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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.” ↩︎
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.
