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.
This church was finished in 1893; the architects were the Kansas City firm of Vrydagh & Shepard. Thomas B. Wolfe, a native of Sewickley Heights, was working in Kansas City for Vrydagh & Shepard, so it was natural that he should be the one sent to Pittsburgh to supervise the church. While it was under construction or shortly afterward, Martin Vrydagh decided to move to Pittsburgh and join Wolfe, founding the prolific partnership of Vrydaugh (in about 1899 he changed the spelling of his name) & Wolfe.
It took old Pa Pitt a while to figure all that out, because every Pittsburgh reference—including Father Pitt’s own sites and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation plaque on the church—gave the name of the firm as Vrydaugh & Shepherd. Father Pitt began to get suspicious when he found that Web searches for “Vrydaugh & Shepherd” turned up this church and nothing else, so it was time to explore alternate spellings.
We also have pictures of Calvary Church at night and in the snow.
Built in 1874, this was the fourth church building put up by this congregation. Apparently this one proved adequate, because—
—this old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society shows that very little has changed except for the replacement of the slate roof with metal. As a bonus, the church’s matinee-idol minister judges us through his pince-nez from an inset.
One minor change: the sloped roof over this little corner entrance has been replaced with a gable filled in with siding.
Kiehnel & Elliott were one of the few Pittsburgh firms to adopt early modern styles at the turn of the twentieth century. When they took on a church, however, they turned completely traditional, and it would be hard to point out anything about this neat little church that sets it apart from the work of other good but conventional architects of the time. This one was built in 1915, and it is a typical Pittsburgh corner-tower Protestant church. Today it is one of our dwindling number of black stone churches, and the soot of the decades gives it a kind of evening-dress dignity it would not have had when it was young.
The church us beautifully kept by its current occupants, Victory Global Ministries, whose pastor disdains the pompous title “bishop” favored by many nondenominational ministers in favor of the original workaday meaning of the Greek ἐπίσκοπος: “Overseer.”
The vanishing of an early addition in the rear shows us something of the original color of the stone.
Built in 1898, this church was designed by Vrydaugh & Wolfe1 in a Romanesque style that carries over elements of the pre-Richardsonian version of Romanesque. It now belongs to the Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, which has kept it beautifully—even the spire, which usually disappears on churches like these.
An old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection shows how little the building has changed.
The domes of St. John the Baptist, with the skyline in the background, figure in many postcard views of Pittsburgh. So if you want to sell postcards, here is your chance. Like all Father Pitt’s pictures, these are donated to the public domain, so you can do what you like with them.
We also have pictures of the church from the other direction and some pictures of the interior.
The First German Evangelical Lutheran Church was founded in 1837, and it was downtown, or on the edge of downtown, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, until the commercial development of downtown Pittsburgh had scattered the congregation and made the land too valuable to keep. We can see from this building that the congregation had money to spend when the church moved to the East End. The architects were the Cleveland firm of Corbusier, Lenski & Foster (not that Le Corbusier, we should point out), who were much in demand as church designers, though this is the only one of their designs old Pa Pitt has found in Pittsburgh so far. By the time this church opened in 1928, the congregation was bilingual, with services in German and in English; so the new church was called Trinity Church.
Not hidden under a bushel.
The parsonage was designed by the same architects and built at the same time as the church.
