The architect of this Byzantine-modern church was Charles J. Pepine, who designed a number of postwar churches in our area.1 It was dedicated in 1949 under the name “Nativity of Our Lady”; later it was known as Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, but it was usually just called St. Mary’s. It closed in 2010. Some attempts were made to turn the building into apartments, but they ran into objections from neighbors and we know not what other troubles; currently the building is vacant, though with building permits dated 2015 and 2019 in the front window.
The distinctive high domes of these towers were not part of the original plan when the new church was first announced in September of 1948, as we can see from this sketch by the architect.
If there must be parking lots, they should be marked by architectural elements in keeping with their buildings—like these pillars at the parking-lot entrance for St. Mary’s.
In the boom years after the Second World War, new housing couldn’t be built fast enough to satisfy the demand. Architects were busy, and modernism was the rage. The Mark Twain and the Stephen Foster brought clean modern lines to Neville Street and doubtless filled up as soon as they were opened to eager renters.
Very few people pay any attention to the Manor Building. It would be a large building except for the fact that it lives against a backdrop of much larger buildings, so its blackish bulk—which was originally blue—makes little impression in the postcard view of Pittsburgh from Mount Washington. But it has an interesting history.
The building was announced in 1955; the design was by Wyatt C. Hedrick of Fort Worth.1 The owner was the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was investing heavily in real estate. Executives noticed that Pennsy stations often sat on valuable land in expensive business districts. Why should all that value go to waste when you can build upward and profit from rentals? “Utilization of the air rights over railroad property where the property is strategically located in Downtown areas is becoming more prevalent,” the Press reporter noted when this building was announced.
That was what was going on here. For a long time the Pennsylvania had had a small commuter station here—the Fourth Avenue station. It was at the mouth of the tunnel that is now used by the subway. The station itself was a small building and a couple of platforms, but the land had become very valuable. So the plan was to build three floors of parking garage, and then ten floors of offices above the garage. There would still be a station in the basement. It should have been a profitable scheme.
From the beginning, however, there seemed to be a curse on the building. “It suffered one delay after another while being built,” said a Post-Gazette story in 1961.2 “Then, after finally being completed in 1958, it was tied up for a year by litigation involving the contractor.”
By the time it was ready for renters, the building was notorious. People called it the Blue Elephant—and nobody wanted to move in.
Not until 1961 did the building overcome its jinx and begin to fill up. After that it prospered. By the next year, it was completely filled.
So there you have the story of the Blue Elephant, and now that you have heard it, perhaps you will notice the building the next time you pass it on the Crosstown Boulevard or go under it on the subway. Then you will forget it again, because it does not make much of an impression on the skyline.
In theory there is no reason to take digital pictures in black and white, since they can always be desaturated later. In practice, knowing that the picture will never have any colors in it makes one think more in terms of lines and shadows. Here are two pictures taken with a camera from the Neolithic era of digital cameras, which Father Pitt keeps set to black-and-white mode.
Rockwell Hall was not quite finished when it was featured in an Alcoa advertisement as one of the Pittsburgh skyscrapers made possible by aluminum. The restrained modernist classicism of the building has been faithfully maintained, so that it looks just about the same now as it did when it was new.
Now, who designed the building? Father Pitt asked Google, “Who was the architect of Rockwell Hall at Duquesne University?”—and instantly got a confident answer from artificial intelligence: “The architect of Rockwell Hall at Duquesne University was Newman-Schmidt. The building, also known as the Duquesne University Building, features a student lounge, vending area, and computer labs, and connects to downtown Pittsburgh via a skywalk.”
Newman-Schmidt was a photography company that provided this excellent picture, and the rest of the information comes from the “description” at that page, which our friend with the artificial brain has confidently misinterpreted.
So we asked a human architect, who told us that “the real answer is William York Cocken (probably with others).”
It seems to old Pa Pitt that, if he has to do the research himself anyway, then AI just adds an unnecessary step that can be profitably eliminated.
