This grand Gothic complex was one of two Presbyterian churches that stood on opposite corners of the same intersection. The other one was the First United Presbyterian (old Pa Pitt will probably never tire of that joke, which the Presbyterians hand to him on a silver platter). Eventually the United Presbyterian congregation united with this one, which is now known as the Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis, though it seems to have used the name Coraopolis Presbyterian relatively recently, when it picked the domain name for its Web site.
The current lavish building was put up in 1929, as we learn from a postcard on the church’s history page, at a cost of $315,000 including furnishings.
William P. Hutchins was the architect of this church, built in 1924. It takes its inspiration from ancient Roman basilicas, with a light overlay of Art Nouveau. Most architectural historians would probably just say “Romanesque” and leave it at that, but it is a more interesting building when we recognize its ancient sources.
Here is a fine example of the last gasp of Gothic architecture in America. This church was built as late as 1951 in a style that would have seemed reasonably conservative twenty years earlier. The building has passed into the hands of the Immanuel Orthodox Presbyterian congregation, and members were spiffing up the grounds while old Pa Pitt was taking these pictures.
The west-front entrance is very similar to what William P. Hutchins did more than two decades earlier at St. Francis Xavier Church in Brighton Heights; perhaps they were both inspired by the same historical example.
Around the corner, behind the church, is a Sunday-school building that dates from 1928 in a style we might call Educational Gothic.
A small but very rich classical bank still in use as a bank.
The clock suggests that the bankers will consult an astrologer before investing your money.
Stock-photo sites will charge you good money for patently metaphorical pictures like these. Yet old Pa Pitt gives them to you for free, released with a CC0 public-domain donation, so there are no restrictions on what you can do with them.
Now the Coraopolis United Methodist Church. The father-and-son team of T. B. and Lawrence Wolfe, part of a century-long dynasty of Wolfes in Pittsburgh architecture, designed this church, built in 1924.
The building this one replaced is also still standing—a typical late-1800s Pittsburgh Rundbogenstil church, and one with the sanctuary upstairs if you come in by the front door. It was a short block away, and it is still in use as a church, now Coraopolis Abundant Life Ministries.
A simple but pleasingly proportioned telephone exchange that was almost certainly designed by Press C. Dowler, who got all the telephone company’s local business in the Art Deco era.
This little armory was built in 1938. The striking design, stripped-down Art Deco or lightly Decoized modern, was by Thomas Roy Hinckley, about whom old Pa Pitt knows only that he designed this building, the single work attributed to him at archINFORM. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Built in the late 1890s, this Pittsburgh & Lake Erie commuter station was designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, one of at least three firms that claimed to be the successors of the great H. H. Richardson, and perhaps the one with the most direct claim, since Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge were the ones who completed Richardson’s outstanding jobs when he died. It is a temple of locomotion in the high Richardsonian style that may remind you of another Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge building in Pittsburgh, Shadyside Presbyterian Church.
After many years of raising money and praying, the community is working on restoring this landmark to pass down to future generations.
Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Most of these pictures are stacks of three different exposures, so that detail is preserved in both the highlights and the shadows.
This is a fine building in a good neighborhood, and you could buy it right now and move in. You might have to spend another million or so fixing it up, but the structure is sound and the interior of the sanctuary, from what we can see on that real-estate site, is intact in the most important details. It does need work, but the best parts of the interior are still there. If you are a congregation looking for a sanctuary, you can put your teenage members to work. That’s why you have youth groups, after all.
The church was built in 1915; the architect was Thomas Hannah, a big deal in Pittsburgh architecture. Comparing the church today to an old postcard, we can see that nothing has changed on the outside.
Well, one thing has changed. The church accumulated decades of industrial grime, turning it into one of our splendid black-stone churches, and the blackness, though fading, has not been cleaned off. Father Pitt hopes the church will pass into the hands of someone who appreciates it in its current sooty grandeur.
The other thing that is different is the long-gone building behind the church in the postcard. It was almost certainly the older sanctuary, probably kept standing as a social hall. It has been gone for years now.
The style of the church is what we might call Picksburgh Perpendicular, the common adaptation of Perpendicular Gothic to the more squarish auditorium-like form of Protestant churches that emphasized preaching over liturgy. Old Pa Pitt will admit that he does not like the stubby secondary tower on the left. It is probably very useful in providing space for a stairwell, but the two towers are too widely separated, as if they are not on speaking terms. The emphatic corner tower is the star of the show, and the other tower seems to be making an ineffectual attempt to upstage it. In spite of that quibble, though, this is a beautiful building that deserves appreciative owners.
