The tower of St. Bernard’s peers over the trees in Mount Lebanon, brought to you in old-postcard colors thanks to the Two-Strip Technicolor plugin for the GIMP.
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Tower of St. Bernard’s, Mount Lebanon
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Dormont Presbyterian Church
The old Dormont Presbyterian Church dominates the business district on Potomac Avenue, making that corner of Dormont look almost like a medieval English city. The church was built in 1923 (or in 1907, with an expansion in 1923; Pa Pitt’s sources are a little fuzzy). The Presbyterians, along with the Baptists and Methodists, threw in the towel in 2013, and this is now a branch of North Way Christian Community.
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First Associated Reformed Church of Birmingham
Built in 1854, this is one of several churches in Pittsburgh that solved the problem of tiny lots in crowded neighborhoods by putting the sanctuary on the second floor, leaving the first floor for social halls, Sunday-school rooms, and the like.
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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by the Second World War: the tower is all that remains of the Gothic church that once stood here, and the rest has been replaced by an office building that has no architectural connection with it whatsoever, but is just gracious enough to make reluctant room for it.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.
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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.
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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.
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Sweeping the Cathedral Steps
In old-postcard colors, a view of the front steps of St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland.
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Entrance to Phipps Conservatory
The entrance to Phipps, rendered in old-postcard colors by the Two-Strip Technicolor script for the GIMP.
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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.
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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.
