Category: Churches

  • The Oldest Church in Beechview Was in Banksville

    Former St. Catherine’s Church

    The current St. Catherine of Siena Church, today part of St. Teresa of Kolkata parish, inhabits a big warehouse-like building from the 1960s on Broadway in Beechview. But St. Catherine’s parish predates Beechview itself. It was originally in the heart of the village of Banksville, where it inhabited this frame building that still stands today, after many subsequent adventures.

    Old church in Beechview

    City planning maps like to draw neighborhood boundaries down the middle of major streets. This often leads to absurd divisions where the spine street of a neighborhood is marked as the neighborhood boundary, putting half the neighborhood in a different neighborhood—as in Garfield and Arlington, for example. Banksville is another example: the neighborhood boundary goes right through the center of the old town of Banksville, putting the eastern half of it in Beechview, including this church. But when it was built, this church was in the heart of Banksville, right across Bank Street (later Gorn Avenue and now the driveway for this building) from the Banksville post office, the site of which is also in Beechview according to city planning maps.

  • St. Peter & St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Hall, Carnegie

    St. Peter and St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church

    Originally Ukrainian Greek Catholic, this church, built in 1906, was designed by Titus de Bobula with an extravagantly broad range of materials that no sane architect would attempt to harmonize. We are tempted to say it was fortunate that De Bobula was no sane architect; at any rate, he has pulled the rabbit out of his hat and made harmony out of dissonance.

    Central dome
    Left dome
    Cornerstone

    De Bobula did not sign the cornerstone, as he did at the First Hungarian Reformed Church and St. John the Baptist, but the lettering is certainly in his style.

    Church and hall

    Next door to the church is a parochial hall. If we interpret our sources correctly, the architect was Harry H. Lefkowitz, and the building was put up in 1928 or shortly after.1 It successfully matches the church by incorporating some of Titus de Bobula’s most distinctive quirks—the freakishly tall and narrow arches at the sides of the façade, the stonework at the top of the two-storey entrance arch, the horizontal scores in the brickwork around the entrance.

    Inscription: Ukrainska Parochiyalna Galya

    Father Pitt, who admits he does not speak Ukrainian, would translate “Ukrainska Parochiyalna Galya” as “Ukrainian Parochial Hall.”

    Hall and school
    1. “SS. Peter and Paul Church Takes Bids,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, May 27, 1928, p. 45. “The SS. Peter and Paul Greek Catholic Church is taking bids for a school and auditorium in James street, Carnegie. H. H. Lefkowitz is the architect.” “James Street” must be a mistake for “Jane Street,” the old name of Mansfield Boulevard, though there is a James Street a block away. The two names would be indistinguishable over the telephone. ↩︎
  • Second United Presbyterian Church, Highland Park

    Second United Presbyterian Church

    This church has an unusually eclectic history. It began as the Second United Presbyterian Church. Father Pitt does not know the original architect, but in 1915 there was a devastating fire, and a large reconstruction project was supervised by the architect John Louis Beatty. In 1933 the Presbyterians moved out, and this became the East End Baptist Church. Now it is the Union Project (an arts venue) and the meeting-place of the Jonah’s Call Anglican congregation.

    About two and a half years ago, old Pa Pitt published some pictures of this church, but something seemed different about it. It took a moment to realize: the decorative details on the tower have been cleaned. Back in 2021, all the stone had been cleaned except for the very top of the tower:

    Tower with soot still on it

    But now the tower is clean to its very tip:

    Top of the tower cleaned
    Second U. P. Church
    Union Project
    Main entrance
    Main entrance again
    Gothic arch
    Pinnacle
    Black pinnacle

    This little pinnacle is still the color the whole church used to be.

    East End Baptist Church

    Map showing the location of the church.

  • Old Church in Aspinwall

    Old church, perspective view

    This old Lutheran church1 is no longer a church, but the exterior has been preserved very well. It is an unusual style for a small church, much like a Queen Anne house with a corner tower. The woodwork in the front gable is especially ornate.

    Decorative woodwork in the gable
    1. It appears on a 1906 Hopkins map as “Evan’l Luth. Ch.” ↩︎
  • Homewood United Presbyterian Church

    Homewood United Presbyterian Church

    Most recently the Homewood Church of God, this building seems to be vacant right now; and although Homewood is prospering more than it has done in decades, it is not likely that this church can be saved. It was built in 1905, and renovated enough in 1961 to merit a new cornerstone.

    Entrance
    Tower
    Window over the entrance
    Idlewood Street side
    Homewood Avenue side

    Addendum: The architects were Struthers & Hannah. Source: American Architect and Building News, June 24, 1903, p. xv. “Architects Struthers & Hannah let the contract to Frank H. Fulmer for the Hamilton Avenue United Presbyterian Church to be erected at Idlewild St. and Homewood Ave. Cost $40,000.”

  • St. Mary’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, McKees Rocks Bottoms

    St. Mary’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, McKees Rocks Bottoms

    Now St. Mary Ukrainian Orthodox Parish. The history of Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainian Christians in the United States is complicated, and old Pa Pitt will not attempt to sort it out here. It ends with double Ukrainian churches in many neighborhoods, and that is the case here: there is a more recent Ukrainian Catholic church around the corner from this one.

