Father Pitt

Tag: Synagogues

  • Congregation Kaiser Torah, Hill

    Congregation Kaiser Torah

    Several old synagogues remain on the Hill, though their numbers are dwindling and none are still synagogues. This building appears not to be in use right now, though it is still marked on Google Maps as Zion Full Gospel Baptist Church (its one review gives it four stars, and the entire text of the review is “Can’t remember this place either sorry”). The Star of David on the side identifies it as a synagogue, even if we did not have our Pittsburgh Historic Maps to look at. In 1922, the Congregation Kaiser Torah changed its name (for some reason) to Congregation Kether Torah. In the early 1950s the congregation moved to Squirrel Hill and sold the building to the “Carter Chapel Colored Methodist Church,” or C. M. E. Church, as we can still see in one of the layers of lettering on the cornerstone.

    Cornerstone
    Webster Avenue front
    From the opposite corner

    Some addenda: In later sources, the earlier name of the synagogue (are you confused yet?) is spelled Keser Torah or Kesser Torah. The congregation was still meeting at the Hillel Academy a few years ago. It has been small for decades; even in 1958 there were only 50 members, according to “The Story of Kether Torah Congregation,” a clipping from the Jewish Criterion preserved at the Heinz History Center.

    A correction: In an earlier version of this article, Father Pitt mistakenly read the cornerstone as “Carter Chapel A.M.E. Church.” It was a C.M.E. Church, not A.M.E.; it later moved to the former Trinity Methodist Protestant Church on the North Side, but is no longer there.

  • Congregation B’nai Israel, East Liberty

    Congregation B’nai Israel

    Henry Hornbostel designed two prominent synagogues in Pittsburgh. The still-prospering Rodef Shalom is familiar to everyone, partly because it sits at the eastern end of the Fifth Avenue monument row in Oakland and Shadyside. This one, built in 1923, is perhaps a more adventurous design. Hornbostel used old and new materials and design elements from different traditions to create a building that immediately looked as if it had been there for a millennium or more. After a few years as a school, it is now in the midst of being repurposed as apartments.

    Technically, according to the neighborhood border that goes up the middle of Negley Avenue on the city planning map, this building is in Garfield. Socially, it is more associated with East Liberty.

    B’nai Israel
    Frieze
    Entrance
    Porch
    The round part
    Another view

  • Adath Jeshurun Congregation, East Liberty

    Adath Jeshurun Congregation

    Probably the most popular style of synagogue architecture in Pittsburgh a century ago was what we might call Jewish Romanesque, with the round arches typical of Romanesque architecture along with some elements taken from traditional European Jewish architecture to make it clear that this is not a Christian church. Here is a good but endangered example of that style.

    Inscription over the enstrance

    It was built in 1923 or 1924 on Margaretta Street, now East Liberty Boulevard, and its members knew it familiarly as the Margaretta Street Shul. The congregation sold the building in 1996 and moved to Monroeville, where it withered away a few years later. For a while after that this was a Baptist church; but it seems to be vacant now. That is the danger. Even in the most prosperous neighborhood, it can be hard to find a use for an old church or synagogue. This part of East Liberty is far from the worst neighborhood, but it has not reached the prosperity of Highland Park to the north or the newly lively core of East Liberty to the south. If the neighborhood stays as it is, this building will probably simply decay and eventually have to be demolished. If the neighborhood prospers, it will probably be demolished to make way for something else.

    Structurally, the building seems quite sound. But the details are suffering, notably the crumbling parapet, which is one of the distinctive and remarkable features of the façade.

    Crumbling parapet

    Some interesting history of the congregation is in this article in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.

    Inscription
    Inscription
    Adath Jeshurun Congregation

  • Torath Chaim Congregation, East Liberty

    Some work has been going on at this abandoned synagogue, so perhaps it will find a new purpose. The abstract menorah (it once had electric light bulbs for candles) and irregular horizontal stone date it to the middle twentieth century. But although you wouldn’t know it from the front, this is really a luxurious early-1900s private house with a modernist façade grafted on.

  • Rodef Shalom Temple

    Rodef Shalom Temple

    One of Henry Hornbostel’s most impressive works, Rodef Shalom, built in 1906, is notable for its colored terra-cotta decorations, which—according to the interpretive sign on the temple grounds—were among the earliest uses of polychrome terra cotta in the United States.

    Find it on the map