Father Pitt

Category: Churches

  • Church of the Epiphany, Lower Hill

    West front of Epiphany Church

    Edward Stotz was the architect of the building for Epiphany Church, with considerable interior work done by John T. Comès. It was built in 1903 to replace the old St. Paul’s Cathedral downtown as the downtown parish church after Henry Frick made the Catholic Diocese an offer it couldn’t refuse, and Epiphany served as the temporary cathedral for three years while the new St. Paul’s was going up in Oakland.

    Epiphany Church

    When the Lower Hill was demolished for “slum clearance,” Epiphany and its school were the only buildings allowed to survive. Thus Pittsburgh accomplished, here and at Allegheny Center, what Le Corbusier had failed to do in Paris: we created a sterile modern wasteland punctuated by a few ancient landmarks pickled in brine.

    Detail of the West Front

    These Romanesque columns and arches strongly remind old Pa Pitt of organ pipes.

    Rose Window
    West Front
    Statue of Christ

    Christ stands at the peak of the west front.

    Statue of St. Peter

    On Christ’s right hand, St. Peter with his key.

    Statue of St. Paul

    On Christ’s left hand, St. Paul with his book.

    Angel

    An angel with plenty of anti-pigeon armor prays for worshipers as they enter.

    Epiphany Church
    Epiphany School

    The school is built in a simpler Romanesque style that links and subordinates it to the church.

    “Epiphany” inscribed on the school
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Officially the Lower Hill has ceased to exist. It is counted as part of downtown in the city’s administrative scheme. But it has never been integrated into downtown, and indeed was forcibly cut off from downtown by the Crosstown Boulevard—a bad mistake recently ameliorated somewhat by building a park on top of the boulevard. With the new FNB Financial Center and other developments, there is some hope that this neglected wasteland may become city again. Meanwhile, Epiphany, now part of Divine Mercy Parish, still serves downtown worshipers, and perhaps will be there for new residents as the neighborhood grows and changes.

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  • First Christian Church, Allegheny West

    First Christian Church

    This interesting modernist church was built in 1963, as we find from the attractive plaque by the entrance:

    Date plaque with date 1963

    The balance of modern design and hand-crafted artisanship in the lettering is very appealing.

    Front of the church

    The architects of the church were Williams & Trebilcock.1 The church was dedicated on April 5, 1964; it replaced a building that had been next to the old Presbyterian Hospital. This building now belongs to Living Word Ministry.

    First Christian Church from across the street
    Left side of the church
    Right side of the church
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Bethel Presbyterian Church, Perry South

    Bethel Presbyterian Church

    You might pass this building by on your way up North Charles Street and never think of it as anything other than another outcropping of generic ugliness. In fact it is a rare surviving frame church from the 1880s. It has been covered in sheets of cartoon fake brick, and the windows have been halved, but the building is still here. It was built before 1890 on Gallagher Street, near the intersection with Taggart Street, as the Bethel Baptist Church. By about 1900, Gallagher had changed its name to Melrose Avenue, and this was known as the Melrose Avenue Presbyterian Church. It kept that name as Taggart Street changed to North Charles Avenue.

    The Presbyterian congregation has almost been erased from history—it is hard to find more than glancing references to it—but the building has been occupied by a nondenominational congregation.

    Melrose Avenue Presbyterian Church
    Bethel Presbyterian Church
    Entrance
    Melrose Avenue Presbyterian Church
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Hazelwood Christian Church

    Hazelwood Christian Church

    Here is another church with the sanctuary upstairs, if you look at the front. This is Pittsburgh, though, so upstairs is the ground floor in the rear.

    Front elevation
    Entrance
    Cornerstone: “Christian Church, 1921”
    Front elevation really big
    Nikon COOLPIX P100; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G
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  • Church of St. Stephen Proto-Martyr, Hazelwood

    Church of St. Stephen Proto-Martyr

    A year and a half ago, old Pa Pitt published pictures of St. Stephen Proto-Martyr, but he was unable to get a picture of the front, because the leaves were on the trees, and the front looked like this:

    Front obscured by leaves

    On a gloomy afternoon recently, however, he happened to be in Hazelwood, and the trees were only beginning to leaf, so it was possible to make out the building through the bare branches.

