This historically Black congregation has been in Swissvale just about since there was a Swissvale. According to our correspondent “Calvin,” this building was originally the First Presbyterian Church of Swissvale. When that church built its new stone church in 1909, this building was sold and moved. (Moving buildings was surprisingly common, and there were firms that specialized in nothing else.)
This historically Black congregation has met in this building for more than 120 years. Some of the stained glass is being restored, so old Pa Pitt will have to return for more pictures when the work is done. The architect was Frederick Sauer,1 who specified his favorite buff Kittanning brick for the job. These streets in the central part of the North Side are tiny, and Sauer’s challenge was to cram as much church as he could into a minuscule lot. He employed the usual Pittsburgh expedient of putting the sanctuary upstairs, with Sunday-school rooms and offices on the ground floor. It seems, by the way, that old Pa Pitt succeeded in finding the architect where other local historians failed (or didn’t try), but the citation is no surprise. This buff Kittanning brick was almost Sauer’s signature, and the building looks like what would happen if you squished St. Mary of the Mount into an impossibly tiny lot.
We are not sure who designed this church, and perhaps a parishioner can enlighten us. Our problem is too many architects: James D. Van Trump attributed it to R. N. Verbrowski, but in the Charette for December, 1949, we read: “ ‘You never know what the Russians are doing,’ is Thomas Pringle’s report on his St. Gregory Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church for Homestead. Of brick with stone trim and one-story, the church will include a chapel, will cost approximately $75,000 and, with the help of God in donations, may be undertaken next Spring.” The mystery would evaporate if we assumed that the design was Verbrowski’s, and Pringle was the local architect of record responsible for supervising the building. At any rate, whoever was responsible for the design went deep into Russian tradition to pick out the elements, but arranged them in a very modern fashion.
The cornerstone preserves the memory of a traumatic event in Homestead’s history: perhaps as traumatic as the 1892 labor war that temporarily turned Homestead into an independent republic, and even as traumatic as the closing of the mills in the 1980s. In 1941, with the Second World War raging in Europe and the American government wisely preparing for the possibility of being sucked into the conflict, the Homestead mill was enormously expanded. Blocks and blocks of densely inhabited streets were bulldozed; splendid churches were razed; ethnic communities were scattered. Everything between Sixth Avenue and the river was just gone. Most of the churches rebuilt somewhere in upper Homestead; but several of them, like this one, could not build until after the war was over and the surviving male halves of their congregations returned.
Homestead’s own Adam G. Wickerham, whose office was a short stroll down the street, designed this distinctive Gothic church, the foundation of which was laid in 1913.1 It replaced the earlier St. Matthew’s, which had been built only fourteen years before and still stands a few strides away. In the picture above, we can see another Wickerham building across the street: the old Rodef Shalom synagogue, now a nondenominational church.
Old Pa Pitt does not know the history of this later wing.
Charles J. Rieger was the architect of this little church with a big tower, which was built in 1899.1 (This is one of the earliest Rieger projects we have found; he had many years of productive work ahead of him.) The congregation must have grown rapidly, because only fourteen years later it moved a block up the street to a larger church. This building was sold to a Hungarian congregation; at some point it ceased to be a church and had a garage door cut into it.
It is traditional to paint onion domes blue like the heavens, or to gild them if the congregation is feeling rich. But Homestead was known for one thing, so these domes are glimmering Homestead stainless steel.
This church was designed by Button & McLean, who also designed yesterday’s Homestead Senior High School. The Button of the pair was Lamont Button, whom we have met as a designer of high-class houses for the upper middle classes. Ground was broken in 1936, but the church got stuck at the basement level. It remained stuck until 1949, when the job was finally finished.1
This grand Byzantine church, built in 1923, is set on a steep slope on an implausibly tiny street. Its congregation is still going: for cultural and administrative reasons, Eastern churches tend to continue long after their Western neighbors have thrown in the towel. The church itself was modeled after the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, which also served as the model for St. John the Baptist in Munhall; but the architect of this one, W. Ward Williams,1 took his model more literally than Titus de Bobula did. Curiously enough the church in Ukraine has the same kind of slope to deal with, as we see in this picture by Raimond Spekking:
The pediment is strictly classical, Doric rather than the Corinthian of its model, with the inscription “Russian Greek Catholic Church of SS. Peter and Paul.”
