Knoxville’s own Edwin V. Denick was the architect of this half-shingled corner-tower church,1 currently abandoned. Since it sits right next to the Knoxville Presbyterian Church that burned last month, and since it has been boarded up by the city, we have to assume that it could vanish at any time, so here are a few pictures to document it before it goes. We’ll put it it the Endangered category on our scale of Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, and Demolished.
In the gables that face the street, the shingles have been replaced with artificial siding; but we can still see them on this gable in the back of the building.
Source: Pittsburg Press, May 26, 1904, p. 2. “Foundations have been started on the buff brick stone and terra cotta church being built on Charles and Knox avenues, Knoxville, for the Knoxville Christian congregation from plans drawn by Architect E. V. Denick.” ↩︎
Andrew Peebles, who also designed St. Peter’s on the North Side, designed this church, which was quite large when it was built but looks like a toy next to the skyscrapers of Grant Street. Built in 1887, it is now the oldest building on the street.
You never know what you might find when you go trawling in the depths of the archives. These pictures were taken in September of 2014, but old Pa Pitt never published them. Why not? His memory is vague, but he suspects it was because he was planning to publish them when he worked out the history of the building, and he never did work it out. Finding the pictures by random luck the other day stimulated him to finish the job, and here they are.
St. Walburga’s was a German parish founded in 1903—the last ethnic German parish founded in the city of Pittsburgh. The cornerstone of this building was laid in April of 1927; the building was dedicated a year later in April of 1928. The architects were the Cleveland firm of Potter & Gabele & Co., and if Father Pitt told you how much time he spent trying to find that information before finally locating it in the Pittsburgh Catholic for April 19, 1928, you would wonder a little about whether he should be regarded as competent to manage his own life.
J. Ellsworth Potter was a successful architect who designed churches in traditional styles until his death in 1958. Henry Charles Gabele was associated with Potter until 1932, but after that seems to have fizzled out as an architect (see a brief notice in this PDF Cleveland Architects Database).
St. Walburga’s parish was suppressed in 1966, a victim of postwar demographic change. Today the building belongs to the Cornerstone Baptist Church, whose congregation obviously treasures it and keeps it in beautiful shape.
Three and a half years ago, old Pa Pitt visited this church to take pictures of the exterior. It was not in use then, although the grounds were maintained. Neighbors reported hearing a smoke detector’s low-battery signal for quite a while. Two days ago, a commenter alerted Father Pitt that a fire had seriously damaged the building.
We’ll put the rest of the large number of pictures we took today behind a link, so that the sad evidence of the conflagration will not be the dominant impression in visitors’ minds for the next week and a half. Furthermore, we promise to balance this article soon with some very cheerful news from the Hilltop neighborhoods.
A few details of the Union Trust Building, designed by Pierre A. Liesch when he was working for Frederick Osterling—at least according to Liesch; the building is usually just credited to Osterling.
Now Spencer United Methodist. Charles W. Bier was the architect of this church,1 which opened in 1925. It sits on a steeply sloping lot at the southern end of Carrick, so that—like many Pittsburgh churches—it has ground-level entrances on two ground levels.
An open belfry becomes a nuisance to maintain, and when the bells are silenced—as they have been in most of our churches—the belfry is often filled in.
The American Contractor, April 14, 1923: “Carrick, Pa.—Church:$100,000. 1 sty. 100×72. Church st. & Spencer av., Carrick. Archt. Chas. W. Bier, Pittsburgh Life bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner The Spencer M. E. Congr., Spv. Gilbert G. Gallagher, 117 Spencer av., Carrick. Solid brk. Drawing prelim. plans.” The church as built does not seem like a $100,000 church. But the dimensions and estimate went up: November 3, 1923: “Church: $140,000. 1 sty. & bas. 75×143. Church st. & Spencer av., Garrick [sic]. Archt. Chas. W. Bier, Pittsburgh Life bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner The Spencer M. E. Congr., Rev. Gilbert G. Gallagher, 117 Spencer av., Garrick. Revising plans.” The current church looks like Bier’s work; we can only guess that the ambitious plans were scaled back a bit before construction began. ↩︎
Hazelwood was a famously Hungarian neighborhood, and several kinds of Hungarian churches sprouted there. The cornerstone of this church was laid one hundred years ago today on December 20, 1925, but it’s not much different in front from the vernacular Gothic churches of half a century earlier.
If we walk around the side of this church, though, we see what is really unusual about it: it grows out of a big old Italianate house built in the 1870s.
The new building was dedicated on May 16, 1926.
The congregation is long gone, but the church now belongs to an organization called “Center of Life.”
The old house has some very fine woodwork, which we hope can be preserved.
Some of the stained glass has fallen to pieces. It is expensive to restore stained glass, but the Union Project in Highland Park made restoring stained glass a community-education project, with spectacular results.
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.
