Heinz Chapel, built over five years from 1933 to 1938, is one of the complex of three great Charles Z. Klauder buildings at the center of the University of Pittsburgh, along with the Cathedral of Learning and the Stephen Foster Memorial. A while ago old Pa Pitt picked out some of the details with a long lens.
The decorations include the arms of various colleges and universities.
A church crammed into a tiny lot, so that it is as tall as it is long. This is one of the many city churches with the main worship space upstairs, the ground floor being devoted to Sunday-school rooms and offices.
The architect was Edward M. Butz, most famous today for the colossal Western Penitentiary.1 The construction was begun in 1894, but the church was built in two stages: at first only the ground floor was put up, with a temporary roof.
This was designed as a large open space that, when the main sanctuary was built above it, could be converted to Sunday-school rooms divided by folding doors.
The congregation grew rapidly, and less than five years later the church was completed.2
A Pittsburg Press article published when the church was dedicated in February of 1899 describes the building:
The new church is one of the handsomest church buildings in that section of Allegheny. Its dimensions are 60×75, and it is built of red brick with stone trimmings. The style is purely Gothic, and it has beautiful large glass painted windows. The building contains two stories, the lower floor being used for Sunday school purposes. It is divided in seven separate class rooms, which are connected by sliding doors. On this floor also is the pastor’s study. About 450 children are enrolled at present as Sunday school pupils.
The auditorium is situated in the second story. It has a seating capacity of 500, the seats being arranged in amphitheater style. A bell, which is said to have a more beautiful tone than any other church bell in Allegheny, has been given by William Eberhardt, of the Eberhardt & Ober Brewing company, and it is hoped that Andrew Carnegie will provide a pipe organ for the church. The members recently applied to the generous iron king and hope that their petition will receive favorable consideration.
George Nattress & Sons of Philadelphia were the architects of this church, one of the dwindling number of black stone churches in Pittsburgh. The Nattresses were favorites among Episcopalians. Old Pa Pitt can think of any number of Pittsburgh architects of the era who could have done just as well or better from at least an external point of view, but perhaps the Philadelphians had an innate sense of the rhythm of Episcopalian worship.
Impressive wooden doors form the main entrance.
The inscription “My house shall be called the house of prayer for all people” is from Isaiah 56:7, which was later quoted by Jesus on the one occasion in his earthly career when he got really angry: the Cleansing of the Temple.
The rough-cut black stones of the front arcade. Old Pa Pitt still thinks the sooty blackness adds dignity to many an otherwise prosaic church, and he encourages congregations that still possess black stone churches to keep their historical soot.
The parish house is built of matching stone (or at least the stones matched after a few years of exposure to Pittsburgh’s blackening atmosphere), but the neat frames for the windows and doors give it a more urbane and less rustic appearance.
The school was built first, in 1926, so we begin with the school. The architect was William P. Hutchins, who chose the “collegiate Gothic” style to send the twin messages that this was a school and it was Catholic.1
The congregation, meanwhile, worshiped in a small frame church for more than twenty years. After the Second World War, Leo McMullen was hired to design a new church and school expansion.2 Both the era and McMullen’s taste dictated a simpler style, but the new building fits well with the school to which it is attached.
The pictures of the church are from back in March; the pictures of the school are from last week. Yes, it does sometimes take old Pa Pitt that long—or longer—just to complete a set of pictures.
The Venerable Bede was the great light of the Dark Ages, the author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, which is the best source for very early English history. Here he is depicted pausing to think while writing one of his books. Bede was exceptionally good at thinking, which set him apart in the early 700s.
Edwin V. Denick was the architect of this neat little corner-tower church, which was built in 1905.1 The current congregation, the Baptist Temple Church, keeps it scrupulously tidy. “We do what we can,” one member modestly told old Pa Pitt—modestly because the man had just spent hours cleaning inside.
Old maps show that the attached parsonage was built later than the church, but it was matched very well to the style and material of the main building.
There is only one National Historic Landmark on the North Side, and this is it. Modest as it is, it would appear on many historians’ lists of the greatest American buildings of the nineteenth century. It is the other great work of Henry Hobson Richardson in Pittsburgh, after the Allegheny County Courthouse. One is sometimes tempted to say that it was ahead of its time (it was finished in 1886, when high Victorian style usually demanded a thick crust of ornamentation), but it would probably be better to say that it stands out of time. It is never stale, and yet it was never outrageously modern. It stands as an inspiration and a reproach to every other building.
