W. Ward Williams was the architect of this little church facing Friendship Park, built in about 1915.1 It has been painted for its new life as a day-care center in bright patterns that both contrast with and emphasize its Rundbogenstil features.
These pictures were taken in July of 2025, but somehow old Pa Pitt forgot about them until now.
Source: The Construction Record, September 19, 1914. “Architect W . Ward Williams, Magee building, has revised, plans for a one-story brick and concrete church, to be built on 4923 Friendship avenue, for the Gospel Hall Congregation.” Additions and alterations by the same architect, 1927. Source: The Charette, September, 1927: “343. Architect: W. Ward Williams, 309-4th Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa. Title: Gospel Hall, Friendship Avenue, E. E., Pittsburgh, Pa. Alterations and additions. Ordinary construction. Two stories, new heating plant. Job closes August 16. Plumbing, heating and wiring reserved. List of Bidders: Walker & Curley, H. S. Moorhead & Company; A. J. Gloekler; Pittsburgh Engineering & Construction Corp.; and J. Kindler.” ↩︎
Built in 1896, this eclectic pile seems not to be in use right now, but it is not in terribly bad shape. It was built as the Second Presbyterian Church of Braddock, but later took the name Calvary Presbyterian. Old Pa Pitt spent some time trying to figure out who designed the building, but none of the newspaper articles he found mentioned an architect.
These stubby entrance towers, with their double eyebrowed round windows, trigger a disturbing pareidolia in Father Pitt’s brain.
On the other hand, the whole building was worth putting up just to display this fan window.
The church is separated by less than a yard from its neighbor, the historically Black New Hope Baptist Church. It illustrates an interesting fact of social history: the separation of Black and White residents into different neighborhoods was largely a development of the second half of the twentieth century, and it was largely a conscious decision of the powers that were. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, our urban neighborhoods were the proverbial melting pots of all nations and races.
This building has been slowly crumbling for many years now, and it has finally reached a stage where reasonable people agree nothing can be done to save it. According to neighborhood gossip, it was estimated that five million dollars would be needed just to stabilize the structure, and no one has five million to spend on a big church in Manchester.
It is part of the curious paradox of Manchester that this church stands on Liverpool Street right next to perhaps the finest and best-restored block of Victorian rowhouses in Pittsburgh. “A building like this anchors the community,” one neighbor told old Pa Pitt—“even in this condition.”
St. Joseph’s was built in 1897 for a German parish. The architect, as we might guess from the picturesque style and the buff brick, was Frederick Sauer.1
When the parish closed, the building was sold to a nondenominational congregation, but the same neighborhood gossip tells us that the congregation struggled even to pay utility bills. After it folded, the building stood vacant, and suffered the usual piecemeal destruction of a large vacant building.
A few days ago, Father Pitt passed by on Liverpool Street and saw the big red sticker on the door. It was pouring down rain at the time, but he went back the next morning to document the church before it disappears, which is why we have more than fifty pictures to show you.
Thomas Scott designed this palatial waterworks, which stands in a little enclave of the city of Pittsburgh on the north shore of the Allegheny just outside Aspinwall. As he did with the Mission Pumping Station on the South Side Slopes, he decorated this one with elaborate grotesque heads and other classical effusions.
Impressive fat columns tell us that this is a colossal building even if we’re too close to see how colossal it really is. The architect was Daniel “Make No Little Plans” Burnham.
Peabody & Stearns were a Boston firm that kept a branch office in Pittsburgh to handle the many jobs they picked up in this city. They were responsible for rebuilding the Horne’s department store, and they designed the Liberty Market, later Motor Square Garden. But they also had a thriving business in Tudor mansions for the well-to-do in Pittsburgh’s East End. This one was built in 1902.
This picture from The Brickbuilder shows the house newly built. We can see that, except for filling in the side porch, very little has been done to change the house. Even the original diamond-paned upper sashes, or identical replacements, are still in the windows, and the windows in the sunroom that was made from the porch were matched to the rest of the windows in the house.
The gables were treated in a dark color scheme; the pastel blue of the current paint, along with the lacy wood trim, gives them a more feminine look than they would have had originally.
These double duplexes represent a common phenomenon in the streetcar neighborhoods that developed around the turn of the twentieth century. They were built for C. M. Neeld in 1916 on land that his family had owned for generations. When the streetcar line was pushed through from downtown in 1905, the Neelds found that their old family homes were right on the car line, and thus right in the path of speedy development. They profited by developing some of their land, but they kept a whole city block for themselves until after the Second World War. These apartments—twelve of them in three buildings—would have turned some of the vacant land into a good steady income that couldn’t be matched by the small farming the Neelds had probably done before the streetcars came.
Father Pitt guesses that the architect was William Arthur Thomas, who favored this white face brick and designed other similar duplexes in Beechview.1
The lowest of the three preserves its original details best. The one at the top of the slope has been altered the most, with mid-twentieth-century “picture” windows replacing the original much larger windows.
The one in the middle preserves these original small windows in the stairwells.
On 57th Street in Lawrenceville was a tight little community of Slovenians, known to their neighbors as Kreiners (from the German name of the Austrian province that is now Slovenia), who built a church, a school, and this Baroque clubhouse. Both this building and the parish school (now gone) were put up in 1911. We have not found an architect for this club yet, but the school was designed by Frederick Sauer; and, in a close ethnic community like this one, it is quite likely that the same people would hire the same architect—a guess made even more plausible by the buff Kittanning brick, Sauer’s favorite color.
The building suffered the usual fate of men’s clubs in Pittsburgh: all the windows were filled in with glass block. But in about 2017, after a period of abandonment, the building was renovated, and the windows were opened up again.
A photograph of the building just before its dedication appeared in the Press for May 28, 1911.
The dedication was a big deal, with a parade, speeches, and music by the city’s only Slovenian singing society. Here is how it was reported in the Kreiners section of the Pittsburg Press:
Tomorrow, May 29, will take place the dedication and opening of the Kreiner Slovenian Home erected at Butler and Fifty-seventh street, Pittsburg.
The home has been built at an expense of $30,000. The dedication of the Slovenic home will be attended by all the local Slovenic societies of Pittsburg and neighboring towns. A parade will start at 9:30 a. m. from the Slovenic hall on Fifty-seventh street, then go down Butler street to Fiftieth street, to Hatfield street then to Fortieth street as far as Arsenal park, whence the parade will return up Butler street to the Kreiner-Slovenic home on Fifty-seventh street.
The formal opening of the home then will take place. The first speaker will be Ferdinand Volk, the president of the Kreiner Slovenic Home, and several prominent Slovenians will follow him. The Slovenic singing society “Precern” will sing several Slovenic songs. The Fifty-seventh street, Pittsburg. The religious part of the dedication will be looked after by the Rev. J. C. Mertl, of the Slovenic Catholic Church of St. Mary, near Butler. The Kreiner-Slovenic Home is the largest Slovenic hall yet built in the United States. More than 1,000 visitors are expected to come to Pittsburg for the dedication of this building, which will be the meeting place of the Slovenians (Kreiners) in Pittsburg and neighboring towns.
