This church sits right across the line from Bellevue in Avalon, but it is often listed as the Church of the Epiphany of Bellevue. It was built in 1912–1913, and the architects were Vrydaugh and Wolfe, who also designed Warwick House and (as Vrydaugh and Shepherd with T. B. Wolfe) Calvary Methodist in Allegheny West. This is one of our increasingly rare black-stone churches; every stone church in Pittsburgh used to look like this.
Though it is no longer active as a church, everything but the sign seems well kept and loved.
Addendum: Just this month (August 2023), this building was awarded a plaque by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
Designed by Bertram Goodhue in the Perpendicular Gothic style, this church emphasizes verticality. We also have pictures of the interior of First Baptist.
Architect William P. Hutchins certainly made the most of the site. He had a hillside location, a prominent intersection, and a lot of space to work with, so he oriented the building diagonally and gave the church a west front (liturgically speaking) that hits us with an outsized magnificence as we come up California Avenue. The church was built in 1927; the style is Perpendicular Gothic, and already shows some signs of the streamlining that would mark Hutchins’ later works. (To see how far he would take that streamlining, have a look at Resurrection Church in Brookline, one of Hutchins’ last churches.)
To get the building, the distant hill, and the clouds all properly exposed took three different exposures, all mashed together in one high-dynamic-range photograph. That is how much work Father Pitt is willing to do for you, his readers.
Shields in relief over the three main doors honor important saints with their symbolic attributes.
The cornerstone. The Latin inscription says, “This is the house of God and the gate of heaven.”
Old Pa Pitt noticed that Wikimedia Commons had no current pictures of landmarks in the very pleasant neighborhood of Brighton Heights, except for a few pictures of the Sacrifice monument, most of them taken by Father Pitt. That lacuna has now been filled, and we will be seeing many of the pictures in the next couple of weeks.
