Father Pitt

Tag: Schools

Church of the Epiphany, Lower Hill

Edward Stotz was the architect of the building for Epiphany Church, with considerable interior work done by John T. Comès. It was built in 1903 to replace the old St. Paul’s Cathedral downtown as the downtown parish church after Henry Frick made the Catholic Diocese an offer it couldn’t refuse, and Epiphany served as the temporary cathedral for three years while the new St. Paul’s was going up in Oakland.

When the Lower Hill was demolished for “slum clearance,” Epiphany and its school were the only buildings allowed to survive. Thus Pittsburgh accomplished, here and at Allegheny Center, what Le Corbusier had failed to do in Paris: we created a sterile modern wasteland punctuated by a few ancient landmarks pickled in brine.

These Romanesque columns and arches strongly remind old Pa Pitt of organ pipes.

Christ stands at the peak of the west front.

On Christ’s right hand, St. Peter with his key.

On Christ’s left hand, St. Paul with his book.

An angel with plenty of anti-pigeon armor prays for worshipers as they enter.

The school is built in a simpler Romanesque style that links and subordinates it to the church.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

Officially the Lower Hill has ceased to exist. It is counted as part of downtown in the city’s administrative scheme. But it has never been integrated into downtown, and indeed was forcibly cut off from downtown by the Crosstown Boulevard—a bad mistake recently ameliorated somewhat by building a park on top of the boulevard. With the new FNB Financial Center and other developments, there is some hope that this neglected wasteland may become city again. Meanwhile, Epiphany, now part of Divine Mercy Parish, still serves downtown worshipers, and perhaps will be there for new residents as the neighborhood grows and changes.

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May 4, 2025
McNaugher School, Perry Hilltop

The lot is a steep and complex slope, but this is an Ingham & Boyd design, and therefore it is symmetrical at all costs. The style is the usual restrained Ingham & Boyd classicism with no columns (they disliked columns) done in white brick, their favorite material for schools, with terra-cotta accents around the entrance.

Much effort has been put into keeping this landmark building in good shape and in use, and we wish success to the enterprising community members who are trying to find tenants for it.

Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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April 30, 2025
St. Richard’s School and Church, Hill District

St. Richard’s parish was founded in 1894 and immediately put up a temporary frame church. Two years later, a rectory—obviously meant to be permanent—was designed by J. A. Jacobs in a restrained version of the Queen Anne style.

In 1907, the parish started building a school, which would also have temporary facilities on the ground floor for the church until a new church building could be built. It was partly financed by “euchre and dance” nights.

Father Pitt has not yet succeeded in finding the name of the architect, but he has found a lot of newspaper announcements of euchre and dance nights.

The permanent church was not yet built in 1915 when this convent, designed by Albert F. Link, was put up. Although the second-floor windows have been filled in with much smaller windows, and the art glass has been replaced with glass block, the proportions of the building are still very pleasing.

We note a pair of stained-glass windows in one of the filled-in spaces on the second floor. If Father Pitt had to guess, he would guess that they came from one of the central windows that are now filled in with glass block.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

It turns out that the permanent church was never built. The dwindling congregation continued to meet for Mass on the ground floor of the school until the parish was suppressed in 1977. The school became St. Benedict the Moor School, and the ground floor was finally converted into the classrooms it had been designed for. Later the school moved to larger facilities at the former Watt Public School, but the parish kept up the old building as an events center.

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April 27, 2025
Third Ward School, Dutchtown

Designed by Frederick Sauer, this school was called the Latimer School after Allegheny was conquered by Pittsburgh. It was built in 1898.

In the 1980s it was converted to apartments under the name “The School House.” As far as old Pa Pitt knows, this was the first major conversion of a disused school to apartments in the city, and it showed that the idea was viable.

The school was converted to apartments in the age of Postmodernism, and the designer of this canopy cleverly made it a kind of abstracted projection of the original entrance. Father Pitt caught the fabric part of the canopy on a bad hair day.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

The North Avenue side.

Map.

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April 7, 2025
Resurrection School, Brookline
John T. Comès, perhaps Pittsburgh’s greatest contribution to ecclesiastical architecture, designed this school in 1909.¹ As often happened in growing parishes, it was meant to serve as the church as well until a bigger sanctuary could be built (which finally happened in 1939). The upper floor was added in 1912, and wings (invisible from the front) were added after Comès died by the Kauzor Brothers, one of whom had briefly been Comès’ partner. Today the school has been turned into retirement apartments without much change to the exterior.

Canon PowerShot SX150IS.
1. Source: A very thorough Chronology of Resurrection Parish published in 1934. ↩︎
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March 14, 2025
Annunciation School, Perry South

Benno Janssen and Edward J. Hergenroeder were the architects of this school, which seems to show the economy of line old Pa Pitt associates with Janssen. Hergenroeder would go on to design many Catholic schools, as well as the convent around the corner from this one (which we’ll be seeing soon).

The parish school closed years ago, but the building has found another use, so it is occupied and well maintained.

Among the decorations are several inscriptions, most of them not from Catholic sources.

“Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.” —Addison.

The side entrance on Arvada Way.

“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.” —Shakespeare.

Terra-cotta figures of children enjoying their childhood decorate the side walls of the school.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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February 26, 2025
Tenth Ward Public School No. 2, Observatory Hill
Perched on the side of a steep hill, this tiny schoolhouse was built in 1874.¹ After Allegheny was conquered by Pittsburgh, this was known as the Milroy School (after Milroy Street, which passes on the right side of the school). After it closed as a school in 1938, it was used as community center called Milroy House, and then a preschool; and now it is abandoned and waiting for its next life.

The school appears to have had three classrooms: left, right, and rear.

A picture taken in 1923, when the building was already half a century old, shows how the school looked with its belfry and its real windows.

From Historic Pittsburgh. The photograph was digitized with a copyright watermark, but it has been out of copyright since 2019.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
1. A brief history of the building is at Historic Pittsburgh. ↩︎
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February 17, 2025
St. Philip’s School, Crafton
Designed by Albert F. Link, the original part of St. Philip’s School was built in 1914–1915¹ to look like a fairy-tale castle. The steep hillside site was probably an inspiration: anything built here would look a bit like a medieval fortress, so why not go all the way?

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
1. Source: The Construction Record, December 19, 1914. “Architect A. F. Link, N. Craig street, has plans for the superstructure of a two-story brick parochial school building for St. Phillips [sic] Roman Catholic Congregation to be built at a cost of $60,000. Foundation work has been completed.” ↩︎
December 26, 2024
Crafton High School

Still in use, with modern additions, as Crafton Elementary School, this Jacobean palace was built in 1913. The architect was Press C. Dowler, already well into a career that would last another half-century. His assignment here seems to have been to make up in spectacle for what the little borough’s high school lacked in size, and he came through with the goods, festooning the building with crenellations and terra-cotta ornamentation. But although the decoration may be a bit extravagant, it is done with good taste, making a balanced composition outlined by the sharp contrast between the red brick and the white trim.

The original school had two identical entrances—probably, as was common in those days, one for boys and one for girls.

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

December 10, 2024
Auditorium Entrance, Andrew W. Mellon Middle School, Mount Lebanon

The National Forum warns us that we have to keep an eye on this school. All the schools of its era in Mount Lebanon were designed by Ingham & Boyd, or by Ingham, Boyd & Pratt once Pratt became a partner. This one comes from the era when they were adapting Art Deco elements to their usual ruthlessly symmetrical classicism, and the result shows some similarity to the same firm’s Buhl Planetarium. It has not changed much since it was built, except that, when the name was changed from “Junior High School” to “Middle School,” the inscription was clumsily applied with no spacing between the letters. That bugs old Pa Pitt, but he is not going to get up on a ladder and fix it himself.

Father Pitt does not know the sculptor of these two medallions, but he has a pretty good guess. Compare them to the reliefs by Sidney Waugh on Buhl Planetarium: The Heavens and The Earth and Primitive Science and Modern Science. It seems likely that the same architects hired the same sculptor for these reliefs.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

The marquee is festooned with unexpectedly colorful Art Deco swags.

September 26, 2024