with keyed locks and the increasingly popular combination locks.

Large, long-term carpentry jobs typically are contracted out, but smaller projects go to the University’s in-house carpenters.

The carpenters shop, the largest of Pitt’s trades, encompasses 16 carpenters, including three in the cabinet shop, located at Pitt’s Melwood Avenue facility, and two who staff the lock shop beneath Posvar Hall.

The rest are spread out across the University, where they concentrate on loosely defined territories.

“Each usually has an area,” said carpenters foreman Dave Papp. In addition to knowing the people in a given building, “They’re familiar with working in their own specific areas,” he said. Considering the variety of environments across campus, it’s more efficient for each carpenter to focus on a handful of buildings. Working in a lab in the Chevron Science Center, for instance, is vastly different from working with the old systems and hardware in the Cathedral of Learning, he said.

Carpenter Jim Coyner's domain is the University's lock shop.

In addition to framing — which in commercial construction utilizes metal, rather than wood wall studs — the carpenters may make laminate countertops, shelving, custom whiteboards, cabinets or furniture.

“We can make anything, from new to reproducing something you can’t find,” said Papp. While ordering from a catalog may be less expensive for quantity items, Pitt’s carpenters often can make a single piece or custom item at a reasonable cost with a faster turnaround time than an outside shop, he said.

Racks of oak, walnut, maple and poplar — whatever might be needed to fill requests — stand ready in the Melwood shop to be crafted to order. Tucked into out of the way spots are samples of trim moldings and templates from past work — extras are kept to facilitate matching, should the need arise.

Among the most unusual requests cabinet shop carpenter Rusty Kucsmas recalls was fabrication of clapping hands for Roc, the Pitt Panther.

Roc’s soft paws simply couldn’t make the desired noise necessary to rev up the crowds, so Kucsmas created attachable liners out of plywood and polystyrene. That template hangs with the others at Kucsmas’s workstation.

The carpenters in the lock shop are housed in a tiny office in the depths of the Posvar Hall garage. Lining the workshop’s walls are small bins containing the minuscule parts used to repair and re-key locks for doors, audiovisual cabinets and file drawers.

The office also houses the ledger books that associate building room numbers with the proper keys — thousands of them, organized on hooks. “If nobody has a key, we have it,” said carpenter Michael Nucci.

Nucci, a 19-year Pitt veteran who has been stationed in the lock shop for the past decade, has committed to memory many of the details on which systems are in use in each building, simply by virtue of his years of experience. Nine different keying systems are in use at Pitt.

“The University grew and it just happened that way,” he said.

The variety of the Pitt carpenters’ more traditional work can be seen in a number of places across the Pittsburgh campus.

Sometimes Pitt's carpenters work with wood, as in this video screen cabinet in the WIlliam Pitt Union.

Zaremba, for instance, fabricated display cases that are seen by hundreds of people each day in the Cathedral of Learning and Falk School. Likewise, the wooden directories in the elevator lobbies throughout the Cathedral are the carpenters’ handiwork.

In advance of the G-20 summit, Pitt’s carpenters built a cover to protect the water feature outside Pitt’s Biomedical Science Tower 3. Painted to match the building, the large wooden box made the perfect disguise to prevent damage to the lighted fountain.

In recent months, the carpenters, in conjunction with the tradespeople in Pitt’s paint shop, systematically repaired and refinished the Heinz Chapel pews, removing two each Monday and returning them in time for weekend weddings.

Carpenter Michael Nucci displays some antique door hardware near a bank of keys in the carpenters lock shop.

Library patrons also have Pitt carpenters to thank for keeping their seating in good repair. Fixing Hillman Library’s wooden chairs is a never-ending task, said Kucsmas, who estimated that she’s repaired at least 500 of them in her 10 years as a University carpenter. Patrons perch on the chair backs and snap off the dowels that fasten them to the body of the chair; seats get ripped.

Stacks of the chairs piled high outside the cabinet shop testify to the frequency of such mishaps.

Finer work also is visible at Hillman Library: Pitt’s carpenters furnished and trimmed the new reading room on the library’s fourth floor.

While passersby may not notice their craftsmanship, the carpenters take pride in knowing their work will survive long after they’re gone. ”When you’re done with something you’ve accomplished something,” Zaremba said.

Kucsmas notes with pride that she recently built a white board cabinet for the new Welsh Nationality Room. “It’s going to be there forever,” she said.

—Kimberly K. Barlow