Category Archive: Religious Properties
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$43,000+ in Grants Awarded to Maintain and Restore Religious Proprerties
Carole Malakoff
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation
August 8, 2007Since January, $43,899 has been paid out in matching grant funds to help eight congregations maintain and restore their historic religious structures. Five of these grants were from last year’s grant cycle.
The organizations were:
2006:
– Calvary United Methodist, North Side
– Hawthorn Avenue Presbyterian, Crafton
– Union Project, East Liberty
– St. Andrews Episcopal, Highland Park
– St. Anthonys Chapel, Troy Hill2007 (to date)
– Zion Christian Church, Carrick
– Bethel Presbyterian, Bethel Park
– Valley Presbyterian, ImperialThree are churches that were just awarded grants this February and have already completed work. These grant funds enabled congregations to restore stained glass windows, perform roof and gutter work, and do stonework.
Tom Keffer ,Landmarks construction manager, has provided technical assistance to three congregations. He consulted on issues of general renovation procedures, roof repairs, and stained glass restoration.
Work recently completed at Monumental Baptist Church in The Hill included stone work above the main doorway. The lintel was on the verge of collapsing. Only one of the double doors could be opened safely. After work was completed, both doors can now be opened enabling safe and easy access into the sanctuary. Monumental Baptist raised their matching funds through Sunday service collections.
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4 schools in region to share preservation grant
By Mary Pickels
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, July 20, 2007Four area schools of higher education will share in a $200,000 Getty Foundation grant aimed at preserving the individual campuses’ historic buildings and landscapes.
Each of the four schools — Seton Hill University, Washington & Jefferson College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and California University of Pennsylvania — also contributed $10,000 to the effort.The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation announced the Campus Heritage grant. A foundation team will begin studying the schools this month, concluding in March 2009.
“The benefit is they get a very complete analysis of their historic buildings,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “Even if they are in perfect condition, they get a plan for future maintenance; recommendations for restoration; disability (improvements); and landscaping — down to how to prune a bush properly that might have been there 50 years.”
The individual reports, Ziegler said, can assist the schools with fund-raising to implement specific plans.
According to the Getty Foundation Web site, each of the schools exhibits a range of design in its academic buildings, distinctive campus planning and landscapes, and individual structures that represent American architectural history both locally and nationally.“They all have historic buildings, and/-or historic landscapes,” Ziegler said. “They are small in size, not likely to apply individually. And they are within easy travel distance for our team. And they were very cooperative. … We went to several and said: ‘In our view, you would qualify.’ These four were very enthusiastic.”
Seton Hill’s winding entrance drive is lined by 80 sycamore trees that are 100 years old, spokeswoman Becca Baker said. She called its historic buildings “a campus treasure.”
“Once we receive the conservation plan for Seton Hill — which will detail the PHLF’s recommendations for the preservation, conservation and continued use of our historic buildings — we plan to incorporate the recommendations into our campus master plan,” Baker said.
McMillan Hall, built in 1793, and Old Main, built in 1836, are Washington & Jefferson College’s flagship buildings, said Kristen Gurdin, director of foundation and legal affairs. McMillan Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“One of the unique features of Old Main is that it has two towers,” Gurdin said.
After the Civil War, Washington College and Jefferson College united because of the loss of student soldiers. The towers represent the two schools.
“One of the benefits (of the study) will be the strategic assessment of the campus all at one time,” Gurdin said.
IUP’s Sutton Hall and Breezedale Alumni Center, and California’s Old Main, are all listed on the National Register of Historic Places — a consideration in their candidacies for the Getty grant, Ziegler said.
“During this final year of the Campus Heritage initiative,” said Getty Foundation Director Deborah Marrow in a news release, “we are pleased to fund the preservation planning for four of Pennsylvania’s historically important campuses.”
Two years ago, a similar grant was awarded to Allegheny College, Geneva College, Slippery Rock University and Grove City College. The earlier round of grants included funding from the Allegheny Foundation, said Ziegler.
Mary Pickels can be reached at mpickels@tribweb.com or (724) 836-5401.