    This impressive building was designed by Carlton Strong (whose full name was Thomas Willet Carlton Strong, and no wonder he usually shaved off half of it). Strong’s most famous work was the magnificently Gothic Sacred Heart in Shadyside, but he adapts very well to the Byzantine style here and gives the Bottoms a distinctive addition to its skyline.

    Dome
    Cornerstone dated 1922
    Entrance
    Front elevation
    From the rear
    Rectory

    The rectory is in a different style; it is certainly one of the most splendid houses in the Bottoms.

    Rear of the rectory, with fence in Ukrainian-flag colors

    The fence behind the rectory has recently been repainted in a patriotic color scheme.

    Church and rectory

    Carlton Strong, incidentally, came to Pittsburgh as a designer of apartment buildings, giving us the Bellefield Dwellings as his first work here. He later converted to the Catholic faith and became one of our most prominent church architects. You can read a good biography of Carlton Strong by the distinguished local historian Kathleen M. Washy on line:

    Designing in God’s Name: Architect Carlton Strong

  • St. John’s Ukrainian Catholic Church, McKees Rocks Bottoms

    St. John’s Ukrainian Catholic Church

    Built in 1960, this church adopted a radically simplified Byzantine architecture. It is much smaller than its Ukrainian Orthodox (formerly Ukrainian Greek Catholic) neighbor St. Mary’s around the corner, but both congregations continue to inhabit the same neighborhood without throwing bricks at each other.

    Perspective view
    Church and rectory

    The attached rectory is in an equally simple style; the pasted-on false shutters are an attempt to make it feel less institutional.

  • St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, McKees Rocks Bottoms

    St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church

    Now billing itself as just an “Orthodox” church, since the Russian Orthodox church in America became autocephalous in 1970 and has long included a broad spectrum of ethnicities. This church was built in 1914, and the architect was George W. King—a name that so far does not appear anywhere else on old Pa Pitt’s Great Big List of Buildings and Architects. “King” does not sound like a particularly Russian name, though Ellis Island could do funny things to people’s names. But he certainly seems to have captured the spirit of Russian church design, and these onion domes are one of the most distinctive features of the skyline of the Bottoms.

    Onion domes from the rear
    Front elevation
    Entrance and porch
    Round window
    Cornerstone dated 1914
    Perspective view from the south
    Rectory

    After the baroque elaboration of the church, the rectory seems almost ruthlessly plain. But it does its job well: it matches the church in materials, thus showing its association, but it directs all attention away from itself and toward the church, which seems theologically appropriate.

  • Holy Ghost Greek Catholic Church, McKees Rocks Bottoms

    Tower of Holy Ghost

    If you have ever come up the Ohio or across the McKees Rocks Bridge, chances are you have noticed this gold-domed tower rising from the McKees Rocks Bottoms. You would not have had time to appreciate the details, but appreciate them now. Just the tower is a remarkable piece of work. But the whole church is something extraordinary, and worth a visit to the Bottoms to see. Since the Bottoms is a neighborhood of surprising architectural riches, you will probably find yourself distracted by a dozen other wonders before you leave.

    Holy Ghost Greek Catholic Church

    Holy Ghost Greek (now Byzantine) Catholic Church is a startling outcropping of Art Nouveau in a neighborhood where we never expected to find it. The design was the work of McKees Rocks’ own John H. Phillips, as we know from the cornerstone.

    Cornerstone

    Here we have the date, the name of the architect, and the name of the contractor, along with the name of the pastor. There was one other church architect in Pittsburgh who routinely put his own name and the name of the contractor on cornerstones in florid Art Nouveau lettering, and that was Titus de Bobula. Looking at the style of this church, with its radical and constantly surprising Art Nouveau ornamentation, Father Pitt forms the hypothesis that Phillips knew of Titus de Bobula’s work and was strongly influenced by the eccentric Hungarian.

    Ornamental brickwork

    The corner cross picked out in bricks is wildly different from anything you have seen before. To the right of it we also see a variant of the square above a downward-pointing triangle that seems to have been a kind of signature for Phillips, appearing on at least three of the four buildings of his that Father Pitt has so far identified.

    From the rear

    The church behind the front is more conventional—which is also true of Titus de Bobula’s churches. Both de Bobula and Phillips relied on elaborate fronts to make their grand impression.

    Tower

    Certainly this tower makes a strong impression. There is nothing else quite like it in Pittsburgh. The variation of detail in the bricks is remarkable. But the forms are harmonized very cleverly, with each level echoing shapes from the other two.

    Cornerstone from the other side

    Phillips also designed the Ukrainian National Home around the corner, and Father Pitt hopes to identify more buildings by him in McKees Rocks. He has joined Pittsburgh’s exclusive little club of early modernists, and old Pa Pitt is delighted to make his acquaintance.

  • Lorenz Avenue Baptist Church, Elliott

    Lorenz Avenue Baptist Church

    Now New Culture Church, this little Gothic building and its attached parsonage make the most of their steeply sloped corner lot. We note that the minister would have had to go up the equivalent of two storeys to get from his parlor to the church sanctuary right next door.