Father Pitt

Tag: Potomac Avenue

  • Dormont Methodist Episcopal Church

    Dormont Methodist Episcopal Church

    Built in 1920 in an angular modern-Gothic style, this church served its original congregation until 2013, the year of the great collapse of Dormont mainline churches, when the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Baptists all threw in the towel. The building became a Buddhist temple for a while (the Buddhists gave it the current paint scheme), but it seems not to be active right now. It is, however, kept up well.

    Thanks to the Gazette Times of September 13, 1920, we have a picture of Bishop McConnell of the M. E. Church laying laying “a copy of the Gazette Times containing announcement of the corner stone laying, coins of the present day, a list of trustees and a list of members of the Dormont and Banksville churches, recently combined” in the cornerstone.

    Bishop McConnell laying documents in the cornerstone
    Cornerstone

    This cornerstone is a top contender for the coveted title of Most Awkward Word Break on a Stone Inscription Outside a Country Graveyard.

    Capsule Enclosed

    It seems that another capsule was laid in 2009, four years before the church dissolved.

    Dormont United Methodist Church

    None of the news stories we found mentioned an architect, but we hope to find a name eventually.

    Dormont Methodist Church
    Side entrance
    Tower
    Dormont Methodist Episcopal Church
    Dormont M. E. Church
    Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6; Nikon COOLPIX P100.
    Comments

  • Storefront on Potomac Avenue, Dormont

    Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    A beautiful storefront with veiny marble and a large panel of stained glass spanning the whole width. Note the properly inset entrance, so that the door does not fly open into passing pedestrians’ faces—a requirement we have forgotten.

  • Stone-and-Shingle Cottage in Dormont

    1708 Potomac Avenue

    Stone below and shingle above—a popular combination in the 1920s, but almost all such houses have had their shingles replaced with artificial siding. On this house in Dormont, however, the shingles remain. The roof and windows are newer replacements, but otherwise this house stands just about as it was originally built.

    Stone-and-shingle cottage
    These pictures are very large; be careful on a metered connection.
    Side of the house

    Note how the basement garage door is carefully matched to the rest of the house.

  • Dormont Presbyterian Church

    Dormont Presbyterian Church with Ginkgo biloba leaves

    We have seen this especially fine church before, but since old Pa Pitt was out walking on Potomac Avenue in early-evening light, he decided that we could see it again. It is now the Dormont campus of the nondenominational North Way Christian Community, which fortunately has the money to keep up the exterior.

    Dormont Presbyterian Church, Espy Avenue side
    Tower of Dormont Presbyterian Church
    Side porch
    Espy Avenue entrance
    Parsonage

    The parsonage is just the sort of elegant and respectable dwelling you need for your Presbyterian minister. With a broad English Gothic arch at the entrance to link it to the church, it makes a good transition between the monumental church and the prosperous merchant-class houses on Espy Avenue.

    Addendum: Father Pitt tentatively attributes the church to Chauncey W. Hodgdon. Mr. Hodgdon was hired to supervise alterations in 1914, and it was considered unethical for another architect to alter or add to a building within a few years of its construction unless the original one refused, or was unavailable, or was rejected by the client.

  • Dormont Presbyterian Church

    Dormont Presbyterian Church

    Dormont Presbyterian Church (now North Way Community Church) in winter sunlight.

  • Potomac Avenue, Dormont

    Potomac Avenue

    One of the most pleasant shopping streets in the South Hills, Potomac Avenue has a remarkable variety of things to do in a short space. There are coffeehouses, restaurants, an undivided neighborhood movie palace still showing movies, a wine shop, a bakery, a bookstore, a large and well-stocked Turkish-Russian grocery, an oriental-rug dealer, and a streetcar stop on the Red Line (Potomac) that makes it all accessible.

    The old Dormont Presbyterian Church (now North Way Christian Community) dominates the street in just the right way.

  • Spanish Mission Style in Dormont

    A modest commercial building on Potomac Avenue, this is a good example of the Spanish Mission style in commercial buildings and apartment houses. The style—a kind of Eastern fantasy of the Southwest—is certainly not unknown elsewhere in the Pittsburgh area, but for some reason it was especially popular in Dormont, where numerous Mission-style buildings still stand. Doubtless the original roof overhang above the name was tile, and very probably green tile. Below, the building at Potomac and Glenmore Avenues retains its original green roof tiles.

  • Apartments and Storefronts, Dormont

    This interesting residential-commercial structure on Potomac Avenue seems to combine two styles. The apartment building is a kind of very late Italianate, but the way the projecting storefronts form a sort of courtyard seems very much in the Mission style, as do the sloped roofs, which old Pa Pitt suspects were originally tile rather than asphalt shingles.

  • Dormont United Methodist Church

    The year 2013 was a bad year for older churches in Dormont: three of them—the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Methodists—gave up trying to maintain their fine old buildings with diminished congregations. The Presbyterians sold their building to a suburban megachurch; the humbler Methodists sold their building to Buddhists who used it as a temple. But the Buddhists, after having painted the building in this attractive bright yellow and red, have given up as well; and as of October 2019 the building is for sale again.


    Map

  • Dormont Presbyterian Church

    The old Dormont Presbyterian Church dominates the business district on Potomac Avenue, making that corner of Dormont look almost like a medieval English city. The church was built in 1923 (or in 1907, with an expansion in 1923; Pa Pitt’s sources are a little fuzzy). The Presbyterians, along with the Baptists and Methodists, threw in the towel in 2013, and this is now a branch of North Way Christian Community.