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Can the former Fourth United Presbyterian Church be saved? – Friendship landmark abandoned and crumbling
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saturday, July 7, 2007With its rugged presence, the former Fourth United Presbyterian Church holds a prominent corner in Friendship, at the intersection of Friendship and South Pacific avenues. But for how long? It’s a good building fallen on bad times.
Built in the 1890s when the Richardsonian Romanesque was in vogue, the sandstone church has an arcaded porch with three arches supported by massive columns. Inspired by the welcoming, triple-arched porches of several of Richardson’s civic buildings, this one also promises shelter and security.
Sadly, the building no longer provides either. From the outside, the lack of maintenance is apparent in the missing windows and mortar. But that doesn’t prepare you for the scene of utter devastation and chaos inside.
In a first-floor hallway, water bubbles up from a hole in the floor, causing the floor tiles to buckle under puddles. Because water leaks through a portion of the roof when it rains, a staircase has rotted, and mold and mildew are everywhere. In the sanctuary, plaster falls from the ceiling onto the pews and paint peels from the columns, which still carry their Byzantine capitals, one of the interior’s few grace notes that have survived unscathed.
Stained-glass windows have been removed and replaced by plywood, which is falling away, or by nothing at all. Furniture is strewn about and packaged food still stands on the kitchen counters. In an office room, file cabinets hold manila folders full of church records.
It looks as if the congregation just up and left, which is exactly what happened several years ago, said the Rev. Lorraine Williams. The Fourth United Presbyterian Church — not to be confused with the still-active Fourth Presbyterian Church at Friendship Avenue and Roup Street — closed in the 1960s. Then it rented the church building to a school for about 10 years, the Rev. Williams said. She and her former husband, also a pastor, purchased the church in 1976 from Pittsburgh Presbytery. He now suffers from Alzheimer’s in an assisted living facility. She left their congregation in the mid-1980s and now is pastor of a church she declined to identify because she did not want to associate it with this situation.
She said the congregation that abandoned the church — the Greater Pittsburgh Gospel Deliverance Center — now calls itself New Day Ministries and rents space in Emory United Methodist Church. But her name is still on the deed. The Rev. Williams said she, too, was appalled at the condition of the building when she was last inside about two years ago.
The church has been on the market for more than a year and been under agreement three times, including twice with the same buyer. Neither was able to come up with financing for what they wanted to do — demolish the church and replace it with townhouses.
The Rev. Williams said windows and other objects were sold and removed from the building when it looked as if it would be demolished.
For the past year, the church has been listed with Tim Kimbel, president of Star Real Estate, and is now priced at $165,000. Mr. Kimbel will hold an open house on Monday and Tuesday for qualified bidders. About 20 parties expressed interest in the property while it was under agreement, including two who’d like to turn it into a neighborhood arts center. Of those 20, nine will be touring the building. Others are welcome to do so, but they must call Star Real Estate at 412-494-4110 on Monday morning to report their interest.
After the open house, to be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday and from 2 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Mr. Kimbel will take bids on the property.
“This is not an auction,” he said. “We want people to submit their highest and best offer” by Thursday, along with a refundable deposit in the amount of their choice between $1,000 and $5,000. He and the Rev. Williams then will decide which to accept or counter-offer.
The Rev. Williams said the income from the sale would be distributed to a church ministry but not to New Day Ministries.
The church’s architect is unknown; several local and out-of-town firms were working in the Richardsonian Romanesque style in the 1890s here. Nevertheless, the building is a neighborhood landmark, although not, unfortunately, an official city historic landmark nor part of a city historic district. Demolition will require only a permit and, Mr. Kimbel said, about $85,000, according to estimates he had received from demolition contractors who looked at the building.
Jeffrey Dorsey, director of the neighborhood nonprofit Friendship Development Associates, said his group was inside the church as recently as late winter.
“By our estimate it’s close to a $2 million project to rehab it,” he said, adding that while Friendship is full of preservationists, they are also realists. “It’s just not a front-burner project for us because we have other projects going, mostly on Penn Avenue,” including development of the Glass Lofts at Penn Avenue and Fairmount Street.
Can this church be saved? Yes, it can and should. But it will take someone with vision — and very deep pockets.
(Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590. )
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Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation announces Historic Building and Landscape Designations
Pittsburgh, PA –
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s Historic Landmarks Plaque Committee recently awarded historic designation to some 38 buildings, 3 districts, and 2 designed landscapes.
Residential architecture ranged from an 1832 log house in Gibsonia, Victorian houses in Leetsdale and Oakdale, Colonial Revival houses in Shadyside and Munhall, an Arts & Crafts enclave in Fox Chapel, to two 1936 houses in Ross Township’s Swan Acres, which Architectural Forum called “the nation’s first modern American subdivision.”
The oldest of three designated churches is the sole surviving documented building in Pittsburgh by the region’s first woman architect, Elise Mercur.
There are two golf courses, a municipal building, two industrial sites now converted to housing, an African-American landmark, several distinguished structures adapted to new uses, and an urban oasis—Mellon Square—that is an outstanding example of mid-20th-century design, urban planning, and local philanthropy.
• The specific sites designated as “Historic Landmarks” are (in chronological order):
• Chalfant Log house, 2716 West Hardies Rd., Gibsonia, Hampton Twp., 1832
• “Elm Ridge,” James Gardiner Coffin / John Walker house, 1 Breck Dr., Leetsdale, Isaac Hobbs, architect; David Kerr, builder, 1869. Plan published in Hobbs Architecture, 1873
• W. J. Stewart / Howard Stewart house, 124 Hastings Ave., Oakdale, 1873
• St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (now Christian Tabernacle Kodesh Church of Immanuel), 2601 Centre Ave., Hill, Elise Mercur, architect, 1896
• Colonial Place Historic District, Shadyside, George S. Orth, architect; E. H. Bachman, landscape artist, 1898
• Carnegie Steel Manager’s house, 518 E. 11th St., Munhall, 1900
• Armstrong Cork Company Buildings (now The Cork Factory Apartment Lofts), 2349 Railroad St., Strip, Frederick J. Osterling, architect, 1901, 1902; addition 1913
• Elmhurst Road Historic District, Fox Chapel, Wilbur M. May et al, 1904-20
• St. James Episcopal Church (now The Church of The Holy Cross), 7507 Kelly St., Homewood, Carpenter & Crocker, architects, 1905-06
• Mt. Lebanon Golf Course, 1000 Pine Ave., Mt. Lebanon, George A. Ormiston, landscape architect/designer, 1907-08, formerly Castle Shannon Golf Club
• First National Bank of Pitcairn (now commercial/rental), 500 2nd St., Kiehnel & Elliott, architects, c. 1910
• Central Turnverein (now Gardner Steel Conference Center, University of Pittsburgh), 130 Thackeray St., Oakland, Kiehnel & Elliott, architects, 1911-12
• Five H. J. Heinz Company buildings (now Heinz Lofts), Progress St., Troy Hill, 1913-27, H. J. Heinz Company, R. M. Trimble, and Alfred Kahn, architects
• Fox Chapel Golf Club, 426 Fox Chapel Rd., Alden & Harlow, architects, 1924-25; Brandon Smith, architect, 1931; course designed by Seth Raynor, 1925
• Pythian Temple (now New Granada Theatre), 2007 Centre Ave., Hill, Louis A. S. Bellinger, architect, 1927-28; remodeling 1937-38, Alfred M. Marks, architect
• Keystone Athletic Club (now Lawrence Hall, Point Park University), 200 Wood St., Downtown Pittsburgh, Benno Janssen for Janssen & Cocken, architects, 1928
• Mt. Lebanon Municipal Building, 710 Washington Rd., William H. King, Jr., architect, 1928-30
• Southminster Presbyterian Church (formerly Mt. Lebanon Presbyterian Church), 799 Washington Rd., Mt. Lebanon, Thomas Pringle, architect, 1927-28
Edgeworth Club, 511 East Dr., Brandon Smith, architect 1930-31; additions
Swan Acres Historic District, Ross Twp., Quentin S. Beck for Beck, Pople & Beck, 1936
Mellon Square, Downtown Pittsburgh, James A. Mitchell for Mitchell & Ritchey, architects; Simonds & Simonds, landscape architects, 1954-55
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Landmark Downtown cathedral gets its first cleaning– Episcopal house of worship was being damaged by acid runoff whenever it rained
Monday, June 25, 2007
By Sara McCune,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteOne of Pittsburgh’s oldest cathedrals is getting a complete makeover.
