Built in 1898, this church was designed by Vrydaugh & Wolfe in a Romanesque style that carries over elements of the pre-Richardsonian version of Romanesque. It now belongs to the Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, which has kept it beautifully—even the spire, which usually disappears on churches like these.
An old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection shows how little the building has changed.
A banking palace from the 1890s, with the ground floor still in use as a bank. The style is classical on the ground floor but Romanesque above; we suspect the ground floor may be a later alteration. Father Pitt does not know the architect yet. L. A. Raisig, a successful architect and builder who designed many buildings in Wilkinsburg, kept his office here, so it is possible that he designed the building.
A commercial building on Penn Avenue with a well-preserved terra-cotta front whose distinctive Art Deco decorations were worth picking out with a long lens.
A well-kept apartment building that retains its original art glass in the stairwell, though the apartment windows have been filled in with smaller substitutes.
Ingham & Boyd designed this beautiful church for a congregation that is still hanging on, now yoked with Swissvale Presbyterian Church. When they were built, though, the churches served different denominations: this one was a congregation of the United Presbyterians, a Pittsburgh-based splinter group that broke off from the main body of Presbyterians in the United States in 1858 and would later merge with them again in 1958, one century and two days after the split.
Every detail of this church is chosen both for its own exquisite beauty and for its contribution to the composition as a whole. Nothing is out of place.
As the cornerstone tells us, the church was built in 1915. Ingham & Boyd usually worked in a classical style for public buildings, such as their dozens of schools; but their relatively few churches are Gothic, and buildings like this one make us wish they had given us more churches.
Siting a building is an art in itself, and one to which Ingham & Boyd paid particular attention. This church looms in the distance as we come eastward on Biddle Avenue like a heavenly vision.
The view is different coming northward on Hay Street: here we are confronted by what looks like an English village.
With a long lens, we can appreciate the woodwork in these dormers.
Robert J. Worsing was both the developer and the architect of this good-looking six-unit building, put up as condominium apartments in 1977. Among the amenities was “a 36-inch wide log-burning fireplace” in each unit, which explains the prominent chimneys with their modernistic chimney pots. A Press article showed the architect’s model, which includes the fabric awnings that—surprisingly—are still maintained over the front windows.1
This elegantly proportioned corner-tower church is currently vacant. Doesn’t some artist need a distinctive studio? Think of what you could do with the auditorium and three floors of school next to it!
The tower has completely abstract non-figurative gargoyles—perhaps a compromise the Romanesque-minded architect made with an iconophobic congregation.
L. A. Raisig was listed as the architect of this well-preserved apartment building, which was built in 1900.1 And that sets old Pa Pitt’s mind speculating, because in the history of architecture, L. A. Raisig is famous, if you could call it that, for exactly one thing: for a brief period, just after Frederick Scheibler finished his apprenticeship with Alden & Harlow, he and Raisig were partners in the firm of Raisig & Scheibler.
According to Martin Aurand’s biography of Scheibler, “In fact, Raisig was a builder, not an architect, and it is hard to figure what he brought to the short-lived partnership other than an initial sense of security for a young architect.”2
However, Mr. Aurand may have been mistaken about Raisig. He was writing in the days before instant searches of the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide were possible, and quite a few listings turn up in which Raisig appears to be acting as architect.
But when did Scheibler join Raisig? Mr. Aurand found exactly two projects by them, one an unbuilt competition entry, and both from 1901. This apartment building was announced in August of 1900. And when Father Pitt looks at the front of it—
—he notices a very distinctive arrangement: two-storey classical columns holding up a broad third-floor balcony, with a smaller second-floor balcony over the entrance. It is not a common arrangement—in fact, old Pa Pitt can think of only one other instance of it at the moment, and it is this building in Park Place:
This apartment building was put up six years later, in 1906, and it was designed by Frederick Scheibler in his early classical phase.
What are we to make of this observation? Nothing definite yet; Father Pitt intends to find out more about L. A. Raisig, who disappears from the Record & Guide after the end of his partnership with Scheibler. (Addendum: Mr. Raisig died quite suddenly in 1901.) But we may consider at least the possibility that the Ruskin Villa is a very early work of Frederick Scheibler in partnership with, or working for, L. A. Raisig. So old Pa Pitt leaves this article for now, but he will update it with better information when he knows more about Mr. Raisig and his partnership with young Frederick Scheibler.
Wilkinsburg used to call itself “City of Churches,” and it still has a denser concentration of great church architecture than almost any other neighborhood or borough. This one is battered but still hanging on, now as the Arc of the Covenant Church. The building dates from 1896–1897; the architect mentioned in contemporary listings was Elmer B. Milligan,1 who would soon take on Francis M. Miller as a partner—probably while this church was under construction, since a fortieth-anniversary program names Milligan & Miller as the architects.
The colossal octagonal lantern is the most striking feature of the church: there’s nothing else like it in Wilkinsburg.
The Wilkinsburg borough building, which also houses the library, was designed by Theodore Eichholz in 1938, at the height of the mania for Colonial American architecture spurred by the restoration of Williamsburg. It opened on the first day of 1940.1 In these past two years it has been getting some restoration, including replacement of those tall columns, which are made of wood. The old ones had rotted; these new ones, carefully duplicating the originals, are supposedly treated to prevent rot—although if you only have to replace your wooden columns once every eighty-five years, you’re not doing too badly.
