This was the last of the five (out of seven) churches old Pa Pitt managed to visit during the open house for St. Joseph the Worker Parish, seven of whose eight churches are closing this month. Because he got there just as the open house was winding up, Father Pitt didn’t get as many pictures as of the other churches, but the ones he did get give a good impression of what the church is like. They also show that it needs some maintenance work, which would probably be expensive.
Addendum: The architect was Pittsburgh-born, Philadelphia-based Harold Wagoner, with Angel Chorne as associate.
It’s always sad to see a church close. However, there is very good news for St. Colman’s School, a 1920s masterpiece by Link, Weber & Bowers. It is undergoing a thorough and expensive restoration for a second life. We took a few pictures of the school on the same visit.
Another of the seven closing churches in the inner eastern suburbs. The dominant feature of this one, built as St. Michael’s in 1929–1930, is the huge octagonal lantern.
The interior of the church is much more auditorium-like than most Catholic churches of its era, probably because a square lot forced it to make that adaptation.
Another one of the seven closing churches in the near eastern suburbs. The exterior has the kind of “noble simplicity” American bishops love to praise, while at the same time maintaining a traditional look.
The best description old Pa Pitt can come up with for the interior is “straightforward.” It is not spectacular, but it works for Christian liturgy, with everything in the right place and room for devotional art of the right sorts.
A dramatic Last Supper painting behind the altar shows all the disciples in characteristic poses, including tortured Judas clutching his bag of money and stewing over what he’s about to do. (Click or tap on the picture to enlarge it.)
The stained glass is also straightforward. To Father Pitt’s nose it has a strong scent of illustrated Sunday-school supplement about it, but it tells the Bible stories in a way that we can immediately recognize. Above, John the Baptist and the Annunciation.
Joseph and the child Jesus (who has made himself a model cross); Jesus praying in the wilderness.
The Transfiguration; the Twelve adoring Mary.
Adam and Eve cast out of the Garden of Eden; the angel staying the hand of Abraham as he is about to sacrifice Isaac.
Manna from heaven; Moses, seeing the golden calf, about the smash the tablets of the Law.
Addendum: The church, built beginning in 1955 as St. Aloysius, was designed by William York Cocken and Edward J. Hergenroeder. The basement, however, was built in 1914 and temporarily roofed over, but multiple delays (including two big wars and a Depression) kept the congregation in that temporary basement church for more than forty years.1
The first reaction of most visitors to Madonna del Castello is astonishment that such a thing even exists. The sanctuary hovers over the parking lot on spindly legs like some giant beetle ready to march out into the streets of Swissvale. It is beautiful, impressive, and a little terrifying.
The interior of St. Anselm in Swissvale, one of the seven churches in St. Joseph the Worker parish scheduled to close this month. We’ll have a separate article for the stained glass. Father Pitt publishes these pictures with gratitude to the parish volunteers who held a simultaneous open house in all the churches of the parish on Sunday, February 22. Old Pa Pitt managed to get to five of the churches during the two-hour window.
The Hall of Sculpture in the Carnegie (as seen by the ultra-wide auxiliary camera on old Pa Pitt’s phone, so don’t expect too much if you enlarge the picture), designed in imitation of the interior of the Parthenon.
The vestibule at the original entrance to the Carnegie Institute building, seldom used now because visitors come in through the modernist Scaife Galleries addition. This picture was taken hand-held in dim light with the ultra-wide auxiliary camera on old Pa Pitt’s phone, so please forgive its obvious flaws.
A look at the interior of the Cafe Reineman on Fifth Avenue shows us what was expected of any establishment claiming to be the best restaurant in Pittsburgh, and indeed west of the Allegheny Mountains. It is brightly lit by gas—the artist has made the illumination by large chandeliers a prominent feature. It has tables for couples and families arrayed in efficient rows to accommodate many guests and leave room for the waiters to navigate. It has an ornate bar with immense mirrors and proper facilities for expectoration on the floor. For single gentlemen diners, there are stools along the wall. For unaccompanied ladies, there is a Ladies’ Entrance as far from the bar as practically possible, allowing them to pass into the eating part of the establishment without enduring rude remarks from the expectorating drunks—who appear to be starting a fight even in the drawing, as if a bar without a fight would be an unacceptable omission in the most complete establishment in the West. And, of course, the location is important: just across from one of the main theaters, the Opera House, whose last incarnation became the Warner. (Note that address numbers on Fifth Avenue have changed: this would be at about 343 Fifth Avenue now.)
Officially the Andrew Carnegie Free Library, or the Carnegie Free Library by the inscription over the door, but the name “Carnegie Carnegie” is obvious and irresistible and adopted for the library’s Web site.
When the two Chartiers Valley boroughs of Mansfield and Chartiers merged in 1894, they decided to name the new town Carnegie after what was probably the most familiar name in the Pittsburgh area. In return, Andrew Carnegie gave them the jaw-dropping sum of $200,000 for this magnificent building (designed by Struthers & Hannah), plus money for books and—unusually for Carnegie—an endowment. His usual agreement with towns that took a library from him was that the town must undertake the upkeep, thus making the citizens ultimately responsible for their library; but in a few steel towns (where we suppose he felt more personally responsible) he endowed the library with enough of a fund to keep it going indefinitely.
Like Carnegie’s other steel-town libraries, this one was not just a library. It also had a music hall, a gymnasium, and a lecture hall.
Note the terra-cotta lyre over this window on the music-hall front of the building. Today the music hall is still delighting audiences, and the library sticks to its mission of being a welcoming place to go read a book.
Columns of the Composite order, the most elaborate of the five classical orders, send the message that this is not just a library but a palace for the people.
The lobby lets us know that we have entered a building of unusual richness. Marble panels cover the walls, and mosaic tile decorates the floor.
The Greek-key pattern in the tile is repeated in the risers in the stairs.
The interior of the library itself mimics the experience of being a rich man with a big library—like old Col. Anderson, whose library was Carnegie’s model. You walked in, sat in front of a big fireplace, and had servants bring you books, and for an hour or two you were just as wealthy as Carnegie himself.
Open stacks have eliminated the servants, but the fireplace is still there, with a familiar face over the mantel.
In days of gaslights and low-wattage early electric bulbs, natural light from outside was still important for a reading room. Fortunately no one ever had the money to block up these windows.
All the windows are surrounded with elaborate terra-cotta decorations.
The Hall of Sculpture was designed as a model of the interior of the Parthenon. It used to be crowded with plaster casts of antique sculptures; most of the casts have been moved to the Hall of Architecture, leaving the Hall of Sculpture mostly empty except when special exhibits are mounted there.
