The World’s Tallest Church Building

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Carolyn Ristau

Everything in Chicago is stretched–even churches. My eye was caught by this building as I looked to cross a street in Chicago and saw the steeple on top of this skyscraper a couple blocks down. I was very confused at first, trying to figure out why an office building had a steeple on top of it. Then I saw the name of the church, First United Methodist Church, carved into the side of the building. The only other indication on the exterior visible from a distance that suggested the religious use of the interior was the doorway.

This building is also known as the Chicago Temple. The congregation was founded in 1831 and has been worshiping at this site since 1838. The current building was built in 1924 and has 23 floors.

One of my souvenirs from Chicago was the book “City of the Century” by Donald L. Miller, which describes the history of Chicago up to the 1893 World’s Fair. So it doesn’t talk about the building of this church building, but it does describe the building of the Auditorium–Chicago’s multipurpose Opera House. The book notes “there was no government support of the arts in the United States, so the Auditorium would have to pay for itself” (361). As a result the theater was enclosed in a office/hotel complex.

It seemed like there might have been similar thinking in the design of this church building–as real estate was expensive downtown, covering the church with office space could help it afford its location. However, if that is why the building is mixed-use, it was not inspired by the Auditorium, which was built in the late 1880s. According the history page of the church’s website, there has been a multipurpose church building on this site since 1858. The first one was a 4-story structure with stores and businesses on the first two floors and the church above.

The new building has a two-story sanctuary on the first floor. Accounts differ as to how many this can hold (500, 1000, 1200 people). The second floor has another smaller sanctuary. Floors three and four hold the accessory rooms–classrooms, meeting rooms, etc. The parson’s house is also located in the building. The remaining floors are office space. The crowning jewel, is a small chapel underneath the steeple.

I regret that I did not take the time to stop and investigate whether I could explore the inside of the building. As I was focused on a specific task when I came upon the building, I did not even think about trying to see inside. If you are interested, I found a YouTube video that shows what I take to be the first floor sanctuary and the small chapel under the steeple.

A Lofty Location

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Carolyn Ristau

This little gem in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood is full of surprises. In the 20-some years I’ve been passing through this area, I never noticed the building. It was brought to my attention a few years ago when I began researching adapted church buildings in Pittsburgh. If you are in the nearby vicinity, the building blends into its surroundings. But from other parts of the city it stands out (see 31st Street Bridge, Bloomfield Bridge, Busway Bridges: Herron Street, Busway Bridges: 28th Street). It is also visible standing out along the ridge in the second photo in my Washington’s Crossing Bridge post.

There are two characteristics that make it stand out from a distance. The first is its location at the highest point on 40th Street in Lawrenceville.

The second characteristic is one of the most intriguing parts of this building: the fellowship hall is at ground level and the sanctuary is above, reached by a flight of stairs. This is the only church building I have been in where the sanctuary is a full flight of stairs above ground level. I’m very curious to know if there are any others–please share, if you’ve come across one!

The building was built in 1896-97 for the German Evangelical Lutheran St. John’s Congregation, which later became St. John’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church. In 2002, the congregation merged with St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church and closed the doors on this location. A real estate agent purchased the property and prepped it for conversion into 3 condominiums–one unit each for the sanctuary, fellowship hall, and parish house–before the current owners purchased the property and completed most of the rehab work creating the Choir Loft Condominiums. (A side note that may be of interest is that the current owners considered purchasing the building that is now the Union Project but chose this one instead.)

The owner reported that the building was essentially empty for nearly 2 years before he acquired it. The floors were in bad condition–the pews had been ripped out, tearing the sanctuary’s floor, and the choir loft’s floor was completely missing. He said his goal in renovating the building was to “not destroy the architecture and the interior. We wanted it to feel like a church still because it is a church.”

Having gotten a tour of the interior of the sanctuary unit, I’d say they succeeded in this goal. The former sanctuary space is an open loft configuration with hardwood floors. The raised steps for the altar area were kept and made into the kitchen. The choir loft remained open and served as the bedroom. The gorgeous stained glass windows were also intact. While I was there on a winter evening after sunset, I loved the description of how the colored pattern from the stained glass gradually moves across the floor like a very colorful sundial. My other favorite part was that there was still a bell in the tower, which the owner rang for me. While inside the sound was muffled, it sounded like it could have woken sleeping neighbors.

