Father Pitt

Category: Churches

  • Swissvale Presbyterian Church

    Swissvale Presbyterian Church

    Kiehnel & Elliott were the architects of this church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1909. It certainly isn’t typical of the modernistic Art Nouveau designs we associate with Kiehnel & Elliott; but their few churches tended to be more conservative, and here they were probably commissioned by a congregation with conservative tastes. They came through with a typical Pittsburgh corner-tower auditorium church, and the fact that almost nothing has changed since the church was built tells us that the congregation had no reason to regret its choice of architects.

    Cornerstone
    Postcard of First Presbyterian, Swissvale

    A postcard of unknown date from the Presbyterian Historical Society. Father Pitt is grateful for the volunteer work that made nearly a thousand old postcards of churches freely available, so that we can compare them to the standing buildings, and remember the buildings that have vanished. In this case, the comparison shows us that almost nothing has changed.

    Swissvale Presbyterian Church

    You think we have utility cables now, but imagine what it was like when the streetcars ran on Monongahela Avenue.

    Entrance
    Tower
    Side porch

    This side porch feels mysterious and ancient, which is probably a good thing for a church. Wouldn’t you like to come in and discover the ancient mysteries?

    Side porch
    Cupola
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR; Sony Alpha 3000.

    It’s easy to miss this small cupola or big finial at the peak of the roof, so old Pa Pitt went after it with a long lens so you can admire it up close.

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  • Mount Lebanon Presbyterian Church

    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    A view with a long lens from about three-quarters of a mile away.

  • First Baptist Church, Oakland

    First Baptist Church
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    We also have a picture from the same angle in the summer, and pictures of the interior at night.

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  • Holy Ghost Greek Catholic Church, Marshall-Shadeland

    Dome of Holy Ghost

    Now known as Holy Ghost Byzantine Rite Catholic Church. Carlton Strong, best remembered for Sacred Heart Church in Shadyside, designed this Byzantine church and the somewhat similar St. Mary’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the McKees Rocks Bottoms.

    Kathleen M. Washy, an expert in the history of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, wrote a long article on Carlton Strong (download the PDF here) for Gathered Fragments, the magazine of the Catholic Historical Society, so old Pa Pitt will send you there for more about this fascinating artist. Here we’ll just look at pictures.

    Holy Ghost Church
    West front
    Porch and entrance
    Main entrance
    Porch
    Cornerstone with Greek Catholic Church of the Holy Ghost, erected A. D. 1928
    West front
    Perspective view
    Side of the church
    Tower and side entrance
    Side entrance
    Tower
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Canon PowerShot S45.
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  • First English Evangelical Lutheran Church

    First English Evangelical Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    Andrew Peebles, who also designed St. Peter’s on the North Side, designed this church, which was quite large when it was built but looks like a toy next to the skyscrapers of Grant Street. Built in 1887, it is now the oldest building on the street.

    More pictures of First Lutheran.

  • St. Walburga’s Church, Lincoln–Lemington–Belmar

    St. Walburga’s Church, now Cornerstone Baptist Church

    You never know what you might find when you go trawling in the depths of the archives. These pictures were taken in September of 2014, but old Pa Pitt never published them. Why not? His memory is vague, but he suspects it was because he was planning to publish them when he worked out the history of the building, and he never did work it out. Finding the pictures by random luck the other day stimulated him to finish the job, and here they are.

    The tower with dome

    St. Walburga’s was a German parish founded in 1903—the last ethnic German parish founded in the city of Pittsburgh. The cornerstone of this building was laid in April of 1927; the building was dedicated a year later in April of 1928. The architects were the Cleveland firm of Potter & Gabele & Co., and if Father Pitt told you how much time he spent trying to find that information before finally locating it in the Pittsburgh Catholic for April 19, 1928, you would wonder a little about whether he should be regarded as competent to manage his own life.

    St. Walburga’s in 1928
    The church at its dedication, from the Pittsburgh Catholic, April 19, 1928, p. 3. Almost nothing has changed externally.

    J. Ellsworth Potter was a successful architect who designed churches in traditional styles until his death in 1958. Henry Charles Gabele was associated with Potter until 1932, but after that seems to have fizzled out as an architect (see a brief notice in this PDF Cleveland Architects Database).

