A few more details of this splendid church, built in 1897, which probably will not stand much longer—although the demolition order had been removed from the front door when old Pa Pitt visited most recently. The architect was Frederick Sauer.1 We have many more pictures in an earlier article.
If the church is demolished, Father Pitt will buy these hinges. He has no idea where he would put them or even whether he could lift one, but they ought to be preserved.
We’ve seen this little church before, where we also learned some of its history, but we need no excuse for seeing it again other than that it is a charming little church with a long history. Built for a Lutheran congregation in 1894, it was sold to the African Methodist Episcopal congregation only eleven years later, and they worshiped here for a century.
November is the month that gives us an excuse to use the word “russet” over and over.
The receiving vault (now the Columbarium), built in 1878, was designed by Bailey & Anglin, Allegheny architects who designed some important projects in Allegheny and the rest of southwestern Pennsylvania.
Father Pitt’s constant endeavor is to point out the things we never look at and show why they are worth looking at. Here is a row of three small storefronts in East Liberty—a very modest building, but the architect nevertheless strove for an interesting and unusual effect. The shallow arches (we can be fairly sure there were three of them; seams and paler blocks mark where the storefront on the right has been repaired and rebuilt) and stone face give the little building an air of permanence and make the merchants occupying it (currently three different restaurants) seem just a little more opulent than they actually are. Plat maps suggest that it was built in about 1900.
One corner of West Park is cut off from the rest by an iron fence. It’s a triumph of landscaping: until you get close to the fence, you can’t see that the reason for the fence is a broad railroad cut, four tracks wide, that slices right across the park. It could have ruined the whole effect of this urban paradise, but instead artistic landscaping has made it picturesque—especially in November, when the long rows of ginkgo trees are shedding their golden leaves.
Some views from two different divisions of the Union Dale Cemetery.
Last year we saw the Natatorium Building in the middle of a renovation. Now here it is renovated, and looking pretty much the same. The original architect was R. B. Melvin.
We also have some history of the Natatorium Building.
Old maps show this as the Lohr Building, owned by A. C. Lohr. Lohr was a patent-medicine peddler who promoted himself as “the Plant Juice man,” selling a supposedly herbal concoction called Plant Juice that would treat “all forms of stomach, liver and kidney trouble and blood disorders,” according to identical articles planted in the Gazette Times and the Press for July 13, 1914. Pittsburgh is most famous for glass, iron, and steel, but in the golden age of patent medicines it was one of the most important centers of medical hooey in the country, and fortunes were made here in that trade.
The storefront retains its corner entrance, but with the step up from South Avenue blocked by a planter.
The rectory for Most Holy Name of Jesus Church, built in about 1875 in an elaborate Second Empire style—quite possibly with Father Suitbert Mollinger’s own money, since he had quite a fortune and nothing to spend it on but his parish and his collection of relics.
