Father Pitt

Why should the beautiful die?


Methodist Episcopal Deaconess’ Home, Uptown

Methodist Episcopal Deaconess’ Home

This corner was associated with the Methodist Church for decades. The elaborately eclectic building on the corner was the Methodist Episcopal Deaconess’ Home; the fine brick house to the left of it, built as a private residence, was taken over by the Women’s Home Missionary Society of Pittsburgh, whose previous headquarters had been where the Deaconess’ Home was later built—or expanded, since Father Pitt believes he detects a typical prosperous merchant’s rowhouse on the corner swallowed by later accretions that made it an institutional building.

Deaconess’ Home

We certainly cannot accuse the architect of giving us monotonous surfaces.

The spelling “Deaconess’,” incidentally, comes from the 1923 map to which we referred. Father Pitt would have written “Deaconesses’,” on the assumption that more than one deaconess lived there.


3 responses to “Methodist Episcopal Deaconess’ Home, Uptown”

      • Thanks so much! Might you have any historical information about the deaconess home? An ancestor of mine was in that home in the early 1900s. Thank you.

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