Then & Now 1926-2026: Allegheny West Religious Buildings

Posted on May 24, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

View of West North Avenue, Allegheny West

Allegheny West Neighborhood

Allegheny West is a neighborhood that features a blend of stability and destruction in its built environment.

Allegheny City’s Millionaires Row once occupied this part of town. It is a dense neighborhood, with a mix of uses. While the houses are frequently attached, many have front porches that provide a buffer from the street. Architectural ornamentation is common and the sidewalks are often paved in brick.

Parts of the neighborhood were impacted by “urban renewal.” The southern portion, between Ridge Avenue and the railroads, was designated as a “renewal” area on behalf of the community college. In 1970, the project was just getting started. It was projected that 10 families and 25 individuals would need to be relocated to make way for the community college campus. A few other areas of the neighborhood north of Ridge Avenue have also seen block-scale demolition and redevelopment into parking lots, warehouses, and a fast food restaurant.

One of the buildings from the congregations listed in the 1926 Polk Directory was lost through these smaller demolition/redevelopments. The other two buildings remain intact with the same congregations.

Neighborhood Statistics (Out of 70 in this Series)

68th largest by acreage
45th highest number of sites (multi-way tie)
16th most sites/acre

Locations

The map below shows the locations of the 3 congregations listed in the 1926 directory for Allegheny West (the dotted line marks the neighborhood boundary).

What are they now?

The table below matches the 3 congregations listed in the 1926 directory with the current use of the site.

1926 Congregation Name	By 2026 the Congregation’s Building is:
Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church	still Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church
Emmanuel Episcopal Church	still Emmanuel Episcopal Church
North Presbyterian Church	replaced with a parking lot

Photos

Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church (2026)
Emmanuel Episcopal Church (2026)
North Presbyterian Church site (2026)

For more on this series, visit our introductory post.

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

Then & Now 1926-2026: Allegheny Center Religious Buildings

Posted on May 17, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

View of the pedestrian mall, Allegheny Center

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

Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church site (2026)
Central Presbyterian Church site (2026)
Central Reformed Presbyterian Church site (2026)
Christ Episcopal Church site (2026)
Church of the Soul site shared with two other congregations (2026)
First Allegheny Christian Church site (2026)
First Presbyterian Church of Allegheny site (2026)
First Protestant Methodist Church of Northside site, adjacent to a Spiritualist site (2026)
First United Presbyterian Church site (2026)
Fourth United Presbyterian Church site (2026)
Gospel Tabernacle site (2026)
Ohio Street Methodist Episcopal Church site (2026)
Pentecostal Mission site (2026)
Sandusky Street Baptist Church site (2026)
Second United Presbyterian Church site (2026)
St. Cyprian Catholic Church site (2026)
St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church site (2026)
St. Peter Catholic Church (2026)
Trinity Lutheran Church site (2026)

For more on this series, visit our introductory post.

Sources:

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

Then & Now 1926-2026: Pittsburgh’s Religious Buildings

Posted on May 10, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

View of Pittsburgh from West End Overlook

Why Religious Buildings?

In 2010, as I travelled around different neighborhoods in Pittsburgh for work, school, and play, I began to notice a number of former religious buildings that were being used for secular purposes from child care to community centers to homes. Yet, I only heard people talk about one or two that made the news for the controversial way in which they were now used, particularly the brewpub that brewed in the former altar space. This inspired me to try to identify how many former religious buildings in Pittsburgh were being used for secular purposes and what those new uses were. While I have since learned that this is a moving target, I have become more and more fascinated about what these buildings tell us about the history of the city and the people who’ve lived here.

Eventually, I will write a book about Pittsburgh and its communities featuring Pittsburgh’s former religious buildings. In the meantime, I’m broadening the parameters of my research to gather information about former religious buildings that have been demolished or that sit vacant.

Why 1926?

The more I learn about 1926, the more it seems a significant moment in Pittsburgh’s history. It sits in the middle of the city’s final decade of significant population growth, which gets a boost from the numerous boroughs annexed that decade. The city’s boundary in 1926 only encompasses 85% of what will become the city’s full extent after the last annexation in 1955. While the City adopted zoning in 1923 with two types of residential districts (one for single-unit and two-unit dwellings and one for any number of units), in 1926, it added a third type of residential district for only single-unit dwellings.

Granted, given my day job, this last fact may be the reason I’ve become so focused on the year 1926. However, since we are now exactly 100 years later, it seems worth elevating 1926 and 2026 to another “Then & Now” series.

Scope of the Series

Polk’s Pittsburgh City Directory of 1926 identifies over 500 listings under the category “Churches.” Over the next couple of years, this Then & Now series will visit these sites by neighborhood to identify what they look like in 2026. I expect there will be 71 posts in this series occasionally interrupted by other posts, including the monthly public art posts and annual Bridge Madness series.

In 2026, there are 90 neighborhoods officially recognized by Pittsburgh’s Department of City Planning. Only 70 of these will be featured in this series. The others do not have religious sites that are listed in the 1926 city directory. This is because they were were largely undeveloped at that time, not yet annexed to the city, or both (parts of the neighborhood undeveloped and other parts not annexed).