Marius Rousseau, an architect so versatile that it would be hard to assign a style to him, designed this church,1 whose onion domes are one of the characteristic features of Rankin as seen from the Rankin Bridge.
A crucifix in memory of a longtime priest, the Very Rt. Rev. Stephen Varzaly, sits in the front yard of the church.
Of all Titus de Bobula’s remaining works, this is the building that most astonishes architectural historians—the one architects study in their history classes—and we are pleased to say that it has had a good bit of money spent to stabilize and adapt it to its life as the National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural and Educational Center. For a long time it was the cathedral of the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy, until a new cathedral was built in a more suburban section of Munhall.
Titus de Bobula himself designed this plaque, as we can tell because the lettering is in his own very distinctive hand—the same style of lettering he used to sign his drawings. It was not common for architects to put their names on their buildings, but Titus de Bobula was not a common architect.
The rectory has been decaying, and we hope there will be enough money to carry the rehabilitation of the church into the rectory. They were built as a set, and Bobula’s rendering of the pair shows that the rectory was originally designed for a slightly higher budget. The places where it was cheapened are precisely the parts that are decaying now.
From the Czechoslovak Review, January, 1920 (but it is clearly De Bobula’s original rendering); found at Wikimedia Commons.
Some of the wooden porch columns have been lost; the ones that remain are getting crumbly.
Old Pa Pitt will admit that Braddock can be a sad place, but here is something to celebrate. This historic Black congregation is still going after nearly a century and a half, and its neat little building is beautifully kept.
The cornerstone of the building was laid late in 1906, when the Rev. Dr. J. T. Wanzer was pastor. The architect of the church was John Lewis Beatty,1 who was one of our most successful designers of Protestant churches. In this case the budget was small, but Mr. Beatty gave the congregation a building to be proud of. Certain economies were necessary: only the front is stone, the rest being ordinary red brick. But that front leaves an impression of solid respectability.
The Pittsburg Press used to publish an extensive column of “Afro-American Notes,” and in the edition for December 17, 1905 we find a paragraph about the plans for New Hope’s new building:
The New Hope Baptist Church of Braddock, Pa., is undoubtedly one of the most progressive churches in Braddock. They are making great preparations to begin their new building in the early spring. The Rev. J. T. Wanzer deserves great credit for the good work he is doing for the upbuilding of religious Christianity among the negro race. He is without doubt a good worker. Services every Sunday morning at 11 a. m. and evening at 7:30 p. m. All are welcome.
It was not always easy being Black in Braddock. While the plans for the church were in preparation, two of its most prominent members had a run-in with a gang of “hoodlums,” as we read in the Press:
Much bad feeling is being engendered by a gang of hoodlums, who infest the corner of Fourth street and Hawkins avenue, North Braddock, and attack negroes. Last night Reuben Poles and James Price, the former a trustee of the New Hope Baptist Church, colored, of Braddock, and the latter superintendent of the Sunday School, while on their way home from a church meeting, were called vile names, followed for several squares by five fellows, all over 20 years of age, and finally attacked. Poles was beaten into insensibility with a beer bottle.2
As we see from the language of the Press report, which describes the assailants as an infestation, most respectable citizens were disgusted and appalled by such “hoodlums.” But they were a fact that Black residents of the borough had to deal with. Undaunted, the members of New Hope finished their church—and they are still here, 120 years later, worshiping in the same building.
The addition to the left is well matched to the main church; it was probably built in the 1920s or 1930s.
