Built in 1905–1909, St. Andrew’s was designed by Carpenter & Crocker, who seem to have been favorites among the Episcopalians of Pittsburgh: they also designed the parish house for the cathedral downtown and St. James’ in Homewood, now the Church of the Holy Cross. This building is dominated by its outsized tower.
Very grouchy gargoyles guard the tower.
An ornamental pinnacle on one corner of the tower.
The side entrance, with one of its lanterns.
This stone mansion on Acorn Hill, with its eye-catching combination of Gothic and modernist details, was designed by William C. Young and built in 1937.
“The above drawing by William C. Young, architect and builder, is of the model home being erected at the intersection of Watsonia Blvd. [now Marshall Road] and Norwood Ave., North Side, for Mr. and Mrs. John H. Phillips by the Young firm. The home is a combination of all that is modern in electrical equipment and labor saving devices with all that is charming and quaint from the old Norman English Architecture.” Old Pa Pitt thinks of “Norman” as implying the English branch of Romanesque rather than Gothic, but he will not argue about the charm.
The steps leading up to the house from Marshall Road are a masterpiece of romanticism in landscape design.
Now Zion Christian Church. The cornerstone tells us that the congregation was founded in 1908, and its first building was at the corner of Birmingham Avenue and Hays Avenue (now Amanda Street)—a small frame chapel that must have quickly become woefully overcrowded, since this building many times the size was constructed less than twenty years later.
“The membership is 381, as compared with a membership of 30 in 1908,” says the Gazette Times of February 18, 1925, when the plans for the new building were announced.
The architect was Walter H. Gould, “a member of the church,” and so far this is the only building attributed to him that Father Pitt knows about. However, it is an accomplished if not breathtakingly original design, so there must be other Gould buildings lurking about, probably in the South Hills neighborhoods. Comparing the published rendering above with the church as it stands today shows us that the tower grew about a floor’s worth of height between conception and construction—a rare example, perhaps, of an architect being told that his original design was not ambitious enough.
“By spirit and faith and the help of God.”
For about a century and a third, this church was one of the main centers of life in Bloomfield. Now that all the Catholic churches in Bloomfield are closed, incredible as it may seem in our most Italian neighborhood, an Italian Catholic who lives in Bloomfield cannot walk to Mass without making a serious expedition of it.
The church was built in 1886; the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks foundation attributes it to Adolf or Adolphus Druiding, who also designed Ss. Peter and Paul in Larimer/East Liberty. However, an expert in the works of E. G. W. Dietrich (see the comment below) was kind enough to correct that attribution. The church was designed by the partnership of Bartberger & Dietrich, as we learn both from an article at the laying of the cornerstone and an illustration of the church in the Builder and Wood-Worker for June, 1889, where it is attributed to Bartberger alone. Charles M. Bartberger and E. G. W. Dietrich were partners for about three years, from 1883 to 1886, before Dietrich moved to New York, which he seems to have done while this church was under construction. Father Pitt has updated his attribution based on this evidence, with many thanks to our correspondent.
The rectory next to the church has been damaged by the installation of windows in the wrong size and style, but otherwise is in good shape.
Originally the Wallace Memorial Presbyterian Church. In 2013, Dormont Presbyterian Church closed, and its congregation merged with this one; the two congregations together took the appropriate name Unity.
The current church building was put up in 1952 in the fashionable New England Colonial style; it’s a good example of that type.
The smaller Gothic church replaced by the 1952 church is still standing next to it, now in use as a music school.
Construction of the new addition was still finishing up when old Pa Pitt last visited. Here is a pile of stones.
More pictures of the Church of the Ascension, and some pictures of the church in 2013, when it still wore a coat of black.
Hidden behind bushes and later additions is an exceptional example of Victorian Gothic domestic architecture. It seems to have been built in the 1870s to face Sherman Street, a street that vanished by 1890, or possibly existed only on paper; today the original front faces a nameless private alley behind the midcentury-modern Arsenal Place townhouses. The corner has been filled in with a later addition, and then another even later frame-and-stucco addition has been added; but the gables and dormers survive with their Gothic-arch windows and original ornamental woodwork.
For many years, this house is marked on plat maps as belonging to the Rev. J. G Brown, D. D., who already owned the property (possibly with a smaller house on it) in 1872.
This charming Arts-and-Crafts Gothic church is the most distinguished building in the little hamlet of Imperial. It was built, according to the date stone, in 1911 for a congregation that had been founded in 1840, and the large cemetery behind the church has tombstones going back to that foundation.
The outstanding feature of the church is its belfry, with simple and massive woodwork that echoes the Gothic arches below, but also flares out into bell shapes, like a Sunday-school-supplement illustration of the bells within.
A postwar Sunday-school wing in the rear is built from nearly matching brick.
Though the renovations with modern materials—understandable for a congregation on a tight budget—have not always been sympathetic, this is still a valuable relic of the era of Victorian frame Gothic churches. As Pittsburgh and its suburbs prospered in the twentieth century, most of those churches were replaces with bigger and brickier structures, so although these churches were once all over western Pennsylvania, remnants like this are fairly rare. This one no longer serves the Baptist congregation (or the Anglican congregation that inhabited it more recently), but some maintenance work seems to be going on.
The distinctive wooden belfry is still in good shape, though missing a few pieces of trim and wanting a bit of paint. The trim is simple and could be replicated in somebody’s garage woodshop.
A very stony Anglican church that has kept its rich black coat of soot.
Gargoyles guard the building from the top of the tower.