Cleaning crews will wash away 120 years worth of grime from Trinity Cathedral in Downtown, interns from the University of Pennsylvania will clean headstones and landscapers will green up the property.
While the cathedral is being cleaned in preparation for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary, there’s another reason the cleanup’s time has come: The grime on the building from Pittsburgh’s steel mill days has been turning acidic when it rains, and is slowly deteriorating the sandstone cathedral.
The yearlong celebration of the founding of Pittsburgh’s Episcopal church runs from this Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving 2008.
“There had been some debate within the diocese about whether or not to clean it,” Bishop Robert Duncan said. Some members of the diocese thought the blackened exterior would serve as a reminder of Pittsburgh’s industrious past. But the bishop said he could look out of his Oliver Building office and see the deterioration. In 2000, he and some colleagues hired an engineering firm to take a sample of the grime and test it.
“Every time the building gets moist it’s like it’s getting an acid bath,” he said.
Fred Thieman, co-chairman of the anniversary celebration campaign, said the cost of the restoration work won’t be known until after the cleaning. Young Restoration Co., of Carnegie, which has been contracted for the cleaning, uses a wash which is essentially baking soda and water, and environmentally friendly. The cleaning, which began last week, is expected to take three to four months.
While the cathedral was built in 1872, the cemetery’s origin was as a Native American burial ground. It also holds the remains of French and British soldiers and early Americans. University of Pennsylvania postgraduate student Teresa Duff, the site supervisor, said she and two graduate students are cleaning and preserving headstones as the third and final part of a stone-conservation campaign involving the cathedral.
There are eight different methods of preserving and treating the headstones, which are used on a case-by-case basis. For example, some of the stones need to have grout injected into cracks, and some need metal pins inserted to keep them from crumbling .
About 140 headstones will be pulled, treated and returned to their original places.
Ms. Duff said members of the university worked on other stone conservation efforts involving the graveyard in 1990 and 2001. The University of Pennsylvania has one of the state’s best architectural preservation programs.
The alley between the church and the Oliver Building will have landscaping done and be turned into an informal “heroes way” with a memorial to Pittsburgh’s modern heroes, such as the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 and the firefighters who died while fighting the Ebenezer Church fire in 2004.
Trinity Cathedral is in the area of Fort Pitt, where Pittsburgh’s first Anglican prayer service was held.
The Episcopal Church was formed as an American successor to the British Anglican Church.
The cathedral hasn’t been cleaned before for financial reasons, said Canon Cathy Brall. The church has already raised two-thirds of the money needed through bequests, donations and sponsors.
The yearlong celebration also will include lights to provide up-lighting of the cathedral at night.
“Christians consider Jesus as the light of the world,” Bishop Duncan said. “We want the church to be a light for Pittsburgh.”
(Sara McCune can be reached at smccune@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1122 )
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Old church murals cast in new light in Strip District
By Angela Hayes
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteJosie Santapietro always had a habit of looking up while praying in church, but during tonight’s Easter vigil she and other parishioners may find new inspiration to worship.
During the Mass, which begins in total darkness and then gradually illuminates with light, St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in the Strip District will unveil its new lighting system, a project that will bring the church’s 120-year-old ceiling murals to life.
Before, “you always looked at them but you didn’t really see them,” said Ms. Santapietro, the rectory secretary.
“I equate it to our own kind of Sistine Chapel,” said Derris Jeffcoat, the sacristan.
The project was started after a smoking chandelier prompted a visit from the city Fire Department. Fire officials at the time told the Rev. Harry Nichols, pastor of the church, to replace the electrical wiring immediately.
With a wealth of history behind the church, the decision to renovate was obvious. So far, the church has received $80,000 in donations to help fund the $300,000 project.
Although the project began as a safety necessity, Father Nichol’s saw it as an opportunity to emphasize the building’s architecture and paintings.
Lighting designers from Astorino, the Downtown architectural firm, used new lamp designs to enhance and protect the paint of the murals and to bring out the ornate detail of wooden columns in the church, down to the tiniest leaf.
