This picture is impossible, but old Pa Pitt did it anyway. Claim Street in front of the church is narrow, with Japanese knotweed and a drop on the opposite side from the church; so there is nowhere to stand except more or less right in front of the church to get its picture. Naturally some technical hocus-pocus involving multiple photographs was necessary to make this picture, but Father Pitt has never been one to let any rigid ideas of photographic honesty stand in the way of getting a picture of what a thing actually looks like.
The famous Father Suitbert Mollinger, best known for his enormous collection of relics housed around the corner in St. Anthony Chapel, was the founding pastor of this church. The date stone tells us (in German, of course, since this is Troy Hill) that the church was founded in 1868 and enlarged in 1896.
A church built for Reformed Presbyterians, a small Pittsburgh-based (now actually Irwin-based) denomination with a long history. The cornerstone was laid in 1892, and the building was dedicated in 1893. It is now kept up beautifully as the El-BethEl Temple. Old Pa Pitt spent some time looking for the architect, but the church was built just after a scandal enveloped its minister, and that was the thing that occupied the newspapers. Reformed Presbyterians believed that the government of the United States was illegitimate because freedom of religion was one of its principles, whereas a legitimate government must be explicitly Christian. The Wilkinsburg minister refused to accept that all people who voted in elections or held any government office must be excommunicated, and the little R. P. teapot had a big typhoon. Because the tempest may be amusing to watch from afar, we reprint an article from the Press, June 13, 1891, p. 4.
It May Be Ultra-Reformed.
The action of the congregation of the Reformed Presbyterian church in the East End in re-electing Rev. O. B. Milligan as their pastor makes it difficult to understand what effect the suspension of the seven dissenting ministers by the Reformed Presbyterian synod will have. Mr. Milligan has been declared by the synod to be no longer a Reformed Presbyterian minister. In the face of that, his Reformed Presbyterian congregation—that has always held a good opinion of him, and does still—has declared that he shall continue to be the pastor. This church is in the peculiar position of being independent of the main body so far ss the choice of a pastor is concerned. It is in the hands of a corporation that owns the property—and in a general way the congregation. They say they want Mr. Milligan for their pastor, and Mr. Milligan will remain.
The synod has a difficult task on its hands. It cannot allow a suspended minister to keep his position in the Reformed Presbyterian church, and yet there seems no way of excluding Mr. Milligan. Obviously the only thing for the synod will be to refuse to recognize this particular congregation. But if the congregation insists upon calling itself Reformed Presbyterian, as it probably will, where will the synod be then? There seems a probability of two branches of the Reformed Presbyterian church, with the awful likelihood of Mr. Milligan calling theirs the Reformed Reformed Presbyterian church.
The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America has softened its principles a little since then, but it remains dedicated to the idea of Christ as the absolute king in government as well as church matters. Today its nationwide membership is about equivalent to the membership of two fairly large Catholic parishes.
This building replaced a much smaller building from 1845, which was demolished to make way for it. When it was dedicated on July 2, 1893 (by which time the Rev. R. C. Wylie was pastor, and the threatened ultra-reform had been averted), the Post described it as an “innovation in church architecture,” though the description makes it sound like another instance of the popular Akron Plan.1
Yesterday was an eventful day in the history of the Reformed Presbyterian church of Wilkinsburg. The occasion was the dedicatory services of their new house of worship, which has only been recently completed at a cost of over $22,000, including the lot. The new building stands on the corner of South avenue and Center street, and both the inside and outside of the structure are innovations in church architecture. The inside arrangement is very convenient, for both the church and Sabbath school departments are on the same floor and can be thrown into one large apartment by simply raising portieres which separate them.
The church proper is built on the plan of an auditorium and the seats are built in a circular fashion similar to an opera house. The floor slants toward the pulpit and the acoustics are perfect. From the ceiling, which is finished in hard wood, hang two beautiful chandeliers, which contain 127 incandescent lights. When these are all lighted the church is transformed into a fairy palace and the effect is wonderful. A fine brussels carpet covers the floor and the other furnishings are in keeping with the structure.
This is the sort of arrangement Pittsburgh’s distinguished Catholic architect Edward Weber would later describe as “the frightful auditorium plan.” But Weber’s Catholic principles were based on the idea of liturgical worship. When preaching is the main attraction (and Reformed Presbyterians refused all music except the Psalms), a theatrical arrangement makes sense: the church is a lecture hall, not a place for processions and ceremonies.
Leo McMullen of Comès, Perry & McMullen was the architect of the grandest church in his hometown of Bellevue. We have seen this church in detail before, including the front, the interior, the carvings of Adam and Eve at the entrance, the gargoyles, the curious grotesque brackets, and the stained glass. But a cathedral-sized church like this always has more to show us, and the changing season brings us the added delight of fall color.
