Category Archive: Religious Properties
-
Restoring church history-Foundation grants help preserve worship places
10/08/2001
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEWThey’re not pennies from heaven, but grants from the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
The foundation awarded 19 grants to historic religious properties in the Pittsburgh region for architectural restoration projects. The recipients will be honored today at an all-day workshop at the Episcopal Church of Nativity in Crafton.
Pittsburgh is one of only about a dozen regions with a formal program dedicated to preserving historic churches, said A. Robert Jaeger, co-founder of Partners for Sacred Places in Philadelphia.
“Too few cities are undertaking these type of efforts,” Jaeger said. “On the other hand, all we’re doing is really just a drop in the bucket – there is a great need for more funding and more support for these types of places.”
His 12-year-old group is the only national nonprofit organization that focuses on historic houses of worship.
A recent study by Partners for Sacred Places found that 80 percent of the people who use urban churches are nonmembers. That, coupled with the architectural significance of older churches, makes them important for cities, Jaeger said.
Those involved with the local projects agree.
“There’s a real character and spirituality in older churches,” said Barbara Thompson, who wrote the grant application for Brown Chapel A.M.E on the North Side. “I don’t think a lot of the newer churches, while beautiful in their own right, capture that character.”
Brown’s husband, Lawrence, is pastor for the 100-member congregation. The church will use the $2,000 grant for ceiling repairs and painting.
The project was spurred by the church’s senior choir; while volunteers have been working two nights a week since August to paint the walls of the sanctuary, the church needs to hire a professional company for the ceiling work.
Brown Chapel was built in 1903. Churches generally need to be more than 50 years old to be considered for the grants.
“It makes a big difference,” said Rev. Scott Quinn of the Episcopal Church of Nativity in Crafton. “As soon as we say we have a grant from the History & Landmarks Foundation, people in the congregation get very interested in the project.”
Nativity Episcopal used the $3,000 grant it received this year to replace window wells. Two years ago, the church used a similar grant to defray some of the $70,000 cost for replacing the church’s roof.
“One of our strategies is to think in terms of longer-term projects for the properties, rather than a finger-in-the-dike kind of approach,” said Foundation Operations Director Cathy McCollom. “We want to work with them over a longer period of time and make certain they have maintenance priorities, a master plan and that they’re thinking ahead.
Other criteria for the grants include churches that provide social services in their neighborhoods, have a viable congregation and are able to match the grant.
This is the sixth year the foundation has awarded the grants. This year, 26 churches applied. The foundation handed out $53,000 this year, up from $20,000 six years ago.
Jaeger said Pittsburgh’s religious architecture is noteworthy.
“Pittsburgh has one of finest collections of religious architecture in nation. A lot of important national architects, as well as some really talented regional architects, designed churches in Pittsburgh,” he said.
Victor Norman, a trustee at Bellefield Presbyterian in Oakland, said his church fits the criteria by offering several programs and social services to the University of Pittsburgh. The church is located across from the Pitt bookstore.
“Our attendance is actually higher than our membership, which is rare in Presbyterian churches,” Norman said. “Usually you have a lot of members who don’t always show up. We have a lot of members who all show up, then we have a lot of students and visitors as well.”
Bellefield received its second $3,000 grant for an ongoing stained-glass window restoration project. Currently, the church has replaced four of 25 windows in a project estimated to cost between $350,000 and $600,000, Norman said.
“This is going to keep going for years and years. It’s going to be a long time before we get them all done,” Norman said.
In addition to replacing the four windows, the church has used money from Landmarks, its members, and endowments to remove a plastic coating that had been applied to the outside of the windows. While originally designed to protect the windows, it yellowed over time and gave the church the appearance of being boarded up, Norman said.
Today’s program will feature workshops, including seminars on fund raising and grant writing and a tour of Nativity Episcopal, as well as the formal presentation of the grants.
Nativity Episcopal is the second oldest in Crafton and was built on land donated by the Craft family in 1908.
Some decedents of the family, which owned the farm land that became Crafton, still attend the church. An addition was built in 1955.
“The grants just feed on themselves. Once you get one, people are more willing to contribute,” Quinn said. “No one was more surprised by that than me.”