    Tower

    St. Walburga’s parish was suppressed in 1966, a victim of postwar demographic change. Today the building belongs to the Cornerstone Baptist Church, whose congregation obviously treasures it and keeps it in beautiful shape.

    West front
    St. Walburga’s Church
    Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3; Kodak EasyShare Z1485.
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  • Fire at Knoxville Presbyterian Church

    Knoxville Presbyterian Church

    Three and a half years ago, old Pa Pitt visited this church to take pictures of the exterior. It was not in use then, although the grounds were maintained. Neighbors reported hearing a smoke detector’s low-battery signal for quite a while. Two days ago, a commenter alerted Father Pitt that a fire had seriously damaged the building.

    We’ll put the rest of the large number of pictures we took today behind a link, so that the sad evidence of the conflagration will not be the dominant impression in visitors’ minds for the next week and a half. Furthermore, we promise to balance this article soon with some very cheerful news from the Hilltop neighborhoods.

    More pictures of the church after the fire.

  • St. Michael the Archangel Greek Catholic Church, Hill District

    St. Michael the Archangel Greek Catholic Church

    For good reason old Pa Pitt didn’t publish these pictures when he took them eleven years ago. They were blurry and grainy and ugly, and if you enlarge them you can see that everything he did to rescue them was at most partly successful. But at the time he did not know that this old Russian church would be demolished about three years later. Since he ran across these pictures again today, he decided that, as poor as they are, they can stand here for a memorial to one of the dwindling number of mementos of the Hill’s days as a lively polyglot mishmash of every ethnic group.

    Church and rectory
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  • Stewart Avenue Lutheran Church, Carrick

    Stewart Avenue Lutheran Church

    O. M. Topp, the favorite architect of Lutherans in Pittsburgh for a generation, designed this magnificent Romanesque church, which was built in 1927–19281 and seems almost like a tribute to the late John T. Comès, who had died five years earlier. Topp almost always designed churches in the Gothic style, but here he takes up Romanesque and shows that he can be a master of it, right down to the polychrome stripes that Comès loved so well.

    West front
    Rose window
    Entrance
    Lunette
    Stewart Avenue side

    The entrance on the Stewart Avenue side is perhaps the stripiest ecclesiastical structure in the city of Pittsburgh.

    Stewart Avenue entrance
    Lunette
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
    1. The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation identifies Topp as the architect of the main church. The Sunday-school wing was built shortly afterward. Source: The Charette, October, 1927: “359. Architect: O. M. Topp, Jenkins Arcade, Pittsburgh, Pa. Title: Stewart Ave. Lutheran Church, Sunday School. Location: Stewart Ave. and Brownsville Road. Ready for bids Sept. 19th. Approximate size: Two stories; brick, wood and steel. Cubage: 125,000 cu. ft.” ↩︎
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  • Spencer Methodist Episcopal Church, Carrick

    Spencer Methodist Episcopal Church (now Spencer United Methodist Church)

    Now Spencer United Methodist. Charles W. Bier was the architect of this church,1 which opened in 1925. It sits on a steeply sloping lot at the southern end of Carrick, so that—like many Pittsburgh churches—it has ground-level entrances on two ground levels.

    Spencer Methodist Episcopal Church (now Spencer United Methodist Church)
    Tower

    An open belfry becomes a nuisance to maintain, and when the bells are silenced—as they have been in most of our churches—the belfry is often filled in.

    Basement entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
    1. The American Contractor, April 14, 1923: “Carrick, Pa.—Church:$100,000. 1 sty. 100×72. Church st. & Spencer av., Carrick. Archt. Chas. W. Bier, Pittsburgh Life bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner The Spencer M. E. Congr., Spv. Gilbert G. Gallagher, 117 Spencer av., Carrick. Solid brk. Drawing prelim. plans.” The church as built does not seem like a $100,000 church. But the dimensions and estimate went up: November 3, 1923: “Church: $140,000. 1 sty. & bas. 75×143. Church st. & Spencer av., Garrick [sic]. Archt. Chas. W. Bier, Pittsburgh Life bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner The Spencer M. E. Congr., Rev. Gilbert G. Gallagher, 117 Spencer av., Garrick. Revising plans.” The current church looks like Bier’s work; we can only guess that the ambitious plans were scaled back a bit before construction began. ↩︎
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