Father Pitt

Tag: Cathedrals

  • Interior of Trinity Cathedral

    Interior of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Pittsburgh

    Trinity Episcopal Cathedral was built in 1872 from a design by Gordon W. Lloyd, an English-born Canadian architect who was popular among Episcopalians. The view above is made up of three pictures to give us a broad view of the nave.

    This is the third church for this congregation. The first was the “Round Church,” built at about the time the streets were laid out in their present plan in 1785. (It was actually an octagon—one of the first generation of odd-shaped buildings caused by the colliding grids along Liberty Avenue.) The second was a brick Gothic church built in 1824.

    Pews

    Note the divided pews, which are the original furniture from 1872. At the time this church was built, churches were generally funded by pew rents. Your family would rent a particular section, and that was where you sat every Sunday.

    End of a pew

    The number on the end of the pew identifies your section. When Father Pitt visited, the dean of the cathedral, the Very Reverend Aidan Smith, was kind enough to bring out a precious historical artifact: a pew chart of the previous church marked with the prices for each section. The closer to the front (and the more visible) the pew, the more it cost per annum. He explained that this cathedral stopped the practice of pew rents in the 1930s, after receiving a large legacy on the condition that pew rents would be stopped. (In addition to funding the church, they were a good, but arguably un-Christian, way of keeping out the undesirable poor.)

    Interior, diagonal view
    Interior

  • Entrance to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1994

    Entrance to St. Paul’s

    This composition is no longer possible, because the building in the foreground was demolished to make way for the larger Rand Building that occupies the corner of Fifth and Craig today. At least old Pa Pitt is fairly sure he was standing in the old Mellon Bank building, although after almost three decades the memory clouds over a bit, and he had to rely on maps and angles to make that determination.

  • A Medieval Fantasy

    A little experiment in digital art. It began with a photograph of one of the Gothic gateposts outside the chancery behind St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland. That was made black and white, and then put through a multiple-layer “etching” filter, and then every detail that looked at all modern was scribbled over. This is the result. Was it worth the work? Probably not, but one can always learn something from these experiments.

  • St. Peter

    Statue of St. Peter

    St. Peter, with his key, stands in his niche on St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland.

  • More Reflections of St. Paul’s

    Cross reflected

    The Software Engineering Institute gives us an unending parade of reflections of the landmarks around it. The curved wall at the main entrance is particularly productive of interesting effects. Below, for example, what appears to be a reflection of the twin spires of St. Paul’s is actually, on closer examination, the same spire reflected twice.

    Spire reflected

  • Transept Tower, St. Paul’s Cathedral

    Transept tower

    A large Gothic church can be prickly with towers. In addition to the great front towers whose spires can be seen for miles, St. Paul’s has a pair of smaller towers on each transept front.

  • St. Simon the Zealot

    St. Simon the Zealot

    A statue of St. Simon the Zealot on the east transept façade of St. Paul’s Cathedral. He is identified by the instrument of his martyrdom, the saw, which (according to one common tradition) was also how the prophet Isaiah was killed.

  • St. Paul’s in Winter Sunlight

    St. Paul’s Cathedral, Oakland, Pittsburgh

    A winter view from the Mellon Institute. This is a high-dynamic-range picture made from three separate photographs, which helps preserve the detail in the shadows as well as the sunlight.

  • St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral

    St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral

    The classical style of this church, which is now the cathedral for the Metropolis of Pittsburgh, is quite unusual for a Greek Orthodox church. Greek Christians do not usually build in a Greek classical style—and the style of this church, with the prominent arch in the front, is more Roman than Greek. The explanation is that it was built for Methodists; the Orthodox congregation bought it from them.

    Even if you don’t know much Greek, you can probably guess that this is the name of the church in Greek: “St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral Church.”

    Ionic capital

    One of the splendid Ionic capitals that hold up a front of which Vitruvius would have approved.

  • The Four Evangelists on St. Paul’s

    In order: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, on the Fifth Avenue front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Oakland.