This church, built in 1955, belonged to a Slovenian parish in the little Slovenian enclave in Upper Lawrenceville. Father Pitt was not able to find the name of the architect, but he would be almost flabbergasted if it were not Ermes Brunettini, whose St. Ignatius de Loyola Church in Glendale shares so many very individual quirks that it seems almost like the same design adapted to a different site.
Although the parish was suppressed, the church has found other uses, and neighbors told old Pa Pitt that they were happy to see it kept up well.
If Father Pitt’s guess about the architect is right, then he might as well guess that the carvings were done by the Oakmont sculptor Louis Vergobbi, who decorated St. Ignatius in a similar style.
The parish school once stood between this rectory and the church, but it was demolished years ago and replaced with a parking lot.
On 57th Street in Lawrenceville was a tight little community of Slovenians, known to their neighbors as Kreiners (from the German name of the Austrian province that is now Slovenia), who built a church, a school, and this Baroque clubhouse. Both this building and the parish school (now gone) were put up in 1911. We have not found an architect for this club yet, but the school was designed by Frederick Sauer; and, in a close ethnic community like this one, it is quite likely that the same people would hire the same architect—a guess made even more plausible by the buff Kittanning brick, Sauer’s favorite color.
The building suffered the usual fate of men’s clubs in Pittsburgh: all the windows were filled in with glass block. But in about 2017, after a period of abandonment, the building was renovated, and the windows were opened up again.
A photograph of the building just before its dedication appeared in the Press for May 28, 1911.
The dedication was a big deal, with a parade, speeches, and music by the city’s only Slovenian singing society. Here is how it was reported in the Kreiners section of the Pittsburg Press:
Tomorrow, May 29, will take place the dedication and opening of the Kreiner Slovenian Home erected at Butler and Fifty-seventh street, Pittsburg.
The home has been built at an expense of $30,000. The dedication of the Slovenic home will be attended by all the local Slovenic societies of Pittsburg and neighboring towns. A parade will start at 9:30 a. m. from the Slovenic hall on Fifty-seventh street, then go down Butler street to Fiftieth street, to Hatfield street then to Fortieth street as far as Arsenal park, whence the parade will return up Butler street to the Kreiner-Slovenic home on Fifty-seventh street.
The formal opening of the home then will take place. The first speaker will be Ferdinand Volk, the president of the Kreiner Slovenic Home, and several prominent Slovenians will follow him. The Slovenic singing society “Precern” will sing several Slovenic songs. The Fifty-seventh street, Pittsburg. The religious part of the dedication will be looked after by the Rev. J. C. Mertl, of the Slovenic Catholic Church of St. Mary, near Butler. The Kreiner-Slovenic Home is the largest Slovenic hall yet built in the United States. More than 1,000 visitors are expected to come to Pittsburg for the dedication of this building, which will be the meeting place of the Slovenians (Kreiners) in Pittsburg and neighboring towns.
The houses in this row at the upper end of 46th Street were all built on the same plan. They were put up in two stages around the turn of the twentieth century, though they are not much different from Pittsburgh rowhouses of a hundred years earlier. The rising value of Lawrenceville real estate has caused an epidemic of third-floor expansions recently; Father Pitt will admit to thinking they are ugly, but by matching the square footage to the value of the location they keep the main structure of the house in good shape. Below we see one house with its original dormer (and classic aluminum awning) and one house with a new third floor (and apologetic little contemporary awningette).
This building was put up in about 1854, well before the adjacent church, making it one of the very few surviving public buildings in Pittsburgh from before the Civil War, and one of the small number of buildings in the Greek Revival style. It is stable but vacant, and its future is questionable. The rising value of Lawrenceville real estate might make it profitable to convert it into a house or a duplex, but that same rising value would make it much more profitable to replace it with a few townhouses or a small apartment building.
The ornate metalwork support for the porch roof is a later addition, we assume, but it ought to be preserved as well. The stock wrought-iron railing on top of the porch roof can go to the recycling plant.
Dedicated in 1873, this church for an Irish parish was designed by James Sylvester Devlin, about whom old Pa Pitt knows only that he designed this church. It has closed as a parish, and when Pittsburgh Catholics leave a church they take everything distinctive and valuable with them, so that, for example, all the stained glass is gone. But the building is still in good shape.
A pair of stylish Victorian houses opposite Arsenal Park on 40th Street. The one on the right is in the high Queen Anne style, with a turret and odd-shaped windows and a wraparound porch. The one on the left is smaller and more restrained, but only relatively.
These two houses have both had quite a bit of work put into them in the past few years. A quarter-century ago, before Lawrenceville began to be a trendy neighborhood, Father Pitt captured these same two houses with a plastic box camera.
Photographed in 1999 with an Imperial 620 camera.
Several things have changed, especially in the house on the left. The porch has been removed; it looks as though it was a later addition, and the removal may have restored the house to something more like its original appearance. The sawed-off Gothic peak on the third floor has been restored. The glass blocks by the front door are still there, but perhaps that is how we know this is a Pittsburgh house and not one in Baltimore or Boston. As for the house on the right, it has been cleaned and restored to picture-perfect condition.
Hidden behind bushes and later additions is an exceptional example of Victorian Gothic domestic architecture. It seems to have been built in the 1870s to face Sherman Street, a street that vanished by 1890, or possibly existed only on paper; today the original front faces a nameless private alley behind the midcentury-modern Arsenal Place townhouses. The corner has been filled in with a later addition, and then another even later frame-and-stucco addition has been added; but the gables and dormers survive with their Gothic-arch windows and original ornamental woodwork.
For many years, this house is marked on plat maps as belonging to the Rev. J. G Brown, D. D., who already owned the property (possibly with a smaller house on it) in 1872.
Separate ownership does funny things to rowhouses. This row of four would have matched originally; some owners have doubled down on the Victorian style, and some have done what they could with modern materials, leading to interesting effects along the property line.