Neighborhoods Featured in the Series
- Allegheny Center
- Allegheny West
- Allentown
- Arlington
- Bedford Dwellings
- Beechview
- Beltzhoover
- Bloomfield
- Bluff
- Brighton Heights
- Brookline
- California-Kirkbride
- Central Business District
- Central Lawrenceville
- Central Northside
- Central Oakland
- Chateau
- Crafton Heights
- Crawford-Roberts
- Duquesne Heights
- East Allegheny
- East Carnegie
- East Hills
- East Liberty
- Elliott
- Esplen
- Fineview
- Friendship
- Garfield
- Greenfield
- Hazelwood
- Highland Park
- Homewood North
- Homewood South
- Homewood West
- Larimer
- Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar
- Lower Lawrenceville
- Manchester
- Marshall-Shadeland
- Middle Hill
- Morningside
- Mt. Oliver
- Mt. Washington
- North Oakland
- North Shore
- Perry North
- Perry South
- Point Breeze
- Point Breeze North
- Polish Hill
- Shadyside
- Sheraden
- South Oakland
- South Shore
- South Side Flats
- South Side Slopes
- Spring Garden
- Spring Hill-City View
- Squirrel Hill North
- Squirrel Hill South
- Stanton Heights
- Strip District
- Swisshelm Park
- Terrace Village
- Troy Hill
- Upper Hill
- Upper Lawrenceville
- West End
- West Oakland

Neighborhoods Annexed after 1926
- Carrick (1927)
- Hays (1929 & 1951)
- Knoxville (1927)
- Lincoln Place (1929)
- New Homestead (1931)
- Northview Heights (1931)
- Overbrook (1927)
Neighborhoods Largely Undeveloped in 1926
- Arlington Heights
- Bon Air
- Chartiers City
- Fairywood
- Glen Hazel
- Oakwood
- Regent Square
- Saint Clair
- Windgap
Neighborhoods w/Portions Undeveloped in 1926 and Portions Annexed after 1926
- Ridgemont (a portion annexed 1928)
- Summer Hill (a portion annexed 1929)
- Westwood (a portion annexed 1927)

Sources:

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

Williamsport Bridges

Posted on April 12, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

Williamsport is a town of just over 25,000 along the upper Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. I discovered it as an excellent stop-over point to break up the drive home from my relatives in Rutland (where I’ve explored public art, a bridge, covered bridges, and the drawing of municipal boundaries). I enjoy a historic hotel, good restaurants, and a great bookstore (particularly useful when I’ve run out of reading on a trip) whenever I stop in Williamsport.

On a recent trip, I decided to walk the Market Street and Maryland Street Bridges over the Susquehanna while I was there. I took the walk in the morning, leaving my hotel shortly before 8:00 AM, so that I’d be back before checkout time. The sun was already high enough in the sky to be uncomfortably warm and there was very little relief from shade over the bridges and along the river. I spent most of the walk looking forward to when it would be over. A nice riverside trail connected the two bridges. I walked the southern route and frequently wished that the trees came closer to the trail to provide some relief from the sun. As such, I did not take the time to stop and read the informational signs about the region’s history in lumbering or about the birds that might be seen along the river.

Frederick Douglass Bridge, DC

Posted on December 18, 2025 by Carolyn Ristau

For years, even before I started urbantraipsing, I thought nothing of walking from transit stop to transit stop, bridge to bridge, as I explore and encounter the expected and unexpected nooks and crannies of a city. That way of life came crashing to a devastating halt in the fall of 2023 when I developed Long COVID.

Six months passed.

And then a year.

The return to “normal” my doctors promised seemed increasingly unlikely. But a return to functional seemed within reach. The question remained: did urbantraipsing fall within this new functionality?

After a few local test excursions, I felt physically and mentally strong enough to test travel. In April 2025, I took a long-overdue trip to visit my brother in Washington, DC. On this trip, I encountered some great bridges and learned that, much like other activities, with modification and accommodation urbantraipsing is a way of life I can continue.

The open, through-arch Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge was one of our expected encounters. I probably would have been ecstatic about the unexpected benches in the lookouts between the arches under previous circumstances. After all, it isn’t every day that you find a bench on a bridge. However, in the past, I probably would have just said “that’s cool,” photographed them, and moved on. Instead, I took full advantage of these seats for one of my rest and rehydration breaks. This slow down is the reason I spotted the Yard Park Bridge, a bridge I definitely needed to add to my collection.

Perhaps slowing down and being more intentional to accommodate my Long COVID needs will continue to add depth to my urbantraipsing experiences.

Anacostia River Canals

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Carolyn Ristau

The Anacostia Riverwalk Trail crosses over the openings of several canal channels within a short distance from the Frederick Douglass Bridge in Washington, DC. The first canal opening that I walked over, I had no idea that I was walking on a bridge…like when I walked over the Grosvenor Canal in London. It wasn’t until I was checking out the views from the Frederick Douglass Bridge that I saw the opening for the canal underneath the path I had just walked. (First picture in the slide show below.)

The bridge pictured above appears to have been over a canal that fed into or out of (or both?) the old O Street Pumping Station. This bridge was clearly visible as we walked passed it on our way to the Frederick Douglass. I was tempted to cross it (as a bridge walker, it is hard to walk passed a bridge and not over it), but I was tired and trying to conserve energy. However, once on the Frederick Douglass Bridge, I spotted another pedestrian bridge just beyond this one that I could not pass up the opportunity to walk, no matter how tired I was.

The Yard Park Bridge is a highly photogenic bridge, perhaps rivalling London’s Millennium Bridge. It crosses over what I think are the remnants of the Washington City Canal, most of which has been paved over. The paved portion visible from the Yard Park Bridge reminded me of the portions of the