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Celebrations to Mark First Phase of August Wilson House Restoration

By SHARON EBERSON – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, seberson@post-gazette.com April 18th, 2016 –

The August Wilson House Project is set to unveil architectural plans for the restoration of the playwright’s Hill District childhood home and begin re-creating the house at 1727 Bedford Ave. as a community arts center and site of cultural tourism.

Mr. Wilson, who died in 2005, wrote 10 plays, nine set in the Hill, about the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century.

To celebrate the work being done to restore Mr. Wilson’s home, there will be a block party at the house April 30, preceded by a gathering of local leaders and the project team at the Carnegie Library Hill District Branch, where they will reveal the plans for the property and discuss what August Wilson means to the region.

The August Wilson House is a project of the Daisy Wilson Artist Community Inc., a nonprofit named for his mother. Its mission is to promote the literary and social legacy of Wilson through the restoration of the house where he lived for his first 13 years and which also plays a part in several of his plays.