Erie Churches

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Carolyn Ristau

Erie has a variety of attractive church buildings. As I walked around admiring them, I was surprised to see that they were all still used as churches. I did not find a single adaptively reused church building. Given Erie’s location, relatively close to Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh, I assumed it had similar significant population loss creating a need to either abandon, demolish or adapt some church buildings. It turns out, that at least on the county level, this assumption was false. Since 1900, the population of Erie County has grown every decade, except from 1980 to 1990 when there was a slight (1.5%) population loss, from 98,509 to 280,843 (2000’s population). Allegheny County (Pittsburgh’s county), on the other hand saw growth from 775,058 in 1900 to 1,628,587 in 1960 after which the population has declined steadily to 1,223,348 in 2010.

I could not find statistics for the population change of the city of Erie; it is possible that there was a different trend within the city. There were signs of abandonment and decay in other buildings and aspects of the town. Yet the churches are still intact and appear to be thriving. In fact, one of the larger churches was undergoing a major renovation while I was there.

Whatever the reason for the churches’ continued use, I enjoyed my treasure hunt chasing down as many steeples as I could in two hours:

The Union Project: Engaging Community

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Carolyn Ristau

Every adapted church building I’ve come across has something that makes it unique. Of all the ones I’ve come across so far, the Union Project used the most creative method in restoring/adapting the building.

In the late 1990s, a small group of people came together and said that they wanted a “space for art and faith” in their neighborhood. (The quotes in this post are from one of the founding members, who I interviewed for a school project.) By 2001, this group and this sentiment had grown and they purchased the vacant, former Union Baptist Church at the intersection of Negley and Stanton Avenues, two major roads in the East End of Pittsburgh, to convert it into a community center.

When the community center acquired it, the church was still considered active, but it had not been used regularly for two to four years. The building was in very poor condition: the roof leaked, there were broken windows, and pigeons and rodents lived inside. It took four years to prepare the building for occupancy and an additional six years to completely restore the structure.

The part that I like the most about how this building was adapted, was the alternative method they came up with for restoring the stained glass windows of the structure. All the windows needed restoration, which I’m sure would have added up to a colossal expense. Instead of giving up or attempting to raise all the funds to pay for a professional restoration, they offered community classes in stained glass restoration using the church’s windows as the class materials. Some of the windows needed to be completely reconstructed in which case the instructor, a stained glass professional, created the new windows. Beside these, all the windows were restored by community members at the classes.

I took one of the classes a few summers ago. It was a lot of fun and quite interesting to learn how stained glass windows are put together. At least a couple of the people in my class were taking the course so they would be able to restore the stained glass windows in their homes. Much of the housing stock in the neighborhoods surrounding the building feature at least one stained glass window, so this was a useful skill for the local homeowners to learn. A 2012 article in the Post-Gazette announces the completion of this restoration project.

Over the years since the Union Project began, the building has slowly been restored one piece at a time. The former classrooms behind the sanctuary were restored first and converted into office space. Several of these offices are used for the administration of the Union Project, while the rest are rented out to other community groups including a church group. The basement was converted into an art space. This is where the stained glass restoration classes were held. There is also a pottery studio which offers classes. Hula-hooping classes are held in the atrium, or out on the lawn in nice weather. The sanctuary is used as a rental hall for receptions, community events and the like. The narthex is a little coffee shop.

By the summer 2012, the building finally looked like a completed project: the stained glass windows were restored, the sanctuary was finally completely repainted, and the black soot was cleaned off the stone façade. Because of Pittsburgh’s past as a major industrial city, all stone façade buildings collected black soot–many of these buildings have been cleaned in the last ten to twenty years. In cleaning the soot off the Union Project, the crenellations on top of the towers were left black, leaving a respectful reminder of the past, while the change from a black building to white brightened up this corner of the neighborhood.

This is a project that showed me, and the group who completed it, that “anything is possible.”

