Father Pitt

Tag: Romanesque Architecture

  • St. Mary Magdalene Church, Homestead

    St. Mary Magdalene Church, Homestead

    This glorious Romanesque church was closed in 2009, but it was taken over by a community education organization called Dragon’s Den, which has kept it up beautifully, and in the well-preserved interior has added “a state-of-the-art two-level challenge course, climbing wall, and a 160-foot zip line that connects the choir loft to the former altar.” Now you know what to do with a big vacant church.

    Addendum: The architect was Frederick Sauer, who gave us a number of fine churches and the whimsical Sauer Buildings in Aspinwall.

    Entrance
    Arch
    Cornerstone
    Rectory

    The rectory is overshadowed by the magnificent church, but it is certainly a striking design in its own right.

  • Temple B’nai Israel, McKeesport

    Temple B’nai Israel

    This gorgeous synagogue in the style old Pa Pitt calls Jewish Romanesque is fortunately owned by a church that obviously appreciates the building and has not altered its Jewish ornamentation. Father Pitt’s apologies for the lighting; the sun was from the wrong direction, but our cameras did their best.

    Menorah mosaic
    Decalogue
    Corner view of the Temple
    Cornerstone

    The cornerstone gives us a date of 1922 (or 5683) for the building and 1912 for the foundation of the congregation. Temple B’nai Israel was the first Reform congregation in McKeesport, and the congregation still exists, though in 2000 it moved to White Oak. The Temple’s Web site has a timeline of the congregation’s history. (Update: The congregation has decided to wind down operations and close in 2025.)

    The Heinz History Center owns a commemorative plate from 1962 for the “Golden Anniversary” of the congregation; it has a picture of the building, and a misprinted foundation date—“1902” instead of 1912, though the words “GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY” are right above it.

  • Old Main, Duquesne University, Today and in 1888

    Old Main today
    Old Main in 1888

    A comparison shows that Old Main has gradually been un-Victorianized over the years, losing chimneys and a cupola. The building is still an elegant and commanding presence on campus, though inside there is nothing left on the main floor to indicate that it was built before the twenty-first century. It has been old Pa Pitt’s observation that Catholic universities tend to treat old buildings as embarrassments rather than assets.

  • Achille Giammartini

    Purely by accident, old Pa Pitt stumbled on this portrait of the great architectural sculptor Achille Giammartini, whose work adorns churches, houses, and commercial buildings all over the city. There is almost no trace of Giammartini on the Web: in fact, search engines usually come up with no more than half a dozen results, and the first two are usually from Father Pitt. So this seems like as good a time as any to announce Father Pitt’s new project.

    Bit by bit, Father Pitt is building a Pittsburgh Encyclopedia, where he will keep detailed information about architects, sculptors, neighborhoods, and such things, so that he can refer to those articles rather than repeating himself every time he publishes a new picture. Something similar has worked well with Flora Pittsburghensis and the Flora Pittsburghensis reference site.

    At present the Pittsburgh Encyclopedia is just beginning: it has nine articles in total. But we have just added an article on Achille Giammartini that gathers more information about him than exists in any other single place on the Web.

  • The Back of Bellefield Presbyterian Church on a Rainy Day

    Rear of Bellefield Presbyterian Church

    Pedestrians and drivers often see the front of this magnificent Romanesque church, but few ever notice the back. It is plainer but still interesting in its masses, with the half-round auditorium characteristic of many Methodist and Presbyterian churches in the late 1800s.

    The front (seen below in a picture from last year) is also given a round bulge, so that the whole building seems to orbit around that polygonal central tower.

    Front of the church

    Old Pa Pitt will repeat what he said the last time he published pictures of Bellefield Presbyterian Church:

    The church was built in 1896 as the First United Presbyterian Church; the architect was William Boyd, who gave the congregation the most fashionably Richardsonian interpretation of Romanesque he could manage. It was more or less in competition with the original Bellefield Presbyterian, of which only the tower now remains. But in 1967 the two congregations merged. They kept this building, renamed it Bellefield Presbyterian, and abandoned the old Bellefield Presbyterian up the street, which was later demolished for an office block.

  • Penn Avenue Gatehouse, Allegheny Cemtery

    Shortened tower

    If you are not a frequent visitor to Allegheny Cemetery, you might pass the Penn Avenue gatehouse and wonder whether your memory is playing tricks on you. Isn’t there something…different about it?

    Your memory is not playing tricks on you. Here is a picture from 2021:

    Penn Avenue Gatehouse in 2021

    What old Pa Pitt was told was that engineers had determined that the tower was dangerously unstable. The stones were carefully taken apart and labeled, and maybe someday the tower will be restored.

  • Uxor Way and St. Michael’s Church, South Side

    This is one of those only-in-Pittsburgh views: a glorious Romanesque church on the Slopes hovering over little frame alley houses on the Flats. St. Michael’s (now the Angel’s Arms apartments) was designed by Charles F. Bartberger, father of, and often confused with, the prolific Charles M. Bartberger.

  • Romanesque Tower, Uptown

    This curious structure is at the back end of a commercial building on Fifth Avenue, where it faces the alley called Watson Street. It’s hard to tell from the old maps, but this may be the back end of the building that used to be the Uptown postal station, Pittsburgh 19. The tower is curious for multiple reasons: first, that there is a tower here at all along the alley rather than at the front of the building where it could be seen; second, because it looks as though it was put together from two slightly mismatched halves; third, because of the extraordinarily narrow Romanesque windows that look as though someone was expecting an attack by enemy archers. The upper floor, which is what makes this look like a tower, may be a later addition.

    If you enlarge the picture, you will notice a ghost sign on the building next door: Progressive People Want Perfect Liquors. The position of this sign—where it is all but invisible unless you are looking down on it from a distance with a long lens—suggests that it may be even older than the tower that obscures it.

  • Rowhouses on Penn Avenue, Garfield

    5100 block of Penn Avenue

    These are Baltimore-style rowhouses, where the whole block was built at once as more or less one subdivided building. They are much less common in Pittsburgh, but we do find them occasionally, and these rows in Garfield preserve many of their original details. They were built in the 1880s, probably as rental properties, since the 1890 map shows them as all owned by Brown, Donnell & Verner. Intact rows from this era are rare in Pittsburgh, and we should take care to preserve these two rows. Above, the 5100 block of Penn Avenue. Below, houses in the 5200 block.

    5200 block
    Owl

    Terra-cotta owls decorate every house. One wonders whether they had special significance for Brown, Donnell, or Verner.

    Another owl
    Corner house
    House with yellow door

  • Tower of the Courthouse