It earns all those accolades from architects in spite of one serious engineering mistake. Those walls were not meant to lean outward the way they do. The weight of the huge roof pushed them out within a few years after the church was finished. The congregation called in Richardson’s old associates Longfellow, Alden & Harlow to see whether anything could be done, and their conclusion was that the structure was stable the way it was and should be left alone. A century and a third have proved them right.
These simple triangular dormers are the single feature of this church most often directly imitated; compare, for example, the ones on St. Paul’s Episcopal on the Hill (designed by Elise Mercur), or the ones on the First United Presbyterian Church of Etna (Father Pitt hasn’t figured out the architect of that one yet), or the ones on the Watson Memorial Presbyterian Church on Observatory Hill (designed by Allison & Allison)—all direct quotations from Richardson’s dormers here.
This front elevation is a 36-megapixel composite, so you can enlarge it and enjoy the details of the wonderfully varied brickwork that nevertheless seems natural and organic and avoids all suggestion of ostentation.
John Lewis Beatty, who gave us many fine churches throughout the city and suburbs, was a grand old man of Pittsburgh church architecture by the time he designed this church, built in 1928. Today the building belongs to Nabhi Christian Ministries, and it seems to be in very good hands.
We have seen this church before, but on a recent stroll up the Boulevard old Pa Pitt thought it looked beautiful in the sun, so here it is again. It now belongs to the Brookline Assembly of God, a vigorous congregation that keeps it up very well.
Right now you could buy an interesting piece of Pittsburgh Italian history. This was built as the First Italian Presbyterian Church; later it was known as Trinity Presbyterian, and then the building was taken over by the Agape Christian Fellowship. But now the building is for sale. It seems to be in good shape externally, including a spire that does not look very bedraggled at all.
The architect of the church, built in 1902–1903, was D. E. Sheridan, who was based in East Liberty.1 In addition to the usual run of middle-class houses and small commercial buildings, he had a number of clients in the South and Southwest, according to a short biography of him published in 1907, which is backed up by listings in trade journals. The half-round protrusion probably tells us that the church was built on the Akron Plan.
But Italian Presbyterians? Aren’t Italians all Roman Catholics? Let the retired pastor of the church explain it:
The opinion held by most Americans is that the Italians are staunch Roman Catholics. The fact that Rome is the seat of the Roman Pontiff and that most of the Popes have been Italian, makes this widely held opinion sound very logical.
But the historical and religious background of the Italian Immigrants lead us to an entirely different conclusion. To understand their religious attitude, we must remember that the struggle for the unification of Italy alienated from the Roman Church practically all the Italian Patriots. The Italians knew that the Vatican had opposed the noble dreams of Mazzini and Garibaldi, and that it had gone so far as to excommunicate them. They remembered that on September 20, 1870, when the Italian troops entered the Eternal City and proclaimed it to be the capital of the United Kingdom of Italy, the Pope issued a scathing protest against the Italian Government and locked himself in the Vatican. This anti-Italian stand of the Vatican, coupled with the corruption of the clergy, alienated most of the intelligent, patriotic Italians from the Roman Catholic Church. They retained a sentimental attachment to the church, but had no respect for the Clergy. This understandable politico-religious attitude became known as “anticlericalismo.”
Many of the Italian immigrants who settled in East Liberty were avowed anti-clerical. This attitude did not necessarily lead them to seek the purity of the Gospel of Salvation in Jesus Christ, but it kept them free from the oppressive domination of the priests.2
Thus, when Presbyterian missionaries came to the neighborhood, they found a number of Italians ready to hear their message of a Christianity with no popes. The majority of Italians in Pittsburgh remained Catholic, however, and this was never a very large congregation.
It would hardly seem like Pittsburgh if we didn’t include a good batch of utility cables in at least one picture.
Thomas Hannah designed this unusual church, which was built in about 1917.1 We find many churches in Pittsburgh where the sanctuary is upstairs, with Sunday-school rooms and social halls on the ground floor; this appears to be one of the very few where there are rooms above the sanctuary. It is still Presbyterian, but in 1961 came into the hands of the Bethesda United Presbyterian congregation.
When you look at this church, it looks back.
