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.
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Old St. Luke’s
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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. -
Sacred Heart, Shadyside
Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3. Two splendid churches face each other across Shady Avenue. One is Ralph Adams Cram’s Calvary Episcopal. This is the other: Sacred Heart, one of the most tastefully beautiful Gothic churches in a city with one of the best collections of Gothic churches in the Western Hemisphere.
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Saints Peter and Paul: Our Most Endangered Landmark?
There are still too many endangered landmarks in Pittsburgh, in spite of a strong local preservation movement. This one is probably doomed. All that has saved it so far is that it would cost a good deal of money to tear down, and the revival of central East Liberty has not reached this part of the neighborhood yet. As much as it would cost to tear down, it would at this point cost much more to restore, and for what? No church would spend that kind of money, and it is really suitable for no other use.
The cornerstone is dated 1857, but that comes from the older and smaller church that preceded this building. The Rev. A. A. Lambing in 1880 described that building thus: “The church, situated on Larimer Avenue, is of brick, about 75 feet in length by 40 in width, and has a tower rising from the centre in front to the height of about 100 feet…. The church, though neatly finished, lacks the leading characteristics of any particular style of architecture.” The plaque below has the data for this building:
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St. Paul’s Cathedral
St. Paul’s Cathedral, the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, in the Fifth Avenue monumental district. (The Oakland neighborhood has at least three cathedrals—Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Antiochian Orthodox—or four if you count the Cathedral of Learning.) A cathedral is the architectural equivalent of a coral reef; over the centuries, it accumulates a diverse ecosystem of art and history. St. Paul’s is only a little over a century old, but it’s beginning to show signs of the rich diversity that only time can bring.
