The domes of St. John the Baptist, with the skyline in the background, figure in many postcard views of Pittsburgh. So if you want to sell postcards, here is your chance. Like all Father Pitt’s pictures, these are donated to the public domain, so you can do what you like with them.
We also have pictures of the church from the other direction and some pictures of the interior.
It is traditional to paint onion domes blue like the heavens, or to gild them if the congregation is feeling rich. But Homestead was known for one thing, so these domes are glimmering Homestead stainless steel.
This church was designed by Button & McLean, who also designed yesterday’s Homestead Senior High School. The Button of the pair was Lamont Button, whom we have met as a designer of high-class houses for the upper middle classes. Ground was broken in 1936, but the church got stuck at the basement level. It remained stuck until 1949, when the job was finally finished.1
This grand Byzantine church, built in 1923, is set on a steep slope on an implausibly tiny street. Its congregation is still going: for cultural and administrative reasons, Eastern churches tend to continue long after their Western neighbors have thrown in the towel. The church itself was modeled after the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, which also served as the model for St. John the Baptist in Munhall; but the architect of this one, W. Ward Williams,1 took his model more literally than Titus de Bobula did. Curiously enough the church in Ukraine has the same kind of slope to deal with, as we see in this picture by Raimond Spekking:
The pediment is strictly classical, Doric rather than the Corinthian of its model, with the inscription “Russian Greek Catholic Church of SS. Peter and Paul.”
Marius Rousseau, an architect so versatile that it would be hard to assign a style to him, designed this church,1 whose onion domes are one of the characteristic features of Rankin as seen from the Rankin Bridge.
A crucifix in memory of a longtime priest, the Very Rt. Rev. Stephen Varzaly, sits in the front yard of the church.
Now known as Holy Ghost Byzantine Rite Catholic Church. Carlton Strong, best remembered for Sacred Heart Church in Shadyside, designed this Byzantine church and the somewhat similar St. Mary’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the McKees Rocks Bottoms.
Kathleen M. Washy, an expert in the history of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, wrote a long article on Carlton Strong (download the PDF here) for Gathered Fragments, the magazine of the Catholic Historical Society, so old Pa Pitt will send you there for more about this fascinating artist. Here we’ll just look at pictures.
The St. George congregation moved out of this little backstreet church a few years ago, building a much larger and more splendid church, with gilded domes and everything, just south of Bridgeville. A nondenominational congregation has taken it over and keeps the building in good shape. All the stained glass was removed when the building changed hands—except for Father Pitt’s favorite window, which was removed by the Antiochians themselves a few years before they left. It was in the lunette above the front door: a staring eye in glass, with the legend The eye of God is upon you.
The architect of this Byzantine-modern church was Charles J. Pepine, who designed a number of postwar churches in our area.1 It was dedicated in 1949 under the name “Nativity of Our Lady”; later it was known as Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, but it was usually just called St. Mary’s. It closed in 2010. Some attempts were made to turn the building into apartments, but they ran into objections from neighbors and we know not what other troubles; currently the building is vacant, though with building permits dated 2015 and 2019 in the front window.
The distinctive high domes of these towers were not part of the original plan when the new church was first announced in September of 1948, as we can see from this sketch by the architect.
If there must be parking lots, they should be marked by architectural elements in keeping with their buildings—like these pillars at the parking-lot entrance for St. Mary’s.
The mad genius, con man, and would-be dictator Titus de Bobula designed this church, which was built in 1906. Today and tomorrow the congregation is holding its annual Ukrainian food festival, which seems like a good time to celebrate the church and its ancillary buildings with a longer look than we’ve taken in the past.
The church has a complicated history, which you can read about on the parish site. We summarize it here. The congregation began as “St. Peter & St. Paul Russian Greek Catholic Church,” but what did “Greek Catholic” mean? The church was originally Byzantine Catholic, and just a few years after it was founded some members with Orthodox sympathies founded Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church, whose blue domes you see just down the street. Then the church separated from the Roman church and briefly became Orthodox; then for quite some time it was independent; then its priest put it back in the Byzantine Catholic orbit; then there were lawsuits; and finally, in 1951, the church became Ukrainian Orthodox, as it still is. (The Byzantine Catholics founded their own church, which still flourishes as Holy Trinity on Washington Avenue.)
This date stone seems to mark extensive renovations in 1961.
The original 1906 cornerstone is engraved in Titus de Bobula’s own distinctive Art Nouveau lettering—the same instantly recognizable lettering he used to sign his architectural renderings. On the other exposed side of the stone, we get to see his style applied to the Cyrillic alphabet.
Next to the church is the parish hall and school, which was designed by Harry H. Lefkowitz in 1928. Lefkowitz caught some of De Bobula’s quirks—note the tall, narrow blind side arches and the stonework over the central arch, for example—and created a building that fits with the church without being simply an imitation.
Finally, the rectory is a simple house, but built of the same brick and with quoins proportioned to echo the brickwork of the church next to it.
This church at the eastern end of the Great Soho Curve is one of our endangered landmarks. It is a great masterpiece of ecclesiastical architecture by the Pittsburgh genius John T. Comès, who died at the age of 49 but had already built a legacy of glorious churches and schools across the country. However, it belongs to Carlow University, and universities hate historic buildings with a burning passion—Carlow more than most. All that stands in the way of a multimillion-dollar building with a rich donor’s name on it is this stupid church, which isn’t doing anybody any good. All it’s useful for is assembling large numbers of people for some sort of religious observance, and what good is that to a Catholic university?
So we document its details as well as we can. There is a strong movement to preserve the church, but universities usually win these fights in the end.
The martyrdom of St. Agnes.
In the center: a Chi-Rho monogram with the Alpha and Omega. Left to right are the symbols of the four Evangelists: the lion of Mark, the eagle of John, the human face of Matthew, and the ox of Luke.
There’s still a bell in this tower.
The rectory next door is designed to match the church. It shows the Art Nouveau influence that Comès could combine effortlessly with historical models to produce a style uniquely his own.
These deep-blue onion domes are one of the distinctive features of the Carnegie skyline as motorists see it from the Parkway West. This Russian church, originally known in English as St. Mary’s (according to the cornerstone), sits right next to the Ukrainian Orthodox church by Titus de Bobula; it was built in 1920, about fourteen years after the Ukrainian church. Though Holy Virgin is not so extravagantly eccentric, it holds up well against its neighbor; and the two of them together form a memorable composition that makes us wonder for a moment what continent we landed on.
