Allegheny Center Neighborhood

Reconstructing a neighborhood that has been almost completely reconfigured is difficult. Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Center neighborhood was once the center of Allegheny City, which was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907. In the 1800s and first half on the 1900s, the heart of this bustling city was 36 blocks of dense, walkable, mixed-use activity. Most of the buildings and streets of these blocks were erased in the 1960s and 1970s when the City of Pittsburgh and the Urban Redevelopment Authority led a major, federally-funded, “urban renewal” project in the neighborhood. Four existing streets were converted into a one-way ring road, while most of the other streets were erased or converted to pedestrian plazas. The buildings were mostly demolished and replaced by parking lots and mid- to high-rise buildings within the ring road and parking lots and housing complexes outside the ring road.

To facilitate this “renewal,” 376 families, 1161 individuals, and 598 businesses were relocated outside the neighborhood by 1970. Unsurprisingly, given the scope and extent of this displacement in the name of renewal, only one of the buildings used by the 22 congregations listed in the 1926 directory survives. What is surprising is that a former parish house survives, which helped locate the former locations of several of the church buildings that used to sit nearby.

Neighborhood Statistics (Out of the 70 in this series)

• 64th largest by acreage
• 4th highest number of religious sites
• 2nd most sites/acre

Locations

The map below shows the locations of the 22 congregations listed in the 1926 directory for Allegheny Center (the dotted line marks the neighborhood boundary). Note that there are only 20 pins because three congregations apparently shared the same space.

What are they now?

The table below matches the 22 congregations listed in the 1926 directory with the current use of the site.

1926 Congregation Name	By 2026 the Congregation’s Building is:
Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church	replaced with a parking lot
Central Presbyterian Church	replaced with a community service building
Central Reformed Presbyterian Church	replaced with a housing complex
Christ Episcopal Church	replaced with a community service building
Church of the Soul	replaced with a parking lot
First Protestant Methodist Church	replaced with a housing complex
First United Presbyterian Church	replaced with a parking lot
First Allegheny Christian Church	replaced with a small scale hospital
First Presbyterian Church of Allegheny	replaced with a housing complex
Fourth United Presbyterian Church	replaced with a park (tennis and basketball courts)
Fourth Spiritualists	replaced with a parking lot
Gospel Tabernacle	replaced with a parking lot
Metropolitan Church Mission	replaced with a parking lot
Ohio Street Episcopal Methodist Church	replaced with a housing complex
Pentecostal Mission	replaced with a apartment building
Sandusky Street Baptist Church	replaced with a parking lot
Second United Presbyterian Church	replaced with a commercial building
Spiritualist Church of Truth	replaced with a housing complex
St. Cyprian Catholic Church	replaced with a housing complex
St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church	replaced with a school baseball diamond
St. Peter Catholic Church	still St. Peter Catholic Church
Trinity Lutheran Church	replaced with a commercial building

Photos

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For more on this series, visit our introductory post.

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Sources:

Pittsburgh Department of City Planning. A Development and Renewal Program for Pittsburgh, Summary Documentation, Pittsburgh Community Renewal Program. Pittsburgh, 1970. https://pittsburgharchives.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_d1f07da0-9303-4aee-a162-04c83a0eaaa0/

Polk’s Pittsburgh City Directory, 1926. Pittsburgh: R. L. Polk & Co. https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735056286846/viewer#page/4/mode/1up