The life of Christ is depicted in relief at the main entrance to East Liberty Presbyterian Church. We believe the sculptor was John Angel (but we would be delighted to be corrected). Above, the Nativity.
The baptism of Christ by John the Baptist.
The Sermon on the Mount.
The Commission to the Disciples.
Christ washing the disciples’ feet.
The Last Supper.
“Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Parables and miracles of Christ are illustrated in the smaller panels below.
Ralph Adams Cram considered this church his greatest accomplishment, and it would be possible to argue that it is the greatest work of Gothic architecture in North America. Cram was intensely aware of the Gothic tradition, but he was not an imitator: he was as unique and original among the Gothicists as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe among the modernists. The tower of this church is a feast of Gothic detail, but it also takes inspiration from American skyscrapers, and it looms higher than the Highland Building, a steel-framed skyscraper across the street.
Cram himself was a high-church Episcopalian, a monarchist, and a member of the Society of King Charles the Martyr, so it is one of history’s amusing little jokes that his greatest work was built for Presbyterians. But the Mellons, Richard Beatty and Jennie King, gave him complete freedom—a privilege seldom granted even to the greatest architects. The Mellons poured so much money into this church that locals still call it the Mellon Fire Escape, and the late Franklin Toker guessed that it was probably, per square foot, the most expensive church ever built in America.
