
Seen from a hilltop in Brookline. St. Basil’s is prominent on the skyline.
Seen from a hilltop in Brookline. St. Basil’s is prominent on the skyline.
Now St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church of St. Raphael Parish, because the history of parish consolidation in Carnegie is complicated even by Catholic Pittsburgh standards. Built in 1881, this church was out of commission for a while after the Hurricane Ivan floods in Carnegie, but it is now restored and expanded, and in fact is the only remaining Western Catholic church in Carnegie. (There’s a Byzantine-rite Ukrainian church, too.)
The parish school behind the church closed some years ago, but the building still belongs to the church and has been adapted to other uses, including Sunday school and offices.
Addendum: The architect of the school was Albert F. Link.1
Architecture is a kind of message that we instinctively read. When we see a bank that looks like this, we think without even articulating the thought, “That bank is stable and respectable.” The richness of the materials tells us that the bank has plenty of money; the traditional classical design tells us that it is not some fly-by-night institution that somehow swindled its way into a few bucks and will be gone as soon as its trendy design is passé. This bank on Main Street in the borough of Carnegie hits all the right notes with perfect pitch. We have forgotten how to send these architectural messages, but curiously enough we have not forgotten how to read them.
A splendid country house overlooking the town of Chartiers (now the western half of Carnegie). Several real-estate sites on line list this house as built in 1900 or 1901, but clearly it is decades older, and very well preserved. According to our old maps, it appears to be the Doolittle house (but old Pa Pitt would be happy to be corrected). This section of Carnegie northwest of the railroad, the “Doolittle Place Plan,” was built on the former Jacob Doolittle estate, and Doolittle Avenue runs along the northeast side of the house.
This old Romanesque church is beautifully kept up as the Attawheed Islamic Center, occupying one of the most prominent corners in the borough of Carnegie. Though the architecture is Romanesque, the tower and steeple seem uncharacteristically light for the style; old Pa Pitt always comes away with the impression that this is a Gothic building, and only seeing the rounded arches in the photograph corrects his faulty memory.
Thomas E. Morgan, a Civil War veteran, was a big deal in Carnegie, a member of the local Grand Army of the Republic post, on the board of a local bank, and proprietor of a general store.
AuthorFather PittPosted onCategoryCarnegie BoroughTagsGhost Signs
There are two Ukrainian churches in Carnegie. The Catholic one is an enlarged Quonset hut. This one is an Art Nouveau interpretation of traditional Ukrainian architecture by the Hungarian architect Titus de Bobula. Together with its next-door neighbor, the Russian Orthodox church, it makes this corner of Carnegie look exotically East European.
The effect is even more curious when the distinctively Ukrainian domes are seen through a distinctively American maze of utility cables.