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.
The tower originally supported a spire that was damaged in a lightning strike and replaced with the dome-like structure that caps the tower now.
Even without the spire, the tower is tall enough to loom over the rooftops of the tall Victorian rowhouses in the streets around the church.
A short secondary tower is capped with castle-like pinnacles.
The church keeps up its visual interest from every angle.
Most of the windows are in bad shape…
…but this Nativity window is mostly intact. It ought to be preserved.
- Record & Guide, October 21, 1896, p. 833. “At Allegheny, the congregation of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church will erect a new building at Locust and Fulton streets, from plans prepared by F. C. Sauer, Hamilton Building, Pittsburg. The estimated cost is $50,000. Rev. Peter Kaufman, pastor.” Locust was renamed Liverpool in the Great Renaming that followed the conquest of Allegheny by Pittsburgh. ↩︎
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