Church Brew Works

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Carolyn Ristau

January 8, 2013, has been declared by City Council as Church Brew Works Day in the city of Pittsburgh to recognize the work of the restaurant’s founder/president, head brewer, and staff. Council’s proclamation highlights the success of this group in adapting a vacant church “into a premiere, nationally recognized craft brewery, neighborhood fixture, and regional asset.”

The Church Brew Works is probably the most infamous of Pittsburgh’s adaptively reused churches. Its notoriety stems from the fact that the brew house is located in the former altar. A friend of mine told me that this positioning bothers her and if she eats at the Church Brew Works, she has to sit with her back to the altar. I have heard that other people consider it sacrilegious to have the brew house on the former altar area and that these people refuse to patronize the restaurant.

This building was formerly an Eastern European Catholic Church and was purchased in 1996 to be converted into a restaurant and brewery. I interviewed the founder/president for a paper on adaptively reused church buildings in Pittsburgh. He explained that the idea for the restaurant started in 1994. The first building selected for the project was an old fire hall two blocks away from the church. The church was chosen in the end because of the availability of parking and the “great architecture.” It was also easily accessible by car, which he felt was important for the success of the restaurant as Pittsburgh “lacks good public transit.” Five months after the purchase was completed, the restaurant opened.

The church had been empty for two years by the time it was purchased in 1996. The school attached to the church had been closed for twenty-five years. The president felt that this added to the decrease in the congregation. The closing of the mills drove church members away to search for new jobs while the closing of the school drove them away to find a new school for their children. As a result of these pressures, the congregation dropped from 2000 to 200 parishioners. When acquired for the restaurant, the church was “worn out” from a lack of reinvestment over the years and there was additional damage as a result of being completely closed for two years. While the initial renovations of the building were completed in five months, paving the parking lot and completing the patio took longer. Fifteen years later, work is still being done because of the “age of the building.”

Much of the original building was reused or adapted in the conversion from a church to a restaurant. The history section of the restaurant’s website explains how the pews were reused as benches for the tables and the bricks from the confessional that was taken down were used to create the pillars for the restaurant’s sign outside. The original floor and lanterns were restored. The result is a beautiful and unique interior for this restaurant. To see what the interior looks like, check out the website or stop by for a meal. I’ve enjoyed the food the few times I’ve eaten here.

Adaptively Rebuilt Church

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Carolyn Ristau

The Spire House is perhaps my favorite of all the adaptively reused churches I found in London. Originally built as Christ Church Lancaster Gate in the 1850s and 1860s, the building has since been adapted to housing. As I walked around the building, I thought it might have been one of the ones damaged during the war, but according to a website about the building most of the structure was demolished in the 1970s because of decay and fungus.

The reason why I liked this building was that despite the fact that most of it was demolished, part of it was saved and the rebuilt structure recalls the former design. I particularly liked the “flying buttresses.”

I agree that there are times when a building can no longer function well, in this case because of decay and fungus, but buildings tell a lot about a society and its history and when they are demolished something gets lost. The Spire House found a compromise between these two and it tells a lot about the city. From the way this building was designed, it is apparent that this society is moving forward and changing, but still respects its past and its religion. There other signs of this throughout the city, such as the church tower in the middle of a road.

Adaptive Reuse of Churches: London

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Carolyn Ristau

When I started planning on going to London this year, my first idea was to go for a month or so to study the adaptive reuse of churches in that city. I thought London would be a good place to see a wide variety of adaptions as the UK has been working with the problem of redundant churches for about a hundred years. As I was pursuing this idea I found a book from 1977 which addresses this problem across Great Britain. (I have not come across any book publications on the adaptive reuse of church buildings in the US.) This book “Chapels and Churches: Who Cares?” includes a discussion of what had been done up until that point in time in the adaptive reuse of church buildings. I compiled a list of 76 different uses that these buildings have been adapted to from the book. In my observations in the Pittsburgh area, I have seen less than ten types of new use for church buildings with housing being the most common.

There was one factor about the church buildings in London that I found fascinating, perhaps in part because it is not a factor in Pittsburgh, or any US city for that matter. Many churches sustained damage during WWII and The Blitz. The churches damaged during the war were demolished, rebuilt, adaptively reused, or memorialized, resulting in some unique (at least to me) situations.

