A small church that still belongs to Lutherans, now as Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Chapel (a Missouri Synod congregation). It is an exception to the general rule that Lutherans did not build corner-tower auditorium churches; the shape of the tiny lot dictated the shape of the church. The slope dictated that the sanctuary would be on the second floor if you enter from the front, but the ground floor if you enter from the back.
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.
H. Childs Hodgens was the architect of this church, which was built in 1911.1 It has not been M. P. for a good while; currently it is shared by the House of Prayer for All Slavic Christian Church and the Congregation Yeshua Ben David.
A good example of the kind of arts-and-crafts Gothic that was popular for churches in the first quarter of the twentieth century, usually defined by broad Perpendicular Gothic windows, corner towers, and simple but elegantly crafted woodwork. The architect was S. A. Hamel, about whom old Pa Pitt knows little so far other than that he designed some churches south of the rivers and lived on Giffin Avenue, just two blocks away from this church. Mr. Hamel was associated with a real-estate broker named James A. Griffith, who sold this lot to the church and probably recommended the architect. It seems the congregation was not disappointed: the same congregation still owns the building, and a picture published when the church was dedicated in early 1919, though the scan is poor, is clear enough to show us that almost nothing has been altered.
The congregation was originally German Baptist. The earlier home of the congregation, when it was known as the First German Baptist Church, is also still standing on the South Side; it now belongs to the Holy Assumption of St. Mary Orthodox congregation.
When ground was broken for this building, an article in the Press related the history of the congregation.
Ground Broken for New Temple Baptist Church
Ground has been broken for the new Temple Baptist church, to be erected at Brownsville rd. and Onyx st., Mt. Oliver, at a cost of $50,000. The plans, drawn by Architect S. A. Hamel, call for a handsome structure of rough brick of odd coloring, creating a beautiful effect, and the congregation, which now is holding services at Birmingham and Hays aves., Carrick, anticipates being in its new home before the end of the year.
The Temple Baptist congregation is the oldest German Baptist congregation in Pittsburg and vicinity, and formerly was known as the First German Baptist, the word German now having been dropped from its title.
Formerly services were held in the old church at South Nineteenth st. and Carey ay., where, for 60 years the congregation worshiped, but recently the property was sold to the Greek Orthodox congregation. A chapel that had been maintained by the Baptist congregation at Hays and Phillips aves., Carrick, also has been disposed of and now is being used by the Carrick Red Cross. Since Rev. A. P. Mihm, the pastor, assumed charge three years ago, the membership has enjoyed a steady and substantial growth.
“Ground Broken for New Temple Baptist Church,” Press, April 28, 1918, Financial Section p. 3.
This fine corner-tower church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1911, was designed by O. M. Topp and Charles M. Hutchison.1 The plan was probably made in 1906, when a small chapel was put up with the intention of building the larger church when there was enough money. This is one of the very rare cases, incidentally, where the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation is wrong. The PHLF plaque has the church designed by F. Hoffman & Co.; but F. Hoffman & Co., was a Wilkinsburg contractor (probably the one that got the contract for the building), not an architectural firm.
The congregation is gone, but some attempt is being made to restore the building as a Center for Civic Arts. Old Pa Pitt wishes the Center good fortune, because this fine building deserves to have a future, and Wilkinsburg deserves art. As we can see from this old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection, the building has hardly been altered at all:
The congregation prospered, and in 1928 a large educational wing was built—now abandoned and in bad shape. The architect was Lawrence Wolfe, with O. M. Topp—by then one of the grand old men of Pittsburgh architecture—listed as “associate architect.”2
A church in a typical Pittsburgh interpretation of Perpendicular Gothic. The stubby battlemented towers make it look like a chapel built into the wall of a castle; we would guess that the larger one was meant to hold up a spire. The white Kittanning brick gives some of the effect of stone without the expense of stone.
Addendum: The architect was John A. Long; the church was built in about 1911.1
Update: Thanks to our correspondent David Schwing, we know the story of this church better. It was a Shingle-style frame church dedicated at the end of 1896.1 In 1953, it was “Perma-Stoned,”2 so that the end result is an odd mixture of Shingle-style forms—like the flared roof—and 1950s aesthetics.
The original text of the article follows.
Father Pitt is not quite sure what to call this style: maybe arts-and-crafts Mediterranean.
The corner-tower entrance is typical of Pittsburgh churches, but the stone porch is not.
The arches and spindly columns of the belfry are the touch that says “Mediterranean” to old Pa Pitt.
From this angle we can see that the building has the usual Pittsburgh problems to solve: the lot gains almost two floors’ worth of height from lower to upper corner.
McDonald was a very Presbyterian town, with at least four Presbyterian churches all within an easy walk of one another. In 1897, two Presbyterian churches went up in McDonald side by side—a Presbyterian church and a United Presbyterian church. They seem to have been called First Presbyterian and First United Presbyterian at first, but later took the names Trinity and Calvary. After the denominations merged, so did the congregations—but they kept the two buildings, now called the Calvary Center and the Trinity Center of McDonald Presbyterian Church.
The United Presbyterian church, now Calvary Center, was the larger of the two. The architect was James N. Campbell.
Behind the church is a neat and prosperous-looking foursquare parsonage built of matching brick.
The smaller Presbyterian church, now the Trinity Center, was designed by the Washington (Pennsylvania) firm of McCallum & Ely.
The little village of Rennerdale sits halfway between Carnegie and Oakdale on the Noblestown Road. This corner-tower frame church, with its Colonial-style details, reminds us of the Noblestown Methodist Episcopal Church designed by James Allison; and since we know that Allison designed other buildings in the area, it would not surprise us to find that he was responsible for this one. It has been swathed in artificial siding, as our few surviving frame churches usually are; but the siding men did an unusually good job of making sure that the windows and doors were properly framed. The church still belongs to its original congregation.
There’s still a bell in that belfry.
Yesterday we looked at the Oakdale Public School, one of the earliest commissions for James E. Allison. Here, just a short distance to the west in the old village of Noblestown, is another Allison building1 from a little over a year later—a small frame church that, although it has been coated with artificial siding, still retains some of its distinctive character. The form is the irregular square popular in small Romanesque churches of Victorian times, but the details are Georgian, including the big window. The half-round protrusion in front indicates a Sunday-school room built on the popular Akron Plan. The congregation dissolved a few years ago, but the building is in use by a veterans’ organization called Heroes Supporting Heroes.
