Father Pitt

Category: Churches

  • St. Paul of the Cross Monastery Church, South Side Slopes

    A beautiful basilica-style church remarkable as much for its site as for its architecture. It stands on an eminence on the precipitous South Side Slopes, with a magnificent view of the city skyline. The west front is precisely at the upper end of Monastery Street, making a startling vista for lost tourists who find themselves turning off Brosville Street. The interior is full of rich marble and gorgeous sculptures, with a pipe organ installed right at the front of the church by a former rector who considered music important.

  • St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, South Side

    The South Side Church Crawl brought a good number of tourists to see a number of South Side churches. This is probably the church that says “South Side” to Pittsburghers in general; its distinctive domes are prominent from the Liberty Bridge, the McArdle Roadway, and across the river.

  • St. Augustine Church, Lawrenceville

    John T. Comes (sometimes spelled Comès) designed a splendid Romanesque church for this congregation. It was built, however, on an improbably narrow street in the most crowded section of Lower Lawrenceville, so it is impossible to see the front as Comes designed it—unless we appeal to technology, merging fifteen separate photographs to produce one overall picture. In spite of the distortion caused by taking the pictures from a low position and altering the perspective, this imperfect picture comes very close to presenting the front of the church as the architect drew it.

  • East Liberty Presbyterian Church

    Franklin Toker suggests that, per square foot, this is the most expensive church ever built in America. It was built with Mellon money, so it is sometimes called the Mellon Fire Escape by locals who see it as an atonement for the sins inevitable on the way to becoming the richest family in America; but the congregation prefers the nickname “Cathedral of Hope.” The architect was Ralph Adams Cram, who could easily be called America’s greatest Gothic architect, and the Mellons gave him free rein and an unlimited budget. The result was Cram’s ultimate fantasy Gothic cathedral, whose massive central tower dominates the skyline of the neighborhood. To the left, in the distance, we see the Highland Building.

  • Third Presbyterian Church

    “Mrs. Thaw’s Chocolate Church,” as it was called when it was put up, this splendid building was designed by Theophilus P. Chandler, Jr., and opened in 1903. Mary Thaw, the widow of Henry Thaw, paid for most of it, and doubtless specified the architect; Chandler had also designed the Thaws’ mansion, which (alas) is long gone. Chandler was also the architect of First Presbyterian downtown and the titanic Duncan mausoleum and column in the Union Dale Cemetery.

    The picture of the front above is put together from eight different photographs, which is the only way old Pa Pitt could get the whole building from this angle.

    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.

  • Wide-Angle Views of St. Paul’s

    Camera: Canon PowerShot S45.

    An update: When Father Pitt first posted this article, the pictures were distorted. That was because old Pa Pitt had not figured out how to choose the proper projection in the Hugin panorama software. What a difference it makes!

    By stitching together multiple photographs, we get these impossibly wide-angled views of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland. Since the street in front is busy, we also get some ghost figures on the sidewalk and ghost vehicles driving past.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

  • Mount Washington Methodist Episcopal Church

    This church sits on one of those impossibly narrow Pittsburgh streets, and it would have been very difficult to get a picture of the whole front this way without the marvels of Hugin stitching technology. A little wide-angle distortion makes the pinnacles turn inward, but overall this is a very good representation of the front of the building. It is no longer a church; now it is an apartment building, but either an appreciation of the architecture or a limited budget has kept the current owners from making any significant changes to the exterior.

  • Shadyside Presbyterian Church

    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.

    Designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, the successors to H. H. Richardson, this church has an honest Richardsonian pedigree to go with its Richardsonian Romanesque style.

    Can you tell that old Pa Pitt is enjoying his new software toy? The picture above is a wide-angle shot stitched together from nine separate photographs. The fisheye view below is stitched together from six; if you click on it, you can have it at about 38 megapixels.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

    Finally, here’s a picture from the north side of the church, where there is room to get far away enough to take the picture all in one shot.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

  • St. Mary of the Mount

    Here is a huge picture of the front of St. Mary of the Mount on Grandview Avenue, Mount Washington. It’s made from eight individual pictures, all cleverly sewn together by Hugin. If you click on the picture, you can enlarge it to 4,692 × 6,569 pixels, or about 30 megapixels. (It could have been larger, but old Pa Pitt decided that 30 megapixels was probably large enough.) Many thanks to Wikimedia Commons for being willing to host huge pictures at such a level of detail.

    The architect was Frederick Sauer, whose conventionally attractive churches do nothing to prepare us for the eccentric whimsy he could produce when he let his imagination run wild.

  • First United Methodist Church

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare 1485 IS.

    Technically in Bloomfield, this church sits on the corner where Bloomfield, Shadyside, and Friendship come together. The architects, Weary & Kramer, were a firm from Akron that specialized in heavy Romanesque and Gothic. This church is obviously inspired by H. H. Richardson’s designs, especially his courthouse and his Trinity Church in Boston.

    According to the Architectural Record, this congregation used to be called Christ’s Methodist Church.

    Camera: Canon PowerShot S45.