Father Pitt

Why should the beautiful die?

Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greenfield

Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church

This church was built in 1927, but it is very similar to churches built half a century before that. Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists enthusiastically adopted the Akron Plan at the turn of the twentieth century, building square auditorium-style churches, often with big corner towers. The auditorium plan made sense in a church where the emphasis was on preaching. Lutherans, Catholics, and Episcopalians stuck to the traditional center-aisle church plan, because their emphasis was on liturgy.

Entrance

The architect was John A. Long,1 who by this time was one of the old reliables in Pittsburgh. The church is no longer Lutheran, but it is neatly kept by the current occupants, the Agapé Life Church.

Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Fujifilm FinePix HS20 EXR; Kodak EasyShare Maz Z990.
  1. Source: “Prospective Building,” Press, January 25, 1927, p. 23. “Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran congregation will receive bids soon for a new church building in Murray ave. John A. Long is the architect.” ↩︎

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One response to “Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greenfield”

  1. von Hindenburg

    On church layouts; I’ve seen a number of churches in Scotland where, when the Reformation took them, they turned the entire interior 90 degrees, building a new, simpler altar along one of the long walls of the building and arranging the pews in a small number of very wide rows with no center aisle to discourage those Papist processions. It makes for some very awkward interiors, but a neat bit of history.

    St. Mary’s downtown is an interesting example of a…semi-auditorium Catholic church from prior to Vatican II, with its sanctuary set at 45 degrees to the building. I’ve wondered if the idea there was to get the *longest* possible aisle out of a square floorplan. If Pa Pitt has any idea why the church is arranged as it is, I’d love to know.

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