The following churches received grants of up to $3,000 for architectural restoration projects from the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation:
– Emsworth United Presbyterian Church, Emsworth
– First Presbyterian Church of Castle Shannon, Castle Shannon
– Monumental Baptist Church, Hill District
– New Life Community Baptist Church, Hill District
– Pittsburgh North Side Church of God, North Side
– St. James A.M.E. Church, East End
– St. Stephen, Hazelwood
– Zion Christian Church, Carrick
– Bellefield Presbyterian, Oakland
– Brown Chapel A.M.E., North Side
– Calvary United Methodist Church, Allegheny Way
– Calvert Memorial Presbyterian Church, Etna
– The Church of the Good Shepherd, Hazelwood
– Nativity Episcopal, Crafton
– Old St. Lukes, Scott Township
– St. Matthews A.M.E. Zion, Sewickley
– Verona United Methodist Church, Verona
– Wesley Center A.M.E. Zion, Hill District
– Deep Spring Temple, SewickleyThis article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Tribune Review
-
Diocese to decide on churches’ historic status
09/30/2001
By Brandon Keat TRIBUNE-REVIEW
When the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation designated 27 historic structures this year, St. Mary Magdalene Church in Homestead and St. Michael Archangel Church in Munhall were on the list.
But the Pittsburgh Diocese has not yet decided whether to accept the designations and the plaques that come with them.
Inspired by the recent events surrounding St. Nicholas Church on the North Side, where a last-minute historic designation threatens to block the diocese’s plan to sell the church, diocese officials met Wednesday to re-evaluate historic designations.
“The decision is that we want to have a procedure where, before a plaque such as that can be accepted, it will have to be reviewed by the diocese,” said the Rev. Ron Lengwin, a spokesman for the diocese.
Lengwin said a decision on the two churches should be made soon, once a specific process for arriving at a decision has been established.
“We’re just in the process of determining how approval will be given,” he said. “It’s not going to be very complex.”
Lengwin said many of the diocese’s churches have been among the more than 400 historic structures designated by the foundation since the group’s plaque program began in 1968.
He said this designation, which places a plaque on the building or structure indicating its name, date of construction and architect, has not been problematic for the diocese in the past.
Such a designation “could become a matter of pride for a parish,” Lengwin said.
“There are a number of buildings in the diocese that have received this. It doesn’t impose any restrictions on the building, it’s just recognition,” Lengwin said. “It’s a rather simple matter, but it’s part of a larger issue that’s rather important to us.”
That larger issue – one that does trouble the diocese – is other historic designations, such as the one given by the City of Pittsburgh to St. Nicholas Church.
Those designations can prevent the diocese from selling churches.
“It imposes restrictions on a building that could limit the church in its mission and ministry,” Lengwin said.
“The church supports the notion of historic preservation. It’s done that since the founding of the church. But not nonconsensual historic designation.”
In May, Pittsburgh City Council designated St. Nicholas a historic structure, which might interfere with the diocese’s plans.
Lengwin said the situation with St. Nicholas, which the diocese wants to sell to the state Department of Transportation so it can be demolished and allow for the expansion of Route 28, is not the first of its kind for the diocese. Similar scenarios have played out at St. Leo on the North Side and St. Michael on the South Side.
“There are other incidents, (St. Nicholas) is just the latest one,” Lengwin said.
Cathy McCollom of History and Landmarks said the designation does not prevent the owner of the building from altering, selling or demolishing it.
“It’s not legally restrictive,” she said.
McCollom said some structures are nominated by their owners, while others are selected by the foundation’s staff because they are “buildings that we feel are important to be acknowledged.”
McCollom said the east suburban churches were nominated by the foundation’s staff.
“They’re both built by significant architectural firms,” she said.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Tribune Review
-
Church murals depicting spiritual, cultural lives of Croatian immigrants draw renewed attention
By Mary Thomas,
Post-Gazette Art Critic
Thursday, September 27, 2001In an overhead mural inches above the visitor, the face of the Blessed Virgin is contorted in horror. Tears well from her widened eyes as she steps between two soldiers on a battlefield, grabbing a bayonet to halt its thrust. She’s depicted as a Croatian peasant, in a blue dress that’s pleated and embellished with a panel of folk embroidery, and with the fleshy hands, shoulders and breasts of a farm wife rather than with the delicate features generally given to Christ’s mother.