I ended up not going to London to complete a research project on the adaptive reuse of church buildings, but instead went to the city for a few days and explored as much of the city as I could in that time. This included looking for a few of the adaptively reused churches I had learned about in my preliminary research. In the process of looking for the ones I knew about and simply walking around the city, I found some other adaptively reused churches.

Busway Bridges: 28th Street

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Carolyn Ristau

The 28th Street Bridge is one of Polish Hill’s two points of access to the lower regions between it and the Allegheny River, the second is the Herron Street Bridge (see post). This bridge is also the last pedestrian accessible bridge across the busway before downtown. Several of the views from this bridge are similar to, but better than, the ones from the Herron Street Bridge.

For instance, the images of downtown from the 28th Street Bridge have fewer non-downtown buildings blocking the view than those from the Herron Street Bridge.

Also, the Children’s Hospital and Choir Loft Condominiums are visible from both bridges, but on the Herron Street Bridge only the tops of the buildings were visible while from the 28th Street Bridge most of the buildings are visible.

Across the river in Troy Hill, another site of contention within the city is visible. The former St. Nicholas Church pictured above is the sister to the St. Nicholas Church I saw from the 40th Street Bridge (see post), has been vacant since 2004, and has been locked in a battle between preservationists and the parish for over a year. The parish wants to demolish the building that it cannot afford to maintain and many people have called an eyesore, while the preservationists want to preserve the building. This summer a county judge ruled in favor of the parish (see article), but the city has threatened to appeal this decision (see article). The building is certainly architecturally interesting, however it is in a horrible location, smack up against route 28, which I believe provides the only access to the building.

Earlier this summer, when I was talking with someone about my project to walk the bridges of Pittsburgh, he asked me which bridge was my favorite so far. I hadn’t thought about it before, but when he asked, I decided that the Heth’s Run Bridge was my favorite because its design and its existence called up many questions (see May 31 and June 9 posts). Now I would say that the 28th Street Bridge is my favorite, despite the fact that it is rusting, the sidewalk is crumbling, and it has the cage-like fence I generally dislike. I think the bridge is rather cute (if a bridge can be called cute)….Or perhaps I like it so much because it has a stone-lined approach. I love stone.

Homestead High Level Bridge

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Carolyn Ristau

I got off the bus a stop or two before the Homestead High Level Bridge (aka Homestead Grays Bridge). As I walked down Brown’s Hill Road, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that my sidewalk turned into a drain. From a distance it looked like the sidewalk continued all the way to the bridge as it was the same material and same width the whole way down. However, at one point it suddenly changed from being a flat sidewalk to a v-shaped drain. Fortunately it had not rained recently, so the drain was dry and I was able to continue on my way. If I were a person with a mobility disability trying to get down to the bridge, this would have presented a serious problem. There was no warning for this change and the nearest traffic light was some distance back uphill (because of the traffic level this is not a road where it is wise for any person to attempt to j-walk). I did not walk on the other side of the road, so I am only assuming that the sidewalk there would be accessible (that is, not turn into a drain).

The walk across the bridge itself was fine. There is sidewalk on both sides and no fence to cage you in or to block the views. It was a windy crossing, which reminded me that every time I’ve walked the Highland Park Bridge, I’ve noticed the wind. It made me wonder if there is something special about the location of these two bridges or if it is merely coincidence that they are windy. One factor in common between the bridges is that there are the last bridges within the city on their respective rivers when traveling away from downtown.

There are several interesting sites visible from this bridge (most of which are not within the boundaries of the city of Pittsburgh). First is the view above of Homestead. In this shot there are five churches visible, just outside the frame are three more to the left and one more to the right, within several additional churches just a little farther out from this core. I find the close proximity of so many churches interesting first because it is a clear indicator of the past of this town (a major mill town with numerous immigrant groups) and second because about half of these church buildings are vacant or for sale. It is a dream of mine to create a master plan for adapting these churches to new uses that complement each other, address some of the needs of the town and act as a productive catalyst for lifting the town out of decay. As I still haven’t figured out what these uses would be or how to implement the adaption, it currently remains a dream.

