Two rows of houses that have adapted to the trendy business atmosphere of South Craig Street. The row above has been adapted with minimal external modifications.
Since old Pa Pitt is a connoisseur of breezeways, he could not neglect this exceptionally fine example.
This row has been altered a bit more, though some care was taken to preserve its distinctive outlines.
Seen from Climax Street in Beltzhoover. Old Pa Pitt will disclose that there were bunches of utility cables in the way, but to make an idealized view of the building rather than the utility grid, he took them out. If there are blackouts in your idealized Beltzhoover, you know why.
We have many more pictures of St. George’s in another article.
Originally a building with five floors, built in 1886; a sixth floor was added in 1892 with considerable skill. We have more pictures of the building from two years ago; the picture above is a composite of six different photographs, so it is very big if you enlarge it.
A former bakery, now called “Birmingham Place,” between 23rd and 24th Streets on Carson Street. The adaptation was handled with good taste, preserving the attractive proportions of the building, including the huge windows that flood the place with natural light. According to the date at the top of the building, the main section was built in 1919; the section to the left was added after 1924, to judge by a Sanborn Fire Insurance map from that year on which the left wing does not appear.
This was called Perry’s Hall when it was built in 1898, according to a historic marker on the side. A retail store occupied the ground floor; the second floor was used for lodge meetings—a common arrangement in lodge buildings. Thus the rather grand side entrance, which would lead directly to the stairs up to the meeting hall.
By the 1920s, we see on the plat maps that the building was in use as an International Socialist Lyceum—which makes a much grabbier headline than “Perry’s Hall,” don’t you think?
We notice, incidentally, that the small frame buildings next door are marked as belonging to “F. Fabian.” We wonder whether that is a misunderstanding, and the property really belonged to the American Fabian Society, or whether it is one of those amusing coincidences in which history abounds but which would be too implausible for a novelist to invent.
In more recent times, the building was the site of the lamented James Street Tavern, a venue for traditional jazz, for many years. It has just been splendidly restored, and the owner is offering it for lease. So there is no reason it could not be an International Socialist Lyceum again. All it needs is a socialist with enough money.
We have seen pictures of the outside of this church before—here, for example, is a picture from May of 2021:
The other day the current inhabitants, the Union Project, were kind enough to turn old Pa Pitt loose in the sanctuary to take as many pictures as he wanted.
The architect was John L. Beatty, who designed the building in about 1900. A newspaper picture from 1905 (taken from microfilm, so the quality is poor) shows the exterior looking more or less the way it does now.
After a disastrous fire, much was rebuilt in 1915, again under Beatty’s supervision.1 Another fire in 1933 would necessitate rebuilding part of the tower.
The church was built for the Second United Presbyterian congregation, which had moved out to the eastern suburbs from its former location downtown at Sixth Avenue and Cherry Way (now William Penn Place)—exactly one block from the First United Presbyterian Church, which moved to Oakland at about the same time. Later it became the East End Baptist Church, and then was renamed the Union Baptist Church. When that congregation folded, the church was bought by a Mennonite group that founded the Union Project. It is now a community center for pottery, because “everyone should have access to clay.” The sanctuary—which has been preserved mostly unaltered, except for the removal of pews and other furnishings—is available for large events.
The sanctuary is roughly square, which is typical of many non-liturgical Protestant churches in Pittsburgh at the turn of the twentieth century. Above, looking up at the center of the ceiling.
The stained glass was restored as part of a remarkable community effort in which people in the neighborhood learned the art of stained-glass restoration themselves. It would have cost more than a million dollars to have the work done professionally, but volunteers learned priceless skills, and the glass is beautiful.
The vestibule includes some of the original furniture from the church, and some smaller stained-glass windows.
A little while ago, Father Pitt found himself in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for three days with a bag of cameras and nothing to do but walk around. It’s a city made for walking, and the result was hundreds of pictures. The obvious thing to do was to set up a separate subdomain to publish them in a similar style to the main site here. Old Pa Pitt is still sorting through the pictures, but since there are already more than sixty articles over there, now is a good time to make a public announcement of Father Pitt in Winston-Salem.