“It’s showing up things in the church we’ve never seen before,” Father Nichols said.
In a church where it used to be difficult to read a book of hymns, the new light system is something the parish is celebrating.
Each of the murals represents a significant event in either the history of the Catholic Church or in Polish history.
During a test-run of the lighting project, Mr. Jeffcoat saw the difference in visibility of the murals. With the lights switched on, he saw a mural painted around 1900 of Polish king Jan Sobieski defeating the Turkish army in the battle of Vienna in 1683 and pointed out the vivid color.
“No one’s ever seen the murals like this,” he said.
During the project, lighting designers worked with Mr. Jeffcoat and Father Nichols to ensure that the approximately 106 new light fixtures were carefully hidden from view. The team also chose two custom-made chandeliers that fit the church’s present architecture, matching a pattern found in the church pews.
Unveiling the project at tonight’s Easter vigil is symbolic to Mr. Jeffcoat and the congregation because the Mass is actually a ceremony to honor light.
“We couldn’t think of a better time to inaugurate the lighting,” he said.
“To have Christ light up our church and to have our church physically light up — it gives me goosebumps.”
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St. Nicholas is spared, but what about its windows?
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, March 27, 2007Elsie Yuratovich was a pest, and I mean that in the most admiring and respectful way. She pestered me, she pestered the bishop, she pestered PennDOT, she pestered anyone she thought could play a role in saving St. Nicholas Church.
Thanks to Elsie, I have a voluminous file on the church, thick with photographs, postcards, anniversary booklets and her own memories written in her beautiful script. She never went to college and never took a course in public speaking, but she was the most dedicated and knowledgeable advocate the church ever had. Elsie always believed that then-Bishop Donald Wuerl would do the right thing by the church. Her faith in God and man never wavered.
So it was Elsie, who died almost two years ago at age 83, I thought of when I heard that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh was removing religious objects from the church, demolishing its altars and painting over its murals. If Elsie were still alive, this would have broken her heart.
In the life of a city, there are sadder things than the closing of a landmark church, but not many. For life-long parishioners like Elsie, whose grandparents were among the church’s founders, there is the inevitable grieving: disbelief, anger and often a profound sense of loss. For the city at large, it signals a shifting population — usually to the suburbs — and perhaps even the demolition of a building that has played an important role in its neighborhood and sometimes beyond.
St. Nicholas Church on East Ohio Street is an especially prominent one, at the foot of Troy Hill, along the Allegheny River and with three onion domes and stained glass windows that reflect the Eastern European roots of the first Croatian church in America. The church’s namesake fraternal twin — St. Nicholas in Millvale — was completed the same year, 1901, by the same architect, Frederick Sauer, but was destroyed and rebuilt after a fire in 1921.
A few days after the diocese closed the church in December 2004, it announced that it was forming a committee to study turning the church into a national Croatian shrine.
This was something that a group of former parishioners and supporters had lobbied for; they had formed the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation in 2000 to save the church, even as its fate seemed to have been sealed that year with the Route 28 expansion plans. The diocese had agreed to sell the church to PennDOT, and it would be demolished to make way for the widening of the road.
But in 2001, City Council designated the church a city historic landmark. Because the diocese opposed the designation, approval required a supermajority of council, and got it.
When PennDOT was able to draft new plans that shifted the highway toward the river to save the church, everyone who had worked and hoped and prayed for its survival breathed a sigh of relief.
Even the diocese seemed to be getting on board. A tentative sales agreement was drawn up between it and the newly formed Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance, which would buy the building and its contents for $250,000. But the deal fell apart, with the diocese and the Croatian group each blaming the other for the collapse.
For the Croatians, the ultimate deal-buster was that the diocese required that it be able to buy back the building for $100,000, even after they had completed their million-dollar transformation of the church into a shrine.
Why would the diocese insist on a non-negotiable clause it knew would be unacceptable? Why didn’t it do what Elsie always believed it ultimately would do, which was everything in its power to help the Croatians save their church?
Perhaps because a new suitor had entered the picture: the Follieri Group, an Italian development firm with ties to the Vatican that is seeking to buy and renovate Catholic church properties around the country, with limited success. But in this case, Follieri came up with a better offer — neither party is saying how much better — and the diocese accepted it. Follieri plans to purchase St. Nicholas Church and nine other buildings from the diocese.