This “Holy Mother” is only one of more than 20 unique murals that cover the interior of tiny St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, transforming the demure Romanesque structure into a jewel box of cultural, political and artistic expression that’s gained it National and Pittsburgh Historic Landmark designations.
The murals were painted in 1937 and 1941 by Croatian artist Maxi-milian (Maxo) Vanka, the subject of an exhibition at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center. They are considered by many to be his masterworks. Beginning Saturday, the center will offer tours that combine a walk through the exhibition with a bus trip to the murals.
In the small church that clings to the side of a hill, as do many of the workers’ homes in this former mill community, visitors will see both religious and secular imagery that addresses spiritual beliefs, cultural practice and man’s humanity or lack thereof.
Vanka often paired his subjects, and two of the most compelling scenes pay tribute to the Croatian parishioners: “The Croatian Mother Raises Her Son for War” and “The Immigrant Mother Raises Her Son for Industry.” In the former, a group of women in white garments keep watch over the lace-draped coffin of a young soldier. In the background, rows of white crosses angle toward an ominous sky.
The latter pointedly illustrates that life wasn’t easy in the land of promise, where immigrants often faced savage societal prejudices and dangerous working conditions. These women mourn the death of a son who died in a mine accident. It’s based on a true Johnstown event, and the family would lose three other sons in the same day during rescue efforts.
It’s not coincidental that the women are dressed like the blue-garbed “Holy Mother.” According to folklorist Frances Babic, in Christian Slavic folk tradition the women’s communal mourning of the dead assumes “a communion with another mother: Mary, Mother of God.”
Another dramatic and effective pairing is the idealized “Justice,” countered by the breathtakingly ominous, larger-than-life figure of “Injustice,” whose face is hidden beneath a gas mask. In one hand, she holds a bloodied sword and in the other scales which tip in favor of a pile of gold that outweighs a loaf of bread — symbolic of the body of Christ.
Vanka, in a Nov. 14, 1941, article in The Pittsburgh Press, said the inspiration for the work was Nazi occupation. “Hitler says march in, take all, go into Czechoslovakia, into Poland, into all countries. There is no justice today.”
The startling image of a woman chained to a cross represents the suffering peasant mother but is also allegorical for the oppressed, seized countries of Europe.
“The mother is enchained and crucified, because for one assassinated soldier they now kill hundreds,” Vanka explained. “At her feet is a destroyed church and town, and a jail, all bloody to show the cruelty. Hands are reaching through the bars of the jail, asking for help from the mother country, but she can do nothing.”
The mural commissions
The Rev. Albert Zagar was the pastor who commissioned the murals. When he contacted Vanka, an extraordinary collaboration began between two men of faith — a deeply spiritual artist and an unequivocally trusting priest.
Zagar’s only requirement was that some of the images be of a religious character.
Vanka complimented Zagar as the “only priest in 100,000 who is courageous enough to break with tradition, to have his church decorated with pictures of modern, social significance.”
Zagar and Vanka were both born in Yugoslavia and taught at the University of Zagreb, but they didn’t know one another. In America, they came together to produce visual aids that would help the Croatian immigrants cope with their longings for home while adjusting to their new country. By 1937, more than 50,000 Croats had settled in the Pittsburgh region.
Doris Dyen, a folklife specialist who’s now director of Cultural Conservation for the Steel Industry Heritage Corp., explored the dual role of such imagery in her paper “Aids to Adaptation: Southeast European Mural Painters in Pittsburgh,” which appeared in the Library of Congress’ “Folklife Annual 1990.”
Croatians, she said, “used religious beliefs and church affiliation as a tie to the Old Country and a way of adapting to the new. Iconography and the decorative arts … were particularly significant in the process of adaptation, affording as they did a wide range of symbolic expression, while also affirming traditional values.”
Dyen also speculates that Vanka may have seen the work of Diego Rivera. Certainly Vanka’s grandiosity and social content remind one of the great Mexican muralist, who was active at the time.
Vanka also combines aspects of folk and academic painting, bringing a variety of influences together to form what is mostly the passionate expression of one man.
‘The Gift of Sympathy’
Vanka was an illegitimate child of nobility, born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1889, and taken to Croatian peasants to be raised, a common practice at the time. His birth connections did avail him later of a privileged education including studies at the Zagreb Royal Academy and the Royal Academy of Beaux Arts in Brussels, Belgium.
