Father Pitt

Tag: Butz (E. M.)

Grace Lutheran Church, Troy Hill
A church crammed into a tiny lot, so that it is as tall as it is long. This is one of the many city churches with the main worship space upstairs, the ground floor being devoted to Sunday-school rooms and offices.

The architect was Edward M. Butz, most famous today for the colossal Western Penitentiary.¹ The construction was begun in 1894, but the church was built in two stages: at first only the ground floor was put up, with a temporary roof.

This was designed as a large open space that, when the main sanctuary was built above it, could be converted to Sunday-school rooms divided by folding doors.

The congregation grew rapidly, and less than five years later the church was completed.²

A Pittsburg Press article published when the church was dedicated in February of 1899 describes the building:

The new church is one of the handsomest church buildings in that section of Allegheny. Its dimensions are 60×75, and it is built of red brick with stone trimmings. The style is purely Gothic, and it has beautiful large glass painted windows. The building contains two stories, the lower floor being used for Sunday school purposes. It is divided in seven separate class rooms, which are connected by sliding doors. On this floor also is the pastor’s study. About 450 children are enrolled at present as Sunday school pupils.

The auditorium is situated in the second story. It has a seating capacity of 500, the seats being arranged in amphitheater style. A bell, which is said to have a more beautiful tone than any other church bell in Allegheny, has been given by William Eberhardt, of the Eberhardt & Ober Brewing company, and it is hoped that Andrew Carnegie will provide a pipe organ for the church. The members recently applied to the generous iron king and hope that their petition will receive favorable consideration.

Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Sony Alpha 3000.
1. “Grace Lutheran Church,” Commercial Gazette, July 27, 1894, p. 2. “The Grace Lutheran church of Allegheny took out a permit yesterday for the erection of a new church. It is to be located on Tinsbury street, Troy hill and will be a brick structure one story high 45×70 feet. E. M. Butts [sic] is the architect and M. Lemon the contractor. It is estimated to cost about $7,000.” ↩︎
2. “Troy Hill Church,” Press, February 12, 1899. The illustrations are taken from this article. ↩︎
July 12, 2026
The Shingle Style in Thornburg

Thornburg is a small borough in the Chartiers valley where we can find what is probably the best group of Shingle-style houses in the Pittsburgh area. There is some good evidence that most of them were designed by Edward M. Butz, an architect whose most famous work is the Western Penitentiary. (Update: Many of the houses in Thornburg were designed by Samuel T. McClarren, who lived in the borough and was a cousin of Frank Thornburg, the landowner and developer; in fact, the T. in “Samuel T. McClarren” stands for Thornburg.) The Shingle style is rare in Pittsburgh, and though the houses are in a wide variety of forms, they share certain quirks—the second floor overhanging the first, the use of masonry for the first floor and shingles above, the exaggerated eaves—that suggest the hand of one architect in the different designs.

Sony Alpha 3000.

December 17, 2024
Western Penitentiary

The Pen used to be known to frequent guests as “The Wall.”

Closed since 2017, the Western Penitentiary (or, more recently, State Correctional Institution—Pittsburgh) will have a hard time finding a buyer. It would perhaps make a fine mansion for an eccentric supervillain, but most real-world supervillains are dreadfully prosaic in their tastes.

Nevertheless, it is a masterpiece of prison architecture—aesthetically, at least. The architect was Edward M. Butz, and it was built between 1876 and 1882, with various later additions. It looks more like a prison than the Bastille did, and so we present it on Bastille Day, with the cheerful news that no inmates are imprisoned here, but the sad news that it may eventually have to be pulled down by a demolition contractor rather than a revolutionary mob.

July 14, 2023