Construction of the new addition was still finishing up when old Pa Pitt last visited. Here is a pile of stones.
More pictures of the Church of the Ascension, and some pictures of the church in 2013, when it still wore a coat of black.
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Some Details of the Church of the Ascension, Shadyside
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Kodak Retinette with Kentmere Pan 100 film. -
Ingomar Methodist Episcopal Church
This is an old congregation, founded in 1837, and its adjoining cemetery has some stones dating from shortly after that. It has grown continuously; the building you see here was designed by Chauncey W. Hodgdon and built in 1915, and encrusted with additions fore and aft in later years. But the congregation (still Methodist, but advertising itself these days just as “Ingomar Church”) outgrew this church and built a much bigger one across the street; this is now the Ingomar Church Community Life Center.
The 1915 church was originally built very cheaply; its final cost of about $9,000 was roughly equivalent to the price of two middle-class houses at the time. A good history of the church was written in 1962 by Margaret L. Sweeney, and we take our information from that booklet (but we have corrected the spelling of the architect’s name).
Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10. The new building across the street is in a grandiose New Classical style that recalls colonial New England churches and refracts them through a Postmodernist lens.
Ingomar is an unincorporated community that straddles two municipalities. Most of the church grounds and the cemetery are in the borough of Franklin Park, but the border with McCandless Township runs diagonally through this building.
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Montours Church, Robinson Township
The current building is only a century old, but the congregation of Montours Church—also spelled Montour’s or Montour, depending on where you look—was founded in 1778, and the adjoining cemetery is full of Revolutionary War veterans.
A modern chapel built in 1978 is as tall as it is long, with a striking window at the far end.
A bell cast in Cincinnati in 1888 sits beside the church; it probably came from the older building that the 1924 church replaced.
“Van Duzen & Tift Cincinnati.”
Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G with Open Camera. “Buckeye Bell Foundry 1888.”
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Union Church, Robinson Township
Father Pitt thinks this is the most picturesquely sited church in Allegheny County. On a day of rapidly changing lighting, he captured it in multiple moods.
The cemetery is stuffed with Revolutionary War veterans, and several of them will be appearing over at Pittsburgh Cemeteries.
Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Kodak EasyShare Z981; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
New Addition to the Church of the Ascension, Shadyside
The Church of the Ascension, an obviously prosperous Anglican congregation in Shadyside, has just finished a new narthex and several other improvements. The architects were Rothschild Doyno Collaborative.
No lights are hid under bushels here.
The new entrance was meant to be “welcoming and transparent.” It does not attempt to imitate the style of William Halsey Wood’s original design for the church, but it does use similar stone, so that it seems to belong to the church.
The cornerstone is the only direct imitation: it is patterned after the original cornerstone of the church.
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Valley Presbyterian Church, Imperial
This charming Arts-and-Crafts Gothic church is the most distinguished building in the little hamlet of Imperial. It was built, according to the date stone, in 1911 for a congregation that had been founded in 1840, and the large cemetery behind the church has tombstones going back to that foundation.
The outstanding feature of the church is its belfry, with simple and massive woodwork that echoes the Gothic arches below, but also flares out into bell shapes, like a Sunday-school-supplement illustration of the bells within.
Kodak EasyShare Z981; Kodak EasyShare Z1285. A postwar Sunday-school wing in the rear is built from nearly matching brick.
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First Baptist Church, Coraopolis
Though the renovations with modern materials—understandable for a congregation on a tight budget—have not always been sympathetic, this is still a valuable relic of the era of Victorian frame Gothic churches. As Pittsburgh and its suburbs prospered in the twentieth century, most of those churches were replaces with bigger and brickier structures, so although these churches were once all over western Pennsylvania, remnants like this are fairly rare. This one no longer serves the Baptist congregation (or the Anglican congregation that inhabited it more recently), but some maintenance work seems to be going on.
The distinctive wooden belfry is still in good shape, though missing a few pieces of trim and wanting a bit of paint. The trim is simple and could be replicated in somebody’s garage woodshop.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
St. Stephen’s Church, Sewickley
A very stony Anglican church that has kept its rich black coat of soot.
Gargoyles guard the building from the top of the tower.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
Second Presbyterian Church, Coraopolis
Now the Church of God, this is a modest church in an abstract version of Perpendicular Gothic, with castle-like battlemented towers fore and aft. The stained glass has been removed, possibly because it was too decrepit to restore, or possibly to satisfy the iconoclastic tendencies of American Evangelicalism.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
Mother of Sorrows Church, Norwood
Mother of Sorrows Church was sold to a nondenominational congregation some time ago, and when Father Pitt took these pictures some maintenance work was being done, so we hope the building will stand for a long time to come. But old Pa Pitt misses the original parish for one very selfish reason: every year it had a festival, and every year it advertised the festival with banners stretched across Island Avenue at the bottom of the hill proclaiming in big, cheery letters, “MOTHER OF SORROWS FESTIVAL!” If Father Pitt had known the parish was closing, he would have bought those banners and donated them to the History Center.
Note the round apse in the rear.
The rectory was built from matching Kittanning brick; a later extension just about doubled the size of it.
The rectory was connected to the church by this little infill decorated with patterned brickwork.
The tower terminates in a cross-topped dome teetering on the brink of Art Deco.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