Contributing to his sensitive, observant and politicized nature were service with the Belgian Red Cross in World War I and an ethnographic expedition south of Zagreb. Vanka was an acclaimed portraitist and a professor at the Academy of Beaux Arts in Zagreb when he married Margaret Stetten, an American, in 1931. When the war closed in on Zagreb, the couple left for New York City, where they lived until their final move to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1941.
Vanka enjoyed traveling and visited many sites in the United States and abroad. He drowned while swimming off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in 1963.
The History Center exhibition, “The Gift of Sympathy: The Art of Maxo Vanka,” addresses his life and his artistic output, showing the range of stylistic and subject interests he had.
In 1990, the nonprofit Society for the Preservation of the Murals of St. Nicholas — Millvale was formed to support their care and conservation. For information, call 412-820-9292.
-
Old St. Luke’s Church, built in 1852, receives historical marker
Wednesday, July 18, 2001
By Bob Podurgiel
Pittsburgh Post GazetteChartiers Valley 10th-graders Heather Drudy and Nicole Striner joined amid smoke and thunder echoing from successive volleys of musket and rifle fire Sunday to honor a very old historic landmark.
The pair unveiled a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker commemorating Old St. Luke’s Church in Scott.
More than 100 people attended the dedication featuring remarks by the Rev. Leroy Patrick of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission; the Rev. Robert B. Banse, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon; state Sen. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair; state Rep. Tom Stevenson, R-Mt. Lebanon; and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
A Revolutionary War re-enactor from the 8th Pennsylvania Regiment of the Continental Line and Civil War re-enactors from Company A, 9th Pennsylvania Reserves, fired volleys from their muskets and smooth bore rifles.
The Rev. Richard W. Davies of Mt. Lebanon, the vicar at Old St. Luke’s Church, said he was surprised and delighted when Murphy’s office told him last year the church had been approved for a historical marker.
For 13 years since retiring as an administrator with the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, he has helped preserve Old St. Luke’s and its history and to maintain the church as an active worship site.
He said that last year the church hosted two dozen religious worship services and 40 Christian weddings.
“I’m a priest, so I’m dedicated to theology, but in the past 13 years, I have come to love American history as well,” Davies said.
Striner and Drudy credited him with helping them learn more about American history last year when they were in ninth grade and visited Old St. Luke’s as part of their school course work.
The students said they studied the lives of Russell Stuart and Jane Williams, two people buried in the church’s cemetery.
“It gave us an appreciation of how people lived back then. It really opened our eyes to the history of the area,” Drudy said.
The burial ground at Old St. Luke’s contains the remains of several Revolutionary War veterans and many of the first Chartiers Valley settlers.
Davies said worship began at the site when it was an outpost of the British Army prior to the Revolutionary War, and chaplains to regiments stationed there conducted the services.
One of them, Maj. William Lea, who settled in the Chartiers Valley, donated the land for the church.
In 1790, a frame church was built on the site, and in 1852, the present stone church was constructed.
During Sunday’s ceremony, McCollom called the church a shining example of how people can pull together to restore and preserve significant old buildings.
While Davies is happy the church finally has received a historical marker, he also credits modern technology as an unlikely ally in helping with that effort.
After he was notified about the marker, he said the toughest job was back-and-forth communication between the history commission and himself over wording that would appear on the marker.
“If it wasn’t for e-mail and the Internet, we might still be working on it. The computer helped speed things along,” he said.
Bob Podurgiel is a free-lance writer.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
-
South Side church converting to condos
Wednesday, February 14, 2001
By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
While retaining its historic character, one of the South Side’s most beloved old Catholic churches and its rectory will be converted into high-end, residential condominiums.
St. Michael Church on Pius Street on the South Side Slopes, was closed in 1992 as part of a reorganization by the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. At that time, the diocese “desanctified” the church, removing the altar and other religious items from inside.
“The interior is completely gutted,” said Jennifer McCarthy, an architect with Hanson Design Group Ltd., the South Side firm that is designing the proposed condominiums for Thomas Tripoli, a South Side developer.
She said some residents have stopped by to see what is going on at the old church and expressed concern that the church they attended for so many years was being measured and studied for possible renovation.
McCarthy said most of the stained glass was removed from the church five or six years ago. “The altar was ripped out. Anything that had a cross or any sort of religious symbol is gone.”
