At least fifteen churches were destroyed to make way for the redevelopment of Allegheny Center. It was one of the most audacious applications of the ideas of Le Corbusier ever attempted: an entire city center destroyed and rebuilt to modern taste, with only a few isolated landmarks left as museum pieces. The fact that only one of them (St. Peter’s) was a church may tell us something about the assumptions of twentieth-century urban planners.
Oddly, this building, which originally belonged to the First United Presbyterian Church of Allegheny, was one of the few buildings the demolishers left, even though the church next to it was destroyed. It was built in 1916; the architect was R. Maurice Trimble. It now belongs to the Allegheny Center Alliance Church.
The parapet with a rounded crest at the top of the building is a favorite Trimble detail; we see a similar treatment, for example, on the Allegheny YMCA, built ten years later.
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