Father Pitt

Tag: Gothic Architecture

  • Bellefield Towers

    This curious combination of structures always reminds old Pa Pitt of a corner in some European city ravaged by the Second World War: the tower is all that remains of the Gothic church that once stood here, and the rest has been replaced by an office building that has no architectural connection with it whatsoever, but is just gracious enough to make reluctant room for it.

    The old Bellefield Presbyterian Church actually predated the Oakland neighborhood. It was built in 1889 in Bellefield, a rural town that had grown into a suburb or exurb of Pittsburgh. Bellefield’s name is remembered in Bellefield Avenue, though almost all remnants of the place have been obliterated by the one force more destructive to old buildings than war, which is prosperity.

    Here is a long article (PDF format) on the church and its neighborhood by James D. Van Trump, the architectural historian to whom we owe the preservation of much of what we have succeeded in preserving. The article includes a picture of the church in 1890; note the cable-car tracks on the street in front of it.

    The article was written while the church was still standing. “What the Bellefield Church has meant to the Oakland area during the last one hundred years we have seen,” it concludes. “The history of Bellefield’s future has yet to be written. Its congregation feels that if the contribution of the Bellefield Church to the Oakland area is commensurate with that of the past its future would seem to be assured.”

    Well, it’s sort of still there. The congregation was merged in 1967 with First United Presbyterian a short distance down Fifth, and the merged church was renamed Bellefield Presbyterian. In 1985 the old building was sold and demolished for the current undistinguished occupant of the site.

  • St. Paul’s Cathedral and Its Rectory

    This seems to have been the masterpiece of its architects, the Chicago firm of Egan & Prindeville; indeed, the only other work of theirs mentioned in their Wikipedia article is a cathedral in San Francisco that burned in 1962. If they have to be remembered for only one work, though, this is one to be proud of. It was built in 1906, but—like all great cathedrals—it is really only beginning to take shape more than a century later. It takes a heap of liturgy to make a church a cathedral, and chapels and decorations continue to be added by successive bishops.

    The Rectory is designed in a matching but more restrained Gothic style.

    Addendum: According to the article “Designing in God’s Name: Architect Carlton Strong,” the rectory (built in 1926–1927) was designed by Thomas Carlton Strong, who also designed Sacred Heart Church in Shadyside.

  • Heinz Chapel

    The cluster of buildings by Charles Z. Klauder at the heart of the University of Pittsburgh is one of America’s great architectural treasures. This chapel comes from the very end of the era in which architecture could be thought of in terms of the ages rather than this decade. Klauder—who died just before the chapel opened—seems as comfortable with his French Gothic idiom as if he had grown up in France in the late Middle Ages.

  • Sweeping the Cathedral Steps

    Man sweeping the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Pittsburgh

    In old-postcard colors, a view of the front steps of St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland.

  • Entrance to Phipps Conservatory

    The entrance to Phipps, rendered in old-postcard colors by the Two-Strip Technicolor script for the GIMP.

  • St. Matthew’s Church, South Side

    Like many other churches on the South Side, this one is becoming loft apartments. The exterior, at any rate, will be preserved.

    Camera: Canon PowerShot 590 IS.

    Addendum: The architect was Marius Rousseau, according to the parish’s Golden Jubilee book.

  • Union Trust Building

    The only way to get a complete view of the Grant Street front of the Union Trust Building is with a composite of several photos. There are stitching errors, including a spooky phantom wheel rolling down Grant Street, but at least the picture gives us a better idea than we usually get of the face of this massive building, which was intended by Henry Frick to be the best shopping arcade in the country. It was designed in the Flemish Gothic style by Frederick Osterling.

  • South Side Presbyterian Church

    To Father Pitt’s eyes, the remarkable thing about the interior of this church is how Presbyterian it looks. Later Presbyterian churches in Pittsburgh are Gothic cathedrals, or miniature versions for smaller congregations, since the Presbyterians were overwhelmingly the moneyed class in the late 1800s; but this church was built in 1869, and retains the flat-ceilinged simplicity of traditional Presbyterianism. As in several of our churches in crowded city neighborhoods, the sanctuary is on the second floor, reached by either of a pair of flights of stairs in the front (one with an elevator chair for those who need it); the ground floor is the social hall and other rooms. The front was part of an expansion in 1893, built to a grander and wealthier taste.

  • Third Presbyterian Church

    “Mrs. Thaw’s Chocolate Church,” as it was called when it was put up, this splendid building was designed by Theophilus P. Chandler, Jr., and opened in 1903. Mary Thaw, the widow of Henry Thaw, paid for most of it, and doubtless specified the architect; Chandler had also designed the Thaws’ mansion, which (alas) is long gone. Chandler was also the architect of First Presbyterian downtown and the titanic Duncan mausoleum and column in the Union Dale Cemetery.

    The picture of the front above is put together from eight different photographs, which is the only way old Pa Pitt could get the whole building from this angle.

    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.

  • St. Mary of the Mount

    Here is a huge picture of the front of St. Mary of the Mount on Grandview Avenue, Mount Washington. It’s made from eight individual pictures, all cleverly sewn together by Hugin. If you click on the picture, you can enlarge it to 4,692 × 6,569 pixels, or about 30 megapixels. (It could have been larger, but old Pa Pitt decided that 30 megapixels was probably large enough.) Many thanks to Wikimedia Commons for being willing to host huge pictures at such a level of detail.

    The architect was Frederick Sauer, whose conventionally attractive churches do nothing to prepare us for the eccentric whimsy he could produce when he let his imagination run wild.