The Croatian group still hopes to buy the church — not from the diocese, but from Follieri.
It has been disheartening to watch this unfold after the Croatian-Americans, whose national headquarters are here, worked so hard to preserve the church their ancestors built. For the diocese, the bottom line seems to be just that, the bottom line.
St. Nicholas is the only church that is a city historic landmark. After it was designated, then-City Councilman Bob O’Connor sponsored legislation, lobbied for by the diocese, stipulating that only the owner of a religious structure could nominate it as a landmark, and it passed.
But a church is never only a religious building; it is also one that speaks to the cultural and architectural heritage of a place.
The St. Nicholas windows, for example, depict the Croatian patrons Cyril and Methodius and other saints, and are the glory of the church. Sponsored by Croatian lodges around the country, which are also remembered in the glass, and made by Films Art and Glass Co. of Columbus, Ohio, they are an essential part of the church and its cultural significance.
The diocese hasn’t decided whether it will seek Historic Review Commission approval to remove the windows, which is required by canon law when a church no longer has a religious use. But what happens when canon law butts up against preservation law?
If the diocese wants to remove the windows from the church, it will need the commission’s approval. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, and that the diocese finds a way to do the right thing, for Pittsburgh, for the Croatians and for Elsie.
(Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590. )
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Religious objects removed from historic St. Nicholas Church
By Ann Rodgers,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, March 20, 2007A crew has removed religious objects from the interior of St. Nicholas Church, North Side, a landmark building on Route 28 caught in 15 years of wrangling between the parish that no longer uses it, former parishioners who want to save it, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
On Friday the altar, statues and other religious objects were removed, and religious murals were painted over in preparation for a pending sale to the New York-based redeveloper of church properties, The Follieri Group.
Although that deal has not yet closed, a decision was made to remove the objects now because there had been a break-in at the unused rectory, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the diocese.
“We feel that it is necessary to prepare the building for sale and to safeguard those items. We met with the new pastor down there recently and determined what should be removed,” he said.
The action was devastating to Susan Petrick, secretary of the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation, which had unsuccessfully tried to arrange the building’s purchase as a shrine.
Although church authorities had told her that religious objects would be removed, “I didn’t think they were going to take it down to an empty shell,” she said.
The church sits on a death trap stretch of Route 28 that PennDOT has long wanted to widen. In 1994 the parish merged with another Croatian parish in nearby Millvale, also named St. Nicholas. While leaders of the merged parish and the diocese wanted to sell to PennDOT, people from the North Side church had it declared a historic landmark to protect its exterior. PennDOT developed a plan to widen Route 28 with the church intact. The parish continued to use the building until 2004, when a broken boiler led to its closure.
The Follieri Group is run by Catholics who specialize in renovating churches for purposes that are acceptable to the church, including affordable housing. Father Lengwin said the group has not indicated how it intends to use the St. Nicholas property.
However, canon law requires that all religious objects be removed from churches that are being put to secular use. The diocese has been aggressive about that since a church was sold intact in the 1990s for what is now The Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville.
“We’ve learned from that experience, and are very vigilant,” said the Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, director of the diocesan Department for Canon and Civil Law Services.
The altar must always be removed. If a non-Catholic group plans to use it as a church, many of the items can be left if the buyer plans to use them. But if the building will be used for secular purposes, every religious object must go, he said.
“We would take out the candlesticks and the tabernacle, statues, vestments, chalices, anything that would have been used for sacred purposes. If there are any murals that we can’t take down, they would be painted over. Basically we are selling them a building that has no religious things in it,” he said.
It will be up to St. Nicholas parish to decide what to do with the religious items, Father Lengwin said.
“We redistribute them to parishes that need them. The parish itself will determine which of those items they want to incorporate in their [Millvale] building,” he said.
Some ethnic parishes have sent items from closed churches overseas to parishes in their motherland that are still struggling to emerge from rebuilding after communism. “But that has not been decided yet. It will be up to the parish,” he said.
(Ann Rodgers can be reached at arodgers@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416. )