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Tag: Romanesque Architecture

Zion Evangelical Church, Bloomfield
If you are looking for a distinguished church building, here is one for sale, and in very good shape. It was built in 1906 as Zion Evangelical Church; the architect was Chauncey W. Hodgdon.¹ For many years it was the Albright Methodist Church.

The building had more than one narrow escape from death. It was owned by the Methodists who also had the cathedral-sized First United Methodist Church right next to it; since this church was redundant, they proposed to sell it to a developer who would demolish it and build something profitable. When a city historic designation made that more difficult, the church sat abandoned and decaying for several more years, exchanging the fast death of redevelopment for the slow death of neglect. But about three years ago it was restored, including cleaning off the decades of accumulated soot.

This was the tower when old Pa Pitt passed by in 2008; he published this picture under the heading “The Vanishing Black Stones of Pittsburgh.” We may add this building to the list of previously black buildings whose blackness has vanished.

Or at least mostly vanished.

In the background we can see the massive lantern of First Methodist.

Canon PowerShotSX20 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens.
1. According to a city architectural survey from a few years ago. “This now-closed church has been for sale for several years now in an area where development pressures are significant. There was a fight in 2016 over possible city designation as historic, which was granted. The register had the address as 5445 Centre Ave. but the legal address is 486 S. Graham St.” ↩︎
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September 13, 2026
St. Anthony Chapel, Troy Hill

Father Suitbert Mollinger was the founding pastor of of Most Holy Name of Jesus parish on Troy Hill. He was also rich: he had inherited a good bit of money, and he used it in travels through Europe to buy up saints’ relics that were otherwise being tossed out in the waves of revolutions that were washing across the continent in the middle 1800s. He built this chapel to house the collection, which is probably the largest accumulation of relics in one building in the world. He dedicated it to his patron St. Anthony of Padua.

Here is St. Anthony of Padua himself, shown as he often is in art with a book on which the Christ child is sitting, referring to the story that Anthony was once meditating on Scripture when the child Jesus himself appeared to him.

Building in honor of St. Anthony of Padua…

…erected 1882, enlarged 1890.

Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

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September 6, 2026
South Side Market House

The South Side Market House was built in the heart of old Birmingham in 1893. The architect was Charles Bickel.

Originally the building was much more elaborate:

The South Side Market in 1914 by the Pittsburgh City Photographer, from Historic Pittsburgh, where you can see the full-size original.

However, in 1915, a fire gutted the building, leaving only the outer walls standing.

The full-size original is at Historic Pittsburgh.

Mr. Bickel was still alive at the time, but the reconstruction was designed by the city’s own talented Stanley Roush.

Drawing of the rebuilt market house by the architect, Stanley Roush. You can see the full-size original at Historic Pittsburgh; Mr. Roush’s signature is at lower left.

This bovine cartouche commemorates the death and resurrection of the South Side Market.

Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

The fire was not the end of the building’s adventures. In 1950, public markets having become obsolete in Pittsburgh, the building was remodeled as a recreation center under the supervision of Button & McLean, who left the exterior almost unchanged from Roush’s 1915 design.

It was refurbished again in 2012 as a “Healthy Active Living Center” for senior citizens. Father Pitt does not yet know who supervised that remodeling, but he would be delighted to hear from anyone who has information.

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September 2, 2026
Clara Morris House, Point Breeze
S. A. Barr was the architect of this house, built in 1894 for Mrs. Clara Morris.¹ A woman’s home is her castle, and this one looks as though it might be a very effective defense against Mrs. Morris’ neighbors the Fricks.

Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
1. The Engineering Record, May 12, 1894: “Lexington av and Tuscarora st. 2-story br and stone dwell; cost, $12,000; o, C M Morris; a, S & A [sic] Barr; b, S J Crooks.” Tuscarora Street was planned to cross Lexington here. Also, Record & Guide, February 14, 1894, p. 75. “Architect S. A. Barr, 42½ Sixth Street, has made plans for a handsome stone and buff brick dwelling, to be erected on Lexington Avenue, for Mrs. Clara Morris.” ↩︎
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August 21, 2026
St. Ambrose Parish, Spring Hill
Three buildings of St. Ambrose parish (now part of Holy Wisdom parish) are lined up along Haslage Avenue 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

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