Father Pitt

Category: Churches

  • Avalon United Presbyterian Church

    Camera: Samsung Digimax V4.

    This splendid building was put up in about 1906 (Update: It was in the planning stages at the end of 1906; see the end of this article.) It has not been used as a church for about a quarter-century, but it is still kept scrupulously beautiful by the current owners. Compare Father Pitt’s photograph above with the old postcard below, printed when the church was very new (to judge by the utter lack of bushes or other landscaping).

    The style is interesting: old Pa Pitt might almost call it Richardsonian Gothic. It has the heaviness of the Romanesque style that Richardson was famous for, but with pointed arches—only just barely pointed, however, as if they are a little embarrassed about being caught in their Gothicness.

    Addendum: The architects were Allison & Allison. Source: The American Architect and Building News, December 1, 1906: “Avalon, Pa.—Architects Allison & Allison, Westinghouse Building, Pittsburg, have prepared plans for a stone church for the U. P. congregation, Avalon. Address the architects.” Now a private home, but beautifully kept.

  • Harmonist Church, Old Economy Village

    Still an active church, now as a Lutheran congregation, which would have annoyed George Rapp to no end, since he escaped from Lutheran persecution in Germany. This church was probably designed by George Rapp himself; it was built with bricks made by the Harmonists on site, and it was finished in 1831. The clock tower is delightful and distinctive, but the clock has stopped.

  • Grace Anglican Church

    This church dates from the late 1920s, but it looks timeless—it has a sort of Hollywood medieval look that would be at home in a Hollywood medieval movie. The congregation, after dwindling in the 1980s, is now vigorous, with an offshoot congregation in Edgeworth.

  • Old St. Luke’s

    Father Pitt is especially fond of Old St. Luke’s, partly for its history (its congregation was at the center of the Whiskey Rebellion), but mostly for its situation in a picturesque country churchyard.

  • Old Stone Church, Monroeville

    This church is not all that old, having been built in 1896; but it sits on a site where there has been a church since 1834, and a burying-ground since 1796. The Cross Roads Presbyterian Church has moved to a much larger building some distance away, but still maintains the cemetery. The borough owns this building, and the Monroeville Historical Society uses it.

    The bell tower was added in 1976; it is dedicated to George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. Father Pitt has not researched the subject thoroughly, but he suspects that this is the only bell tower in the world dedicated to Nikola Tesla.

  • St. Michael the Archangel Church, Munhall

    This Slovak church is no longer used, but the building is still kept in good condition.

    The Romanesque façade, with its colorful inlays, is something extraordinary even in a region of extraordinary churches.

    The relief of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, apostles to the Slavs, shows more than a little Art Deco influence.

    Until a few years ago, the tower held up a fine statue of St. Joseph the Worker, one of the last major works of the great Frank Vittor. It has been moved to St. Maximilian Kolbe parish, where you can see it at eye level.

  • Old St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral, Munhall

    Update: Some of the information about the architect was wrong in the original version of this article. Back in those days, the Society of Architectural Historians article on this church said, “Little is known about Budapest-born Titus de Bobula.” But Old Pa Pitt has fixed that. Now you can read his article about Titus de Bobula and know way too much.

    The cathedral moved farther out into the suburbs (though still in Munhall borough), and this is now the National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural and Educational Center—an institution that keeps no regular hours and obviously can barely afford to keep the building standing. But the church is loved, and we may hope that whatever love can accomplish will be done for it. The architect was Titus de Bobula, a Hungarian who designed several churches around here. He is a fascinating character: he went back to Hungary in the 1920s and was imprisoned for plotting to overthrow the government; then he came back here and became an arms dealer, while simultaneously working on the designs for the structural aspects of Nikola Tesla’s fantastic, and possibly delusional, electronic superweapons, which of course were never built. It is not often that we find such a direct line from a Carpatho-Rusyn cathedral to the world of science fiction.

    Connoisseurs of elegant lettering should not miss the plaque identifying the architect, contractor, and building date. Father Pitt suspects that de Bobula himself designed it: there is nothing else quite like it in Pittsburgh, and the style seems very much like the Art Nouveau of Budapest. (Update: The style is identical to the lettering De Bobula used to sign some of his drawings, so we may be confident that it is his.)

  • Old St. Luke’s

    This colonial-era congregation in what is now Scott Township found itself at the center of the Whiskey Rebellion, which began when General John Neville, a church member and an old pal of President Washington’s, was appointed tax collector. The current stone building was put up in 1852, but the congregation was founded in 1765.

  • Fawcett Church, Cecil Township

    The congregation began as a house meeting in 1793 and was officially founded in 1812. The current church, which replaced an earlier log church, was built in 1843 and restored after a fire in 1944. Families of early settlers are buried in the churchyard.

    Father Pitt has never run across “Nazarene” as a male given name before. The stonecutter made some very elegant letters, but “May the 1th” was as wrong in 1839 as it is today.

    These pictures are made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, so no permission is needed to use them for any purpose whatsoever.

  • St. Basil Catholic Church, Carrick

    In the light of the setting sun, St. Basil’s presides benevolently over part of Carrick, a neighborhood of steep and crowded hills.

    These pictures have been donated to Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, so no permission is needed to use them for any purpose whatsoever.