This 1890 building was designed by Frederick Osterling, who also gave us the Arrott Building and the Union Trust Building. It now functions as a kind of parasite on the skyscraper Bell Telephone Building next door, but it is still an impressive work of architecture.
Originally St. Anthony’s, a German Catholic church; it became Holy Spirit in the 1990s parish reorganizations, when St. Anthony was merged with St. Anne. The building was put up in 1914, with substantial alterations after a fire in 1936.
One of the surreal things about living in a movie-friendly place like Pittsburgh is that one sometimes finds oneself dropped into a fictional dimension. When Father Pitt stopped to take a picture of this church, he found that the building adjacent was not the parish school, but rather the Crockett County Sheriff’s Department; and there was a sign on the wall that connects the church with the school welcoming him to “Blackburg, Kentucky, The Portal to Shay Mountain, where coal mining is our heritage and Wild Boar & Buck legends live on.” So when, in a year or two, you happen to see a movie that takes place in Blackburg, the seat of Crockett County in Kentucky, you will know that the place is actually Millvale, and the illusion will be spoiled. Sorry about that.
Addendum: The architect was John T. Comès, possibly Pittsburgh’s most prolific architect of Catholic churches.
This splendid church was designed by Bellevue’s own Leo A. McMullen, an architect and organist who is almost forgotten today, but whose works were highly regarded in his time. The American Institute of Architects counted him as one of “six architects who shaped Pittsburgh,” according to his obituary in 1963.
The four evangelists—Mark, Matthew, John, and Luke, in that order—are lined up on the façade, each holding open a book that displays the first words of his Gospel.
This church is not all that old, having been built in 1896; but it sits on a site where there has been a church since 1834, and a burying-ground since 1796. The Cross Roads Presbyterian Church has moved to a much larger building some distance away, but still maintains the cemetery. The borough owns this building, and the Monroeville Historical Society uses it.
The bell tower was added in 1976; it is dedicated to George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. Father Pitt has not researched the subject thoroughly, but he suspects that this is the only bell tower in the world dedicated to Nikola Tesla.
Taller than it is long, Grace Lutheran Church occupies a tiny space in the narrow streets of Troy Hill, a traditionally German neighborhood straddling a narrow hilltop above the Allegheny.
Allegheny’s own Carnegie Hall was built in 1890, right next to the library Carnegie gave to the city a year earlier. The library building still stands, though the library has moved a few blocks up Federal Street; the music hall is now used as the “New Hazlett Theater,” a venue for miscellaneous performances. The library and music hall were among the very few buildings spared when the heart of Allegheny was demolished in the 1960s for the “Allegheny Center” project, which was either an ambitious attempt at creating the modern ideal of a city or an audacious stab at the heart of Pittsburgh’s conquered rival, depending on how you look at it.
Carnegie Hall is a short walk from the North Side subway station.
Addendum: The architects were Smithmeyer & Pelz.
The County Office Building is a curious combination of Romanesque and late Art Deco, with more than a hint of the style Father Pitt likes to call American Fascist. Below, an eagle ornament on the corner holds the Allegheny County arms in its talons. On the arms: a ship, a plough, and three sheaves of grain (though they look like mushrooms in concrete).
The County Office Building is a short walk away from the First Avenue subway station.
