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Tag: Romanesque Architecture

St. Ambrose Parish, Spring Hill
Three buildings of St. Ambrose parish (now part of Holy Wisdom parish) are lined up along Haslage Street on tiny lots. We begin with the church, built in 1894, when the parish was going by the Latin version of the name. (If the atmosphere in these pictures seems a bit murky, that is because they were taken on one of the recent days of Canadian smoke in the air.)

The church has been crusted over with so many additions and alterations that it is hard to imagine what it looked like when it was built. It seems, however, to have been a typical small Romanesque church of the late 1800s, with the usual decorative brickwork and an outsized tower in front. Father Pitt did not succeed in finding the name of an architect.

These chimneys and the cross-bearing crest were obviously meant to be seen, but they are now almost completely invisible behind later construction.

The next building to be put up was the convent, in 1911. It was designed by Edmund B. Lang,¹ who (along with his brother Herman) designed many buildings for German Catholics.

Finally, in 1928, the school was built. The architect was William P. Hutchins,² who matched his design to the round arches and crenelated brick ornamentation of the church.

Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
1. The Construction Record, November 19, 1910: “Architect E. B. Lang, House building, awarded to H. J. Eberz, 721-13 First avenue, Northside, the contract for erecting a 2½-story brick and stone convent, on Haslage avenue, Northside, for St. Ambrose’s Roman Catholic Congregation. Cost $6,000.” ↩︎
2. “Lay Cornerstone of St. Ambrose School Sunday Afternoon,” Pittsburgh Catholic, May 31, 1928. “The new school was designed by William P. Hutchins, architect, and the Pittsburgh Engineering and Construction Corp. is the general contractor.” ↩︎
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July 22, 2026
Romanesque Carvings on the Holland Mansion, Oakland

Father Pitt began this article by writing, “This house, built in 1884…”

And then he stopped.

The common wisdom says that this house, now the Music Building of the University of Pittsburgh, was designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow and built in 1884. That is the information in the Wikipedia article and in the city architectural survey and the National Register form for Schenley Farms and in the University of Pittsburgh Civic Center Conservation Plan.

But the date is obviously wrong: the firm of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow was founded when H. H. Richardson died in 1886, and an 1890 plat map shows the lot still vacant. (It is possible, therefore, that the universally accepted date “1884” originated as a misprint for “1894.”) As for the architects, the building does not appear on Margaret Henderson Floyd’s catalogue of their works in Architecture After Richardson, though we know that Floyd’s vast research missed a few buildings that have since been identified.

So here we have an example of a perfectly good and universally accepted fact that completely unravels when old Pa Pitt pulls at a loose thread. He has nothing yet to offer in its place except the pictures of the whimsical decorations that he originally intended to show you.

This much we know: the house was built for William J. Holland, pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church across the street (designed by Frederick Osterling in a similar Romanesque style), and chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania (later the University of Pittsburgh), and then Director of the Carnegie Institute. He was also perhaps the world’s leading lepidopterist, a teacher of ancient languages, an accomplished paleontologist, and a speaker of Japanese, in case he needed any more accomplishments to impress you.

When the house was built and who designed it will have to remain open questions for the moment.

The house is decorated with Romanesque carvings that have eroded into a medieval softness in Pittsburgh’s harsh atmosphere.

Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

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July 16, 2026
Eberhardt & Ober Brewery, Dutchtown

This splendid building dates from 1883; it is one of the most substantial remaining works of Joseph Stillburg, who was a big deal in Pittsburgh in the 1800s. Eberhardt & Ober was later absorbed into Pittsburgh Brewing, but the E&O brand was kept for many years, along with the memorable slogan “Early & Often.”

The building is well kept as the home of the Penn Brewery, which arguably founded the craft-beer movement and probably makes better beer than Eberhardt & Ober ever made.

This office building, also designed by Stillburg, was built in 1897.

The tall building with few windows was the stock house. Old Pa Pitt is not sure what the handsome little building attached to it was; perhaps a neighborhood historian can enlighten us.

Sony Alpha 3000; Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

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July 10, 2026
Flatiron Building on Troy Hill

A “flatiron” building is a wedge-shaped building, like an old-fashioned clothes iron. There are many in Pittsburgh: our irregular streets leave odd-shaped parcels that naturally fill up with whatever buildings will fit. This one made the most of its corner location by putting a storefront there, now filled in for an apartment. The ornamental brickwork is attractive, and a few carved-stone decorations give the building properly Romanesque credentials.

Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Sony Alpha 3000.

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July 8, 2026
Old Stable on Troy Hill

Every city used to be full of stables because every city used to be full of horses. Garages have replaced stables, and most of the old stables have vanished. Here is a rare survivor. It was in the beer business for at least a century, but that it was a stable before that is fairly obvious. The grinning horse tells the story. Even then it may have been a stable for a brewery; the earliest owner old Pa Pitt has been able to trace was J. P. Ober, the Ober of Eberhardt & Ober, whose brewery at the base of this same hill is now the Penn Brewery.

