Father Pitt

Category: Churches

  • Beth-Eden Baptist Church, Manchester

    Beth-Eden Baptist Church

    On the end of Juniata Street, where it meets Chateau Street, is a cluster of three Baptist churches all huddled together. Two of them originally belonged to other denominations, but this one has been Baptist all its life. Originally the Beth-Eden Baptist Church, it is now called Pilgrim Baptist Church. The building was put up in 1903, when weighty Romanesque was still a popular style in Allegheny and Pittsburgh. The massive tower and the rounded end make a strong impression.

    Tower
    Tower again
    From Juniata Street

    Addendum: The architect was James N. Campbell. Source: “Pretty New Church to Go Up in Allegheny,” Pittsburg Post, April 17, 1901, p. 2. “The structure is to be erected at Chartiers and Juniata streets… The new church will be a handsome buff brick structure, with stone trimmings… The church will be of simple classic style, with colonial effects. A high tower will grace one of the corners of the structure. The church auditorium will have a seating capacity of 450, while the Sunday school room adjoining the auditorium will accommodate 600. A feature of the Sunday school room will be the arrangement of class rooms and its large gallery. The basement of the church will contain ladies’ parlors, kitchen and dining rooms… The plans were prepared by Architect James N. Campbell.” The drawing accompanying the article shows a plan somewhat different from the final building, but in a similar style.

  • St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Manchester

    St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

    Here is another entry in our expanding catalogue of churches with the sanctuary upstairs. Now the Northside Church of God, this church, built in 1890, is a typical rowhouse-neighborhood church, making the most of its small lot. The mansard roof over the tower section looks later; it is possible that a tower or spire was damaged and replaced.

    Inscription

    We can just make out the not-quite-obliterated name “St. Paul’s” above the date.

    Front of the church
    Cornerstone

    This cornerstone was obviously added later, and the most probable explanation is that it marks the date when the church passed out of the hands of the Lutherans.

    Side of the church

  • Hill Top United Methodist Church, Allentown

    Hill Top United Methodist

    A Romanesque church whose immense chimney dwarfs its stubby little tower, this is probably the only church in the neighborhood still serving its original congregation.

    Oblique view

  • Knoxville Methodist Episcopal Church

    Knoxville Methodist Episcopal Church

    A small church whose weighty Romanesque design makes it seem larger than it is. Of course we have the usual Pittsburgh feast of utility cables in front, which old Pa Pitt is too lazy to take out. The building now belongs to a nondenominational congregation called the Holy Faith Tabernacle Church.

    Corner view

    Until 1939, there were two main streams of Methodism in the United States: the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant Church. Both were represented in Knoxville: we saw the First Methodist Protestant Church of Knoxville earlier.

  • Resurrection Church, Brookline

    Resurrection Church

    If old Pa Pitt were more ambitious, he would remove those utility cables from the photograph, or from the street if he were more ambitious than that.

    Resurrection Church was built in 1939 in an interesting modernist Gothic style, anticipating the streamlined modernist Gothic that would have a brief vogue after the Second World War. This design managed to give the congregation a sumptuous Gothic interior while keeping the exterior outlines starkly simple. The main entrance, for example, is recessed far into the building, so that only by standing right in front of it can we see the elaborate Gothic tracery and inscription.

    An update: The 1939 church was designed by William P. Hutchins, who gave us many distinguished late-Gothic churches and schools, including St. Mary of Mercy downtown.

    Entrance
    Inscription
    Side entrance

    One of the side entrances.

    The Light of the World

    “Light of the World” relief over the side entrance.

    Resurrection School

    Before 1939, Resurrection Parish worshiped in the school next door, which was built in 1909. As usual, the Brookline Connection site has a thorough history of Resurrection Parish. From it we learn that the school was built in stages: the first two floors of the front were built first, with the rear and top floor added later. (Addendum: We have found that the architect of the second-floor addition was John T. Comès.1 This strongly suggests that Comès was the architect of the original building.) We are also told that the sanctuary was on the “ground floor,” but as we see from this picture, “ground floor” can be a slippery concept in Pittsburgh.

    Cornerstone
    Oblique view

    The school closed some time ago, and it is now a retirement home. Resurrection Church is now a worship site of St. Teresa of Kolkata parish, which also includes St. Pius X church in Brookline and St. Catherine of Siena in Beechview.

    1. Source: The Construction Record, January 13, 1912: “Architect John T. Comes, 1005 Fifth avenue, will be ready for estimates about January 15th on erecting a one-story brick fireproof parochial addition at Brookline, for the R. C. Church of the Resurrection, Brookline. Cost $15,000.” The original building cost $22,000. ↩︎

  • Church of the Incarnation, Knoxville

    Church of the Incarnation

    Now the Graceland Community Church. This old Episcopal church is a frame structure sheathed in Perma-Stone or some similar artificial siding. Old Pa Pitt does not know the history of the building, but from old maps it seems to date to the 1880s. The square windows in the rear part indicate a later extension, after 1923 (according to the maps), and the Perma-Stone may have been applied at the same time.

    There is a certain traditional shape for Episcopal churches, and it is often possible to identify, or at least suspect, an old Episcopal church simply by its shape. They tend to be small but rich, with a very steeply pitched roof and Gothic details.

    Graceland Community Church

    Map

    [Correction: In the first version of this article, Father Pitt had carelessly typed “Church of the Resurrection” in the headline. He was thinking of a church of that name in Brookline, which will appear here shortly.]

  • Some Details of St. Paul’s Cathedral

    Front of St. Paul’s
    Tower
    Window
    Tracery
    Pinnacle
    Pinnacle
    Ornament
    View from opposite corner

  • St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church, Arlington

    Now a residential duplex, this is a tiny Romanesque church made to seem much more substantial by its weighty tower and its steeply pitched roof.

  • St. Josaphat’s in Black and White

    Two attempts at arty photography with the old Samsung Digimax V4 set on monochrome mode. We also have more ordinary color pictures of St. Josaphat’s.

  • Swedish Congregational Church, Lawrenceville

    Swedish Congregational Church

    There is something about men’s clubs: when they take over a building, the first thing they do is block out as much of the natural light as possible. But the outlines of the old windows are clear enough: it is not hard to imagine this building the way it was when it was a Swedish church.

    This is a late example of the style of modest church more typical of the middle 1800s. It has all the elements—the shallow-pitched roof, the walls divided into sections by simple pilasters, the date stone in the gable, the crenellations. We also note that typical nineteenth-century Pittsburgh adaptation to a tiny lot: the sanctuary is on the second floor, with social hall and schoolrooms or offices on the ground floor.

    1897

    Without the date stone, old Pa Pitt would have guessed that this church was twenty years or more earlier.

    Oblique view

    The Amvets seem to have moved out, and it looks as if the building is vacant now. Considering the mushrooming value of Lawrenceville real estate, it will probably be filled or demolished soon.

    Swedish Congregational Church