Category: Churches

  • Mother of Sorrows Church, Norwood

    Mother of Sorrows Church

    Mother of Sorrows Church was sold to a nondenominational congregation some time ago, and when Father Pitt took these pictures some maintenance work was being done, so we hope the building will stand for a long time to come. But old Pa Pitt misses the original parish for one very selfish reason: every year it had a festival, and every year it advertised the festival with banners stretched across Island Avenue at the bottom of the hill proclaiming in big, cheery letters, “MOTHER OF SORROWS FESTIVAL!” If Father Pitt had known the parish was closing, he would have bought those banners and donated them to the History Center.

    Cornerstone: Mother of Sorrows Church, 1925 A. D.
    Mother of Sorrows, perspective view
    Mother of Sorrows, side view showing round apse

    Note the round apse in the rear.

    Mother of Sorrows with rectory

    The rectory was built from matching Kittanning brick; a later extension just about doubled the size of it.

    Rectory
    Connection between church and rectory

    The rectory was connected to the church by this little infill decorated with patterned brickwork.

    Tower dome

    The tower terminates in a cross-topped dome teetering on the brink of Art Deco.

    Mother of Sorrows Church
    Volutes
    Rose ornament
    Lantern
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
  • St. Francis de Sales Church, McKees Rocks

    St. Francis de Sales Church, McKees Rocks

    The dome is the star of this extraordinary building, which was put up in 1904 and is now slowly crumbling. The school behind it, heavily altered, is in use as a personal-care home; the church would be hard to find a use for even in a prosperous neighborhood. It ought to be preserved, but its most likely fate is to continue to crumble until it finally becomes too dangerous to leave standing.

    Dome of St. Francis de Sales
    Dome
    Dome from the back streets
    Side of the church
    Side entrance
    Side entrance
    West front
    Rear of the church
    A different side entrance
    Side entrance
    Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
  • Neville Island Presbyterian Church

    Neville Island Presbyterian Church

    About this church old Pa Pitt knows only what you see in these pictures. The sign has not changed since 2021, but the grounds are still mowed and the building is in good shape. (Addendum: The congregation informed the Presbytery that it would close the church in 2022, according to a Pittsburgh Presbytery newsletter [PDF].) Its most prominent feature is its tower with eye-catchingly prickly battlements.

    Neville Island Presbyterian Church
    Oblique view of the front of the church
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285.
  • McKees Rocks Presbyterian Church

    McKees Rocks Presbyterian Church

    Now Christ Community Church, this is a typical smaller Gothic church with a corner tower. The stone has not been cleaned of its decades of soot, making this one of our dwindling number of remaining black-stone churches.

    Corner tower
    Rear of the church
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens.

    A matching Sunday-school wing includes a round-backed auditorium.

  • Steeple of Third Presbyterian Church, Shadyside

  • First Baptist Church of McKees Rocks, West Park

    First Baptist Church, perspective view

    A small and beautiful Arts and Crafts interpretation of Gothic, with most of its original details intact, including the shingled gables, the wooden belfry, and the canopy over the tower entrance. The attached parsonage is later, but at least it nearly matches the brick.

    In spite of the name, the church is on the Stowe Township side of the municipal border that runs diagonally through the neighborhood of West Park.

    First Baptist Church
    First Baptist Church
  • Pentecostal Tabernacle, West Park

    Pentecostal Tabernacle

    A simple little Gothic church; it now belongs to Mancini’s bakery across Mancini Way.

    Pentecostal Tabernacle
    Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
  • Sewickley United Methodist Church

    Sewickley United Methodist Church

    The most striking feature (in two senses of the word “striking”) of this church is the great clock tower, which gives time to the whole village. In fact, the borough took over responsibility for maintaining the clock, as the church tells us in its page of Village Clock Tower Facts. The tower was finished in 1884, and in 1996 a thorough rebuilding was finished that included a new electronic clock to replace the replacement clock that had replaced the original clock many decades previously.

    Steeple
    Sewickley United Methodist Church
    Tower entrance
    Sanctuary entrance

    Cameras: Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • First Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis

    First Presbyterian Church

    This grand Gothic complex was one of two Presbyterian churches that stood on opposite corners of the same intersection. The other one was the First United Presbyterian (old Pa Pitt will probably never tire of that joke, which the Presbyterians hand to him on a silver platter). Eventually the United Presbyterian congregation united with this one, which is now known as the Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis, though it seems to have used the name Coraopolis Presbyterian relatively recently, when it picked the domain name for its Web site.

    The current lavish building was put up in 1929, as we learn from a postcard on the church’s history page, at a cost of $315,000 including furnishings.

    Cornerstone: First Presbyterian Church
    First Presbyterian Church
    First Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis
    Entrance
    Dransom
    Ornament
    Lantern
    Lantern
    First Presbyterian Church
    Now called Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis
    Tower
    Tower through branches
    Tower and tower entrance
    Tower and tower entrance
    School and office wing
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
  • Sewickley Presbyterian Church

    Sewickley Presbyterian Church

    This is one of the few remaining churches designed by Joseph W. Kerr, who was one of our top architects in the middle 1800s (he also designed the Shields Chapel nearby in Edgeworth). It opened in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War.

    In Father Pitt’s opinion, Mr. Kerr had good taste. Both this church and the Shields Chapel belong to the middle nineteenth century, but they were never embarrassingly out of date; to the last gasp of the Gothic style in America a hundred years later, an architect familiar with the idiom would have found this a pleasing and successful design.

    Steeple

    It is fortunate that the congregation has the money to keep the glorious steeple in excellent shape…

    Detail of Tower

    …right up to the iron pinnacle at the top.

    Pinnacle
    Tower entrance
    Side entrance
    Side of the church
    Prespective view of the church
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.