Sony Alpha 3000; Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

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July 2, 2026
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Allegheny West

There is only one National Historic Landmark on the North Side, and this is it. Modest as it is, it would appear on many historians’ lists of the greatest American buildings of the nineteenth century. It is the other great work of Henry Hobson Richardson in Pittsburgh, after the Allegheny County Courthouse. One is sometimes tempted to say that it was ahead of its time (it was finished in 1886, when high Victorian style usually demanded a thick crust of ornamentation), but it would probably be better to say that it stands out of time. It is never stale, and yet it was never outrageously modern. It stands as an inspiration and a reproach to every other building.

It earns all those accolades from architects in spite of one serious engineering mistake. Those walls were not meant to lean outward the way they do. The weight of the huge roof pushed them out within a few years after the church was finished. The congregation called in Richardson’s old associates Longfellow, Alden & Harlow to see whether anything could be done, and their conclusion was that the structure was stable the way it was and should be left alone. A century and a third have proved them right.

These simple triangular dormers are the single feature of this church most often directly imitated; compare, for example, the ones on St. Paul’s Episcopal on the Hill (designed by Elise Mercur), or the ones on the First United Presbyterian Church of Etna (Father Pitt hasn’t figured out the architect of that one yet), or the ones on the Watson Memorial Presbyterian Church on Observatory Hill (designed by Allison & Allison)—all direct quotations from Richardson’s dormers here.

Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

This front elevation is a 36-megapixel composite, so you can enlarge it and enjoy the details of the wonderfully varied brickwork that nevertheless seems natural and organic and avoids all suggestion of ostentation.

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June 14, 2026
First Italian Presbyterian Church, Larimer

Right now you could buy an interesting piece of Pittsburgh Italian history. This was built as the First Italian Presbyterian Church; later it was known as Trinity Presbyterian, and then the building was taken over by the Agape Christian Fellowship. But now the building is for sale. It seems to be in good shape externally, including a spire that does not look very bedraggled at all.

“The Church Building Dedicated in 1903,” from The Miracle of Trinity, 1964. The source of the drawing is not mentioned; it may be the architect’s rendering.

The architect of the church, built in 1902–1903, was D. E. Sheridan, who was based in East Liberty.¹ In addition to the usual run of middle-class houses and small commercial buildings, he had a number of clients in the South and Southwest, according to a short biography of him published in 1907, which is backed up by listings in trade journals. The half-round protrusion probably tells us that the church was built on the Akron Plan.

But Italian Presbyterians? Aren’t Italians all Roman Catholics? Let the retired pastor of the church explain it:

The opinion held by most Americans is that the Italians are staunch Roman Catholics. The fact that Rome is the seat of the Roman Pontiff and that most of the Popes have been Italian, makes this widely held opinion sound very logical.

But the historical and religious background of the Italian Immigrants lead us to an entirely different conclusion. To understand their religious attitude, we must remember that the struggle for the uniﬁcation of Italy alienated from the Roman Church practically all the Italian Patriots. The Italians knew that the Vatican had opposed the noble dreams of Mazzini and Garibaldi, and that it had gone so far as to excommunicate them. They remembered that on September 20, 1870, when the Italian troops entered the Eternal City and proclaimed it to be the capital of the United Kingdom of Italy, the Pope issued a scathing protest against the Italian Government and locked himself in the Vatican. This anti-Italian stand of the Vatican, coupled with the corruption of the clergy, alienated most of the intelligent, patriotic Italians from the Roman Catholic Church. They retained a sentimental attachment to the church, but had no respect for the Clergy. This understandable politico-religious attitude became known as “anticlericalismo.”

Many of the Italian immigrants who settled in East Liberty were avowed anti-clerical. This attitude did not necessarily lead them to seek the purity of the Gospel of Salvation in Jesus Christ, but it kept them free from the oppressive domination of the priests.²

Thus, when Presbyterian missionaries came to the neighborhood, they found a number of Italians ready to hear their message of a Christianity with no popes. The majority of Italians in Pittsburgh remained Catholic, however, and this was never a very large congregation.

Sony Alpha 3000.

It would hardly seem like Pittsburgh if we didn’t include a good batch of utility cables in at least one picture.

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June 2, 2026
Homewood Presbyterian Church (Bethesda Presbyterian Church), Homewood

Thomas Hannah designed this unusual church, which was built in about 1917.¹ We find many churches in Pittsburgh where the sanctuary is upstairs, with Sunday-school rooms and social halls on the ground floor; this appears to be one of the very few where there are rooms above the sanctuary. It is still Presbyterian, but in 1961 came into the hands of the Bethesda United Presbyterian congregation.

When you look at this church, it looks back.

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May 31, 2026
First Presbyterian Church, Wilkinsburg

Built in 1898, this church was designed by Vrydaugh & Wolfe¹ in a Romanesque style that carries over elements of the pre-Richardsonian version of Romanesque. It now belongs to the Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, which has kept it beautifully—even the spire, which usually disappears on churches like these.

An old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection shows how little the building has changed.

Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

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May 17, 2026
First National Bank Building, Wilkinsburg

A banking palace from the 1890s, with the ground floor still in use as a bank. The style is classical on the ground floor but Romanesque above; we suspect the ground floor may be a later alteration. Father Pitt does not know the architect yet. L. A. Raisig, a successful architect and builder who designed many buildings in Wilkinsburg, kept his office here, so it is possible that he designed the building.

Fujifilm FinePix HS20 EXR.

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May 14, 2026

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