This is a church whose story would be worth going into in some detail, and old Pa Pitt hasn’t done that yet. It was built in 1918; the architect was Thomas Hannah, but at some point Cram & Ferguson—Cram being Ralph Adams Cram—were brought in as well, and it would be interesting to know how much was Hannah’s work and how much was Cram’s. Perhaps someone from the church knows more and could enlighten us.
We intend to get back to take some better pictures soon, but Father Pitt has been hoarding these pictures for months now and decided it was time to release them into the wild.
The Evangelists Luke (traditionally represented by an ox) and John (an eagle).
This church, kept in good shape as the Pittsburgh Urban Christian School, has a complicated architectural history, and old Pa Pitt will not attempt to sort it all out. The cornerstone bears a date of 1915:
We have seen the name O. M. Topp associated with the church, but a 1931 biography of Arthur N. Steinmark lists this church among his accomplishments.1 In 1915 Steinmark was working for MacClure & Spahr, which makes it seem unlikely that he designed the 1915 portion. But the church is a complex of attached buildings, and Steinmark might have been responsible for some of it.
On December 15, 1929, “Calvary had a rededication service at the completion of a $35,000 building expansion and improvement program which added the tower, the Rose Window, the balcony and included the renovation of the Chancel.”
That $35,000 project is probably Steinmark’s work. Father Pitt believes, however, that only the top of the tower was part of the Steinmark project, because an old picture on that same page shows the rest of the tower as Pittsburgh black stone like the rest of the church, but the top as pristine white.
The top of the tower is probably a replacement for a doomed spire. (Update: See the update above. It is possible that a spire was planned and never built, as often happened with church towers.)
This smaller section appears to be the older sanctuary; old maps suggest that it is probably the 1900 church designed by Wilkinsburg’s own L. A. Raisig,2 given a new stone front to match the main building.
Record & Guide, August 8, 1900, p. 511. “At Wilkinsburg, Station D, Pittsburg, a $25,000 brick church will be erected by the Calvary Lutheran Society. L. A. Riasig, Penn and Wood streets, architects. Rev. J. Bradley Markward, pastor.” ↩︎
Father Suitbert Mollinger was the founding pastor of of Most Holy Name of Jesus parish on Troy Hill. He was also rich: he had inherited a good bit of money, and he used it in travels through Europe to buy up saints’ relics that were otherwise being tossed out in the waves of revolutions that were washing across the continent in the middle 1800s. He built this chapel to house the collection, which is probably the largest accumulation of relics in one building in the world. He dedicated it to his patron St. Anthony of Padua.
Here is St. Anthony of Padua himself, shown as he often is in art with a book on which the Christ child is sitting, referring to the story that Anthony was once meditating on Scripture when the child Jesus himself appeared to him.
Later known as the Mulberry Presbyterian Church. O. M. Topp and Charles W. Hutchison, “țhe well-known Pittsburg architect,” were the architects of this church, built in 1911.1
In spite of his self-declared notability, Charles W. Hutchison has not left much of a visible architectural legacy: after some searching, old Pa Pitt found only two projects definitely attributable to him, of which this is one. It was probably his own church: he lived in Wilkinsburg. His moment of greatest fame came the year after this church was built, when his honeymoon trip was interrupted by the wreck of the Titanic: he and his bride were passengers on the Carpathia, the ship that picked up Titanic survivors. He sold his story, with a well-made diagram of the scene of the rescue, to the Press, which put him on the front page as “the well-known Pittsburg architect.”
Olaf M. Topp, on the other hand, was a very successful architect with a long career ahead of him and much experience behind him. Half the prewar Lutheran churches in the Pittsburgh area were designed by Topp, in addition to a few for other denominations; and in secular buildings his greatest work was the still-lamented Jenkins Arcade.
A while ago this church was taken over by an organization with ambitious plans to turn it into a Center for Civic Arts. The plans seem to have run hard up against economic reality, however, and when old Pa Pitt visited recently the building was up for sale again.
These are far from the first pictures of this cathedral that old Pa Pitt has published, and they certainly will not be the last. A cathedral is too big a deal to take in all at once.
The west front (liturgically speaking1) is a towering Gothic fantasy whose scale is hard to convey in a photograph. Here the human figures on the steps give us some context.
The main doors turn on the mightiest hinges in Pittsburgh.
This would be a magnificent main front for any church; here it is just the façade of the south transept.
In describing church architecture, the altar is always considered “east,” which makes the entrance opposite the altar “west,” and so on, regardless of what your lying compass says. ↩︎
“Old Town of Aspect All Modern,” Pittsburg Press, July 14, 1907. “One of the most important additions to the structural beauty of the place will be the new South Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, which is to replace the old burned down last February. It is to cost $125,000 and will be one of the finest church buildings in the community. The construction is under the charge of Architects Milligan & Miller, who designed the plans.” ↩︎
