Father Pitt

Category: Millvale

  • Masonic Building, Millvale

    Masonic Building in Millvale

    Thomas J. Herron was the architect of this substantial lodge building, which dates from about 1910. Like most such lodges, it had rent-paying storefronts on the ground floor and the lodge hall upstairs, in this case on the third floor, where the tall windows point it out to us. Unlike most such lodges, it has not suffered much from the mania for blocking out natural light that affects men’s clubs; the windows have been shortened a bit, but they are still generously bright.

    Windows of the lodge hall
    Entrance

    It is hard to pin this building down to any one style of architecture; Mr. Herron seems to have had eclectic tastes that ranged from Baroque to Art Nouveau.

    Masonic Building
    Sony Alpha 3000; Sony DSC-S90.
    Comments

  • Holy Spirit Parish, Millvale

    Originally St. Anthony’s, a German Catholic church; it became Holy Spirit in the 1990s parish reorganizations, when St. Anthony was merged with St. Anne. The building was put up in 1914, with substantial alterations after a fire in 1936.

    One of the surreal things about living in a movie-friendly place like Pittsburgh is that one sometimes finds oneself dropped into a fictional dimension. When Father Pitt stopped to take a picture of this church, he found that the building adjacent was not the parish school, but rather the Crockett County Sheriff’s Department; and there was a sign on the wall that connects the church with the school welcoming him to “Blackburg, Kentucky, The Portal to Shay Mountain, where coal mining is our heritage and Wild Boar & Buck legends live on.” So when, in a year or two, you happen to see a movie that takes place in Blackburg, the seat of Crockett County in Kentucky, you will know that the place is actually Millvale, and the illusion will be spoiled. Sorry about that.

    Addendum: The architect was John T. Comès, possibly Pittsburgh’s most prolific architect of Catholic churches.