Yesterday, Pittsburgh City Council gave its final approval to a resolution giving historic designation to the church and rectory. Mayor Tom Murphy now has to sign off on that resolution.
With the historic designation, the two buildings officially come under the purview of the city’s Historic Review Commission, which already has approved plans for renovating them.
Tripoli, who plans to live in one of the condominiums, is proposing to convert the buildings into about 25 condominiums, ranging in area from 1,000 to 2,000 or 3,000 square feet. He said the units will be priced from $150,000 to $250,000.
McCarthy said the first phase of the project will be renovation of the rectory. Once one of the largest in the city, it was the first home in the United States for the Passionist order of priests who staffed the parish from 1853 to 1973.
She said the church renovation will be more involved since new floors and an elevator will be added. She said window sills will be lowered on the Pius Street side of the church to allow more light to get inside. On the side of the church that faces Downtown, she said, “we are going to lower the window sills, put in French doors and small wrought iron terraces.”
The church, which was constructed in a German Romanesque style, has a basilica with a prominent center tower and a clerestory. It was designed by Pittsburgh architect Charles S. Bartberger, who later designed the Passionists’ St. Paul of the Cross Monastery on Monastery Avenue on the South Side.
Walter Kidney, architectural historian for Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, nominated the St. Michael buildings for the historic designation. Neighborhood groups, including the South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association, favor the designation.
“The building has been part of the social fabric of the South Side Slopes for almost 150 years,” wrote Edward F. Jacob, president of the neighborhood association.
Built between 1858 and 1860, St. Michael Church became Pittsburgh’s first Catholic church south of the Monongahela River and the third church built for a German congregation.
Two St. Michael parish traditions have been retained, even though the church is closed.
One is the presentation of “Veronica’s Veil,” the passion play written by a priest from St. Michael in 1913 that has been staged every year since during Lent. “Veronica’s Veil” is now performed in the auditorium at 18th and Pius streets, a building that used to be part of the St. Michael parochial school.
The second is Cholera Day, the feast day of St. Roch, patron saint of plagues, who was credited with sparing parishioners from the cholera attack of 1849. That traditional day began at St. Michael, but was moved to Prince of Peace, the reorganized parish.
In the fall, the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese objected to historic designation for the church and rectory, saying it would prolong the diocese’s efforts to sell the buildings. Last week, Tripoli closed the real estate deal on the buildings before City Council held the final hearing on that designation.
The sale price has not yet been recorded in the Allegheny County recorder of deeds office. The property has a market value of $350,000, according to county records.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
-
Preservation grants aid 20 churches
By The Tribune-Review
October 1, 1998The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has awarded nearly $50,000 to 20 area churches.
“No community is any kind of community without church in it,” said Howard B. Slaughter Jr., director of preservation services at the foundation. Slaughter said the grants announced Monday help the churches to remain “alive, vibrant, and healthy.”
Many of the grants were given for repair of stained-glass windows.
Twenty-seven churches applied for funding.
The grants, ranging from $1,000 to $3,000, will be used for restoration of the historic buildings. Each church is required to match the grants and many of the churches double or triple the investment made by the foundation.
The recipients are:
Bellefield Presbyterian Church, Oakland, $2,000; Brown Chapel AME Church, North Side, $3,000; Calvary Episcopal Church, Shadyside/East Liberty, $3,000; Calvary United Methodist Church, North Side, $2,100; Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg, $3,000; Epiphany Roman Catholic Church, Hill District, $3,000; Episcopal Church of the Nativity, Crafton, $3,000.
Also, First Presbyterian Church, Downtown, $1,500; First United Methodist Church, Shadyside, $3,000; Glenshaw Valley Presbyterian Church, $2,500; Missionary Temple Church of God in Christ, East Liberty, $2,500; Old St. Luke Church, Carnegie, $3,000; The Presbyterian Church of Sewickley, $3,000; St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Oakland, $2,215.
And, St. Benedict the Moor Church, Hill District, $3,000; St. Mary of the Mount Church, Mt. Washington, $1,500; St. Nicholas Croation Church, Millvale, $2,850; St. Paul Baptist Church, Point Breeze, $3,000; Second Baptist Church, Penn Hills, $1,000; West End AME Zion Church, $3,000.