A project that I’ve heard was supposed to lead to the revitalization of Homestead was the creation of the Waterfront Mall on the former Homestead Steel Works site (originally part of the Carnegie steel empire before being sold to US Steel). The revitalization plan did not work out and it is popular to criticize the design of the mall and point out all the reasons for this failure. The most glaring reason is that the roads were designed so that people coming from the city can completely avoid going into the town when going to the mall.

Another negative factor about the mall, which doesn’t necessarily have any effect on the potential to revitalize the surrounding area, is the limited walkability of the site. It drives me nuts and definitely is a major factor curtailing my use of the mall. Part of the mall, pictured above, is walking friendly. However, as someone once pointed out to me, this is where all the expensive stores are and chances are that people shopping here have cars. On the other side of the bridge and across a couple parking lots are the rest of the shops laid out in a long string of big box stores including Target and the grocery store (which as the same helpful person pointed out are frequented by people without cars). I have nightmares of the long trek lugging my growing number of purchases all over this site as I travel between stores and then try to find a bus stop that will take me out of this barren landscape toward home (an absurdly difficult feat).

The image above shows the never-ending parking lots along the long string of stores. From this view it looks far more green than it feels on the ground. One other aspect of interest is the black shapes above the America flag, which are the abandoned structures of the Carrie Furnace, one of the few remnants from the Pittsburgh region’s industrial and steel past. I say “abandoned” but this perhaps is not an accurate term as there are plans and efforts underway to use the site. An August article in the Post-Gazette discusses the efforts of volunteers to save the site and turn it into a museum. The first half of another article from June talks about development plans for turning the land surrounding the furnace into an office/industrial park.

A final site of interest visible from the Homestead High Level Bridge is the slag heap which is now home to the “Somerset at Frick Park” housing development. When I get caught up with posting about the walks I’ve done since starting my blog, I’d like to write about some I took before my blog began, including the hike through Frick Park and over this slag heap. I suppose given my interest in seeing vacant property, including brownfields, within a city reused, I should be pleased with this development. I think I’m getting a bit hung up on the irony of the site–once a dump site for the refuse of mines and industrial sites, now the site of luxury homes and condominiums.

Busway Bridges: Baum-Centre Corridor

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Carolyn Ristau

Baum Boulevard and Centre Ave run parallel along the border of Pittsburgh’s Shadyside and Bloomfield neighborhoods and are arteries that help people move from downtown and Oakland to East Liberty and other East End neighborhoods. The Baum-Centre corridor is currently receiving a lot of attention from the perspective of the development of the city. There is even a community group called the Baum-Centre Initiative made up of representatives from other groups along the corridor. Their goal is to work together to promote development along the corridor that is beneficial and satisfactory to their respective groups and communities.

This area is attracting interest in part because of its arterial activity, but also because Baum used to be the car dealership district. Most of the dealerships have closed their locations leaving behind many empty buildings. Contrary to this disinvestment, Centre Ave hosts one of the UPMC hospitals and an urgent care center was recently added. From what I’ve picked up, UPMC is working to expand in this area.

The large building between Centre and Baum last housed a party/costume supply store, but I image most of the building was sitting empty. For about the last year, it has been under redevelopment. The rumor I have heard is that something related to UPMC is going into the space.

I also heard that UPMC wants to build a parking lot for its employees in this area. I couldn’t picture exactly where it was to be placed from the description I heard, but I wonder if it is this empty lot off of Baum Boulevard.

Outside of the developments going on near them, my impression of these two bridges is that they are quite ugly. I am glad that except for when I walked them for my project, I’m in a bus when crossing Centre Avenue’s bridge and in a car when crossing Baum Boulevard’s bridge. Now that I mention it, that’s how I felt about most of the bridges across the busway I’ve walked (except for the new pedestrian bridge, see July 26 post). Though I haven’t written the posts for all of them yet, at this point I have walked all the bridges over the busway between Penn Avenue and the Bloomfield Bridge.

My favorite part about walking these two bridges was the view of Bloomfield/Lawrenceville from the Baum Boulevard Bridge. This view captures two of Bloomfield’s churches (both currently active) with Lawrenceville’s Childrens Hospital sandwiched between them.

urbantraipsing

A site of urban exploration. Text and photos by Carolyn Ristau.

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