Mr. Cocken died just a week before the building was dedicated, and yet none of the articles on the dedication mentioned the name of the architect. However, the building was mentioned in his obituaries in all three daily papers (for example, this one in the Press).
The star-spangled blue dome of this church is an almost startling sight rising above the streets of downtown McKeesport. The church, generally known as “St. Mary’s” by locals, was built in 1974 from a design by Sergei Padukow,1 a specialist in Russian churches who adapted very traditional Russian forms to a late-twentieth-century style.
The serviceable canopy over the side entrance replaced a much more characteristic original, as we see in this 1970s photograph.
From “Our Eastern Domes, Fantastic, Bright…,” by James D. Van Trump. PHLF; reprinted from Carnegie Magazine.
A comparison with this illustration of “a characteristic church” in Moscow (from from John L. Stoddard’s Lectures, 1898) shows us how neatly Padukow adapted traditional Russian forms to a modern idiom.
A modernist church built in 1964 in traditional basilica form. The architect was J. Kenneth Myers. The church is dedicated to St. Nicholas of Myra, famous for giving gifts to poor children (thus inspiring our legend of Santa Claus) and for smacking Arius across the face at the Council of Nicaea. He was versatile.
Jolly old St. Nick slapping Arius. Ecumenical councils were a lot more fun in the old days.
It is a curious fact of our religious life that, even in the most depressed areas, the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox congregations often flourish, while the Western churches languish and evaporate one by one. This church is in a part of downtown McKeesport that can seem nearly abandoned—but not if you visit on a Sunday, when parishioners flock to St. Nicholas and the Russian Orthodox church just down the street.
The skeleton outline of an onion dome instantly conveys that this is an Eastern church.
Casimir Pellegrini Associates were the architects of this church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1963. It was a Franciscan parish until just a few years ago. Unlike some other abandoned Catholic churches, this one has a happy ending: it was bought by the thriving Lebanese Maronite Catholic congregation of Our Lady of Victory, which began in Brookline (or arguably earlier in the Lower Hill) and spent years banished to the wilds of Scott Township. In honor of Pittsburgh’s best Lebanese festival, which begins today and lasts all weekend, here are quite a few pictures of St. Pamphilus/Our Lady of Victory, which old Pa Pitt has done his best to make look like period-appropriate Kennedy-era Kodachrome slides.
The Our Lady of Victory congregation has graciously allowed St. Pamphilus to stay in his home on the front wall of the church, where he distributes bread to begging hands.
Father Pitt will admit that he does not find the nave the most attractive of all our church buildings. It is dignified and spacious, and that is enough. But the tower, a mailbox on stilts, captures his imagination, and he would hate to see anything happen to it.
The church was dedicated to St. Pamphilus, but it is St. Francis who greets you at the door with his usual motto “Pax et bonum.”
This shrine to Our Lady of Victory is now in its third location.
Father Pitt makes it a practice to try to record all the names on a war memorial, because sometimes things happen to inscriptions. If you enlarge this picture, every name should be clearly legible.
A plaque remembers Msgr. Elias P. Basil, the founding pastor of Our Lady of Victory parish. He had been pastor of St. Anne’s, the Maronite church in the Lower Hill. The story is that he promised St. Mary that, if all his parishioners came home safe from the Second World War, he would build a church in her honor. They did, and he did.
St. Anne Church was on Fulton, later Fullerton, Street, one of the Lower Hill streets that no longer exist because they were urban-renewaled to death. This cornerstone was preserved from the demolished church.
There’s something pleasingly simple about this little apartment building just off the Potomac Avenue business district in Dormont. There are almost no decorative details, but the simple pilasters that frame the front give the building enough texture to carry itself with dignity. The stone lintels over the windows on the side of the building are a clue to its history: the front is probably a later addition, replacing open balconies with extra rooms. But the matching white brick makes the change hard to detect without some concentration.
The entrance (we are able to peer into the shadows by combining three different exposures in one picture) surprises us with classical woodwork and ornamental leaded glass—another clue that this building is older than we would have thought from a glance at the front.