    Perspective view

    The church was built in 1902; it is one of the most important works of Frederick Sauer, and it is hanging by a thread. The building is not in regular use, but not precisely abandoned. We will describe it as Endangered on our six-point scale of Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, and Demolished.

    Church of St. Stephen Proto-Martyr
    West front

    To cut through the clutter of branches and bring out the building, Father Pitt tried several exposures with two different cameras and different kinds of processing afterward. He did not come up with any outstanding pictures, but at least the outlines of the design are clear now.

    West front
    Nikon COOLPIX P100; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Reformed Presbyterian Church, Perry Hilltop

    Reformed Presbyterian Church

    A small but rich corner-tower Gothic church, probably built around the time of the First World War. It has been lovingly restored as a private home.

    Perrysville Avenue front of the church
    Side of the church

    Note the bell in the side yard.

    Reformed Presbyterian Church
    Reformed Presbyterian Church
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Immaculate Conception Church, Bloomfield

    Immaculate Conception Church

    Update: This church was demolished shortly after this article appeared. It seems the misunderstanding we mentioned below was not so easy to clear up.

    This modernist church was dedicated by Cardinal Wright in 1960. The architects were Belli & Belli of Chicago. The stained glass was by Pittsburgh’s Hunt Studios; the scribbly outlines visible from the outside are typical of their postwar work. The church was abandoned by the diocese, but the last old Pa Pitt heard it was being worked on for another use. (In fact there was a stop-work order pasted on the window when Father Pitt walked by in February, but he assumes that is just a minor misunderstanding that will be cleared up.)

    Panorama of Immaculate Conception Church
    Turret
    Immaculate Conception Church
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Canon PoaerShot SX150 IS.

    Map.

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  • Point Breeze Presbyterian Church

    St. Paul Baptist Church

    Now St. Paul Baptist Church. Built in 1887, it was designed by Brooklyn architect Lawrence B. Valk, whose church designs can be found all over the country. (In about 1900, Valk and his son moved to Los Angeles, where they became bungalow specialists but continued turning out the occasional church.)

    Point Breeze Presbyterian Church

    The tower with its huge open Romanesque arch dominates the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Penn Avenue. After the tower, the most eye-catching thing is the porch, with its even huger arch and its crust of terra-cotta tiles.

    Porch
    Porch roof with terra cotta
    Side of the porch
    Tower
    Side entrance

    The side entrance also gets a big arch, and even the basement door gets a stony arched porch.

    Basement entrance
    Rear of Point Breeze Presbyterian Church
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
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  • Tenth United Presbyterian Church, Dutchtown

    Tenth United Presbyterian Church

    This church has a complicated history. It was built as the Tenth United Presbyterian Church. In 1940, it was sold to the Catholic Diocese and became Mary Immaculate Church, the Italian parish in Dutchtown. It went through several parish mergers and names—Our Lady, Queen of Peace, being the most recent—before being sold again, and today it serves as Jonah’s Call Anglican Church. The original church is a typical Pittsburgh corner-tower Protestant church, but the Catholics made it their own with some fine sculpture, to which the Anglicans fortunately have no objection. The Catholic congregation also moved the main entrance, which had been in the tower; the old entrance made a good frame for the Blessed Virgin.

    Mary Immaculate
    Perspective view of the Mary Immaculate sculpture
    Maria Immaculata
    Tenth United Presbyterian Church
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Evangelische Imanuel’s Kirche, Dutchtown

    Evangelische Imanuel’s Kirche

    Built for a German Reformed congregation, Imanuel Evangelical Church later became a Methodist church, and then an art gallery. This is another city church with the sanctuary upstairs.

    Front entrance with inscription

    The inscription on the front tells us that the church was built in 1859 and rebuilt in 1889. Father Pitt does not know how extensive the rebuilding was, but he might guess that the ground-floor windows on the side, with their angular Gothic arches, were from the 1859 building. The carved stonework ornaments probably date from 1889.

    Dragon in Romanesque foliage

    Whenever old Pa Pitt looks into Romanesque foliage and sees somebody looking back at him, he suspects our master of Romanesque grotesqueries, Achille Giammartini.

    Dragon carving
    View across the Tripoli Street bridge
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    The Parkway North just missed this building when it tore Dutchtown in two.

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