Five Generations in Pittsburgh Construction

PBT pic

Landau Building Company was recently featured in the Pittsburgh Business Times as an outstanding family business in the Pittsburgh construction industry.  The article, “Helping Pittsburgh take shape for 125 years,” by Tim Schooley, covers Landau’s family history in the Pittsburgh region, from Henrich Landau in 1879 to the current Landaus in the business – Tom, Jeff, Sharon, and Jen.  When approached by the Pittsburgh Business Times, Landau was humbled and proud of the business and reputation they’ve worked hard to build and maintain.  MBA Director of Industry Relations Jon O’Brien kindly remarked in the article, “They have one of the most friendly and energetic offices.  And it’s a very close-knit group that they have working together.  They have a good thing going.”

Schooley’s article highlighted the family and business timeline. Landau has a long history in the construction industry of Pittsburgh, beginning with Henrich and his sons in the late 1800s.  His three sons, Jacob, Fred, and Albert, formalized the family’s work and incorporated it as Landau Brothers Construction Company, with Jacob as the first president.  The company continued to grow and secured its place as a respectable member of the construction region, as demonstrated through long ties with the Master Builders’ Association of Western Pennsylvania.  As mentioned in a previous news post, CEO Tom Landau discovered the original 1922 MBA charter certificate from the MBA, as his family has also been active on the MBA board for generations.  “It shows you how much influence of how much of a long-standing relationship they have with us that they could hold on to important documents like that,” O’Brien said to Schooley.  When Tom’s father Roy was president, Landau was known mainly for retail building, like Kroger, A&P, and Shop ‘N Save; before that, his grandfather focused on interior build-outs for offices.  More recently, as Landau grew under Tom and Jeff’s presidencies, the company developed a solid reputation for work in healthcare and higher education, as well as commercial and community buildings.

The current generation of Landaus in the business are siblings: Tom, CEO and past president; Jeff, President; and Sharon, Marketing Director who is also a trained architect.  Joining them is Tom’s daughter-in-law Jen, a Project Manager who has also worked in various positions throughout the company.  Like any small, family-run business, Landau has struggled to balance family ownership with bringing in outside talent, but, as Jen reasoned in the article, being a family-run business is what resonates with the employees. Whatever the case, Landau is proud to be recognized for its family values and growing success throughout the Pittsburgh region.

Check out the full article at the Pittsburgh Business Times website: http://bit.ly/1cApKgu
Or visit the “History” section under the “About Us” tab to see our company timeline

This article was posted in Landau News and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are closed.