Father Pitt

Tag: Stanton Avenue

Inside the Second United Presbyterian Church, Highland Park
We have seen pictures of the outside of this church before—here, for example, is a picture from May of 2021:

The other day the current inhabitants, the Union Project, were kind enough to turn old Pa Pitt loose in the sanctuary to take as many pictures as he wanted.

The architect was John L. Beatty, who designed the building in about 1900. A newspaper picture from 1905 (taken from microfilm, so the quality is poor) shows the exterior looking more or less the way it does now.

Pittsburg Press, April 29, 1905.

After a disastrous fire, much was rebuilt in 1915, again under Beatty’s supervision.¹ Another fire in 1933 would necessitate rebuilding part of the tower.

The church was built for the Second United Presbyterian congregation, which had moved out to the eastern suburbs from its former location downtown at Sixth Avenue and Cherry Way (now William Penn Place)—exactly one block from the First United Presbyterian Church, which moved to Oakland at about the same time. Later it became the East End Baptist Church, and then was renamed the Union Baptist Church. When that congregation folded, the church was bought by a Mennonite group that founded the Union Project. It is now a community center for pottery, because “everyone should have access to clay.” The sanctuary—which has been preserved mostly unaltered, except for the removal of pews and other furnishings—is available for large events.

The sanctuary is roughly square, which is typical of many non-liturgical Protestant churches in Pittsburgh at the turn of the twentieth century. Above, looking up at the center of the ceiling.

The stained glass was restored as part of a remarkable community effort in which people in the neighborhood learned the art of stained-glass restoration themselves. It would have cost more than a million dollars to have the work done professionally, but volunteers learned priceless skills, and the glass is beautiful.

The vestibule includes some of the original furniture from the church, and some smaller stained-glass windows.

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
1. Source: The Construction Record, January 16, 1915: “The Second United Presbyterian Congregation has selected Architect J. L. Beatty, 146 Sixth street, to prepare plans for repairing the church on Stanton and Negley avenues.” ↩︎
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March 16, 2025
Some Queen Anne Houses in Highland Park
The Highland Park Residential Historic District, which is coextensive with the neighborhood as defined by the city, preserves more good examples of Queen Anne houses than perhaps any other neighborhood, although Shadyside would come in a close second. Here is an especially splendid Queen Anne mansion on Stanton Avenue. (Addendum: This was the home of architect William Smith Fraser, which he designed and built for himself in 1891.¹)

This house gives us two common Queen Anne elements that were missing from the mansion above: a turret and curved surfaces in the gable.

Here is a whole row of Queen Anne houses bulging with stubby turrets. They lean toward the Rundbogenstil end of the spectrum, which Father Pitt mentions because he misses no chance to say the word “Rundbogenstil.”

This mansion on Stanton Avenue has been converted to apartments, but its basic outlines remain.

This last one might be better classified as “Stick style,” a closely related style that preceded but overlapped the Queen Anne style. Stick-style houses have more of an emphasis on woodwork, especially boards overlaid on the siding for contrasting trim, as we see here, and less of an emphasis on curves and complexities of form.

Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
1. Franklin Toker, Pittsburgh: A New Portrait, p. 235. ↩︎
November 25, 2024
Castle Stanton, East Liberty

Even though it has lost some decorative details over the years, Castle Stanton still drops jaws of passers-by who find themselves in unfamiliar territory here on the border of East Liberty and Highland Park. It looks like a 1920s Hollywood set: we expect Douglas Fairbanks dressed as Robin Hood to leap from an upstairs window and land on his feet after a series of spectacular acrobatics.

This advertisement from the Pittsburgh Press, September 21, 1930, shows us some of the pointy bits that have since been removed.

This Hollywood front hides an unexpected secret, which will be revealed if we walk around to the side of the building.

Now we see the outlines of an older Queen Anne mansion, converted to an apartment house by the addition of a Hollywood-fantasy front facing Stanton Avenue.

Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

November 18, 2024
Second Empire, Meet Spanish Mission

This odd-looking apartment building on Stanton Avenue in Highland Park makes some sense once we peel apart its history. At first old Pa Pitt didn’t know what to make of it, but looking on old plat maps made him realize that the central section was a grand house in the Second Empire style, probably built in the 1870s.

In your imagination, take away those sunrooms on the first and second floors. Add a front porch the width of the house. You might put a Second Empire mansard cupola on the central tower. The result would be a lot like this:

This is Baywood, the Alexander King mansion at the other end of Highland Park (pictures here and here). The house at the core of this apartment building probably looked much like Baywood when it was new. It seems to appear first on the 1882 layer at Pittsburgh Historic Maps, where the property owner is not identified. In 1890 it is shown as belonging to A. Dempster, and it still belonged to A. Dempster in 1910, with its original outlines. In 1923 it has its current shape, and the owner is shown as G. West.

At some time around World War I, then, when several of the houses on Stanton Avenue were being converted to apartments, someone bought the Dempster mansion and decided to expand it into an apartment building. But the Second Empire style was embarrassingly passé. The new wings were done in an up-to-the-minute Spanish Mission style, and the original house was coated with stucco and modified as much as practical to go with the new style. Nothing, however, could disguise the outline of a Second Empire mansion. Thus today we have a clash of styles that is probably more interesting, visually speaking, that a new apartment house in pure Mission style would have been.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

November 14, 2024
Altholl, Highland Park

“Altholl” was built on Stanton Avenue for U. S. Steel executive James Scott in 1900. Stanton Avenue, which today is marked as the border between Highland Park and East Liberty on city planning maps, was already lined with grand Queen Anne mansions; but the Colonial Revival was coming into fashion, and Scott’s house must have looked bracingly modern. It has the adaptable form of the typical large Pittsburgh center-hall house of the turn of the twentieth century, which can swing from Georgian to Renaissance to Prairie Style depending on the details. We’ll call this one “eclectic Georgian.” The house is listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

November 12, 2024
Second United Presbyterian Church, Highland Park

This church has an unusually eclectic history. It began as the Second United Presbyterian Church. Father Pitt does not know the original architect, but in 1915 there was a devastating fire, and a large reconstruction project was supervised by the architect John Louis Beatty. In 1933 the Presbyterians moved out, and this became the East End Baptist Church. Now it is the Union Project (an arts venue) and the meeting-place of the Jonah’s Call Anglican congregation.

About two and a half years ago, old Pa Pitt published some pictures of this church, but something seemed different about it. It took a moment to realize: the decorative details on the tower have been cleaned. Back in 2021, all the stone had been cleaned except for the very top of the tower:

But now the tower is clean to its very tip:

This little pinnacle is still the color the whole church used to be.

Map showing the location of the church.

December 18, 2023