story by m.a. jackson
photos by george mendel
The Embassy of Asbury Heights’ first floor common areas
contain a gym (at right) as well as a private patio, a dining
area where a continental breakfast is served daily, and cozy
living rooms that feature a television and piano and a kitchen.

The apartments (center and far right) all contain a living room,
dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. One
model also has a den. Residents can paint and decorate their
spaces as they see fit.

safe, pampered and
independent… At Home
fter 44 years of living in the same Mt. Lebanon
home her late husband, Edward, had built, Bette
Ruh had a tough decision to make. Plans to move
to a retirement community in the South Hills had
fallen through shortly before her house sold. Active
and healthy, Ruh was far from ready for a nursing
home, but as a widow, she wanted someplace safe
where she would be a bit pampered.

That was when Ruh toured The Embassy, Asbury Heights’ new
independent living apartment complex on Beverly Road.

“When I saw it I fell in love,” she says of her roomy two-
bedroom, two-bathroom apartment. “It is a mile from my [old]
home. I can go to the same doctor, the same stores and visit
my friends. And it’s so close to town—you can zip in and zip
out—and I can walk up to Beverly Road or have dinner down
at Atria’s.”
Ruh is not the first person to be impressed by The Embassy.

Built in the 1930s as a residential “apartment hotel,” the six-story
Art Deco style building originally boasted 61 units and offered
residents marbleoid terrazzo kitchen floors, bathrooms in “colored
vitrolite marble,” beds-in-a-door, GE refrigerators, maid service
and switchboard telephone service for announcing visitors and
taking messages. Those features plus the fact that the building
was on a bus line and close to the Beverly Road Shops, made The
Embassy one of Mt. Lebanon’s more desirable places to live. Carol
Thomas, sales consultant, says Lawrence Welk kept an apartment
44 mtl • january/february 2009
at the Embassy for when his orchestra played in Pittsburgh (Welk’s
champagne music was born at the William Penn Hotel), and a
well-known KDKA news personality reportedly ensconced his
special “friend” in one of the units.

Meanwhile, less than a mile away, Asbury Heights on Bower
Hill Road was growing. The facility had started in 1908, when
Frances Campbell Hamilton, with the help of the Pittsburgh
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, created a home
for 18 elderly men and women in Dravosburg. Filled to capac-
ity by 1926, the home moved to a Victorian farm house on 30
acres of land off Bower Hill Road. Today, operated by the United
Methodist Services for the Aging, Asbury Heights is a continuing
care community that provides independent- and assisted-living
apartments, 21 carriage homes for active older adults, a special
unit for people with Alzheimer’s or dementia, and rehabilitative
care. More than 500 people call Asbury Heights home.

By 2000, Asbury needed to expand. When no property adjoin-
ing the campus proved suitable, the search was widened. Enter
The Embassy.

In June 2005, Asbury Heights purchased the apartment build-
ing for $1.3 million and embarked on a year-and-a-half long
renovation project. Perkins Eastman was the architect; National
Development Company was the contractor. Plans called for turn-
ing the first floor into spacious common rooms and reducing the
number of apartments from 61 to 34, but preserving the charac-
ter of the historic building while updating it was a goal. Much of