Built in 1929, this church on Boggs Avenue is a fine example of the elegantly streamlined Gothic style that was fashionable for a few years before Gothic architecture disappeared entirely from our design vocabulary. It now belongs to a real-estate company, which uses it as offices but keeps the exterior well.

Perhaps you are thinking that this does not look very much like a Pittsburgh church, because there are no utility cables in front of it. Here:

That’s better.

A block or so away on the other side of Boggs Avenue is an older church, much altered but still recognizable:

Though it is festooned with artificial siding and expensive new brickwork, with a comically inappropriate broken pediment over the front door, this is clearly a church from the late 1800s. In fact it was built in 1884, as we can tell because whoever did the renovations was kind enough to place the old date stone in the new brick front:

And there is the name of the church: Evangelische Lutherische Zions Kirche, which is German for Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. This is the original home of the congregation that later built the splendid Gothic edifice down the street.

You will note that this was one of those churches with the sanctuary upstairs; we have added yet another to our growing collection.