On a rainy evening. The young John T. Comès designed this church while he was working for Rutan & Russell.
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St. Augustine’s Church, Lawrenceville
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Carnegie Library of Braddock
William Halsey Wood was the original architect of this library. It was the second Carnegie Library to be commissioned; but, because the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny took longer to build, this was the first one to open.
It set the pattern for future Carnegie Libraries in the steel towns: it was a complete cultural center, with a gymnasium, a music hall, and even a bathhouse. A motivated steelworker could come here, wash off the soot and grime, and improve his body and mind.
The slow revival of this library is an inspiring story of a community coming together to save a beloved treasure. It closed in 1974, because the building was in such bad shape that it could not be kept open. But the library refused to die: its last librarian organized a community group that bought the building and slowly put it back together. Today it is a lively cultural center again, rebranded as “Carnegie One.”
Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens.
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Gospel Hall, Bloomfield
W. Ward Williams was the architect of this little church facing Friendship Park, built in about 1915.1 It has been painted for its new life as a day-care center in bright patterns that both contrast with and emphasize its Rundbogenstil features.
These pictures were taken in July of 2025, but somehow old Pa Pitt forgot about them until now.
Olympus E-20N. - Source: The Construction Record, September 19, 1914. “Architect W . Ward Williams, Magee building, has revised, plans for a one-story brick and concrete church, to be built on 4923 Friendship avenue, for the Gospel Hall Congregation.” Additions and alterations by the same architect, 1927. Source: The Charette, September, 1927: “343. Architect: W. Ward Williams, 309-4th Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa. Title: Gospel Hall, Friendship Avenue, E. E., Pittsburgh, Pa. Alterations and additions. Ordinary construction. Two stories, new heating plant. Job closes August 16. Plumbing, heating and wiring reserved. List of Bidders: Walker & Curley, H. S. Moorhead & Company; A. J. Gloekler; Pittsburgh Engineering & Construction Corp.; and J. Kindler.” ↩︎
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Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny
Smithmeyer & Pelz designed Andrew Carnegie’s first library donation—though, as the people of Braddock are proud to point out, it was the second Carnegie Library to open, since the smaller Braddock library took less time to build. The same architects had designed the Library of Congress, which turned into a quagmire from which they had a hard time extricating their careers intact. (The library part was a piece of cake; it was the Congress part that was impossible to manage.) Unlike the classical Washington library, though, this one was done in a Romanesque style, which architects seem to have instinctively hit on as more suitable for muscular industrial Pittsburgh.
After the library was damaged by a lightning strike, the Carnegie Library moved out and built a smaller branch library northward on Federal Street. This building now is the Museum Lab of the Children’s Museum.
Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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Rodef Shalom Synagogue, Homestead
This is a synagogue that looks the part every inch, and its current occupants have kept all its distinctive features. It was built in 1913, and the architect was the very local Adam Wickerham,1 whose office was only three blocks away. It’s a tribute to Wickerham’s versatility that he designed two prominent religious buildings that face each other across Tenth Avenue—this and St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church—and made each one look exactly right for its congregation.
- The American Contractor, February 8, 1913: “Homestead, Pa .—Synagogue: $20,000. 2½ sty. 46×85. Homestead. Archt. A. H. Wickersham [sic], 601 McClure st., Homestead. Owner Rudolph Sholam [sic], Homestead, Plans in progress; M. H. Moss, secy, building committee, Munhall, Pa., will take figures until Feb, 26. Press brick, stone trim, hardwood & yellow pine finish & floors, gas & electric fixtures.” ↩︎
Correction: In an earlier version of this article, old Pa Pitt, who was working on multiple articles at once, had accidentally typed “Point Breeze” in the title instead of “Homestead.”
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Good Shepherd Church, Braddock
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.
Addendum: The architect was Carlton Strong, according to Van Trump & Ziegler’s Landmark Architecture of Allegheny County (1967), p. 163.
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.
Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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St. Jude the Apostle Church, Wilmerding
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.
Jacob’s dream; David with the head of Goliath.
Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. 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
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Inside St. Anselm Church, Swissvale
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.
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St. Anselm Church, Swissvale
St. Joseph the Worker is an eight-church Catholic parish in the near eastern suburbs. Seven of those churches are scheduled to close this month. A Wikimedia Commons user got in touch with Father Pitt and asked if he could document some of those churches before they close, and it seemed nothing less than a duty to respond.
We begin with the exterior of the church that, of the seven, Father Pitt would most like to see preserved: St. Anselm in Swissvale. We have pictures of the interior as well.
Albert F. Link was the architect of this magnificent Romanesque church, which opened in 1925. It shows Link’s usual adroit combination of historically informed detail with modern Art Nouveau veering toward Art Deco feeling.
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Old Rankin Municipal Building
What was once a rather flamboyant exercise in provincial Rundbogenstil has been tamed by multiple alterations, but we can still see some of the characteristic ornaments—such as the varied crenellations along the cornice and the heavily emphasized eyebrows over the originally arched windows.
The building has a new life as apartments, which at least keeps it standing, even if the conversion did dilute much of its original character.
Sony Alpha 3000; Kodak EasyShare Max Z990. 
Update: Thanks to our alert correspondent David Schwing, we have this old postcard that shows the building when it was young and Romanesquer. It was put up in 1908; the architect was E. W. Milligan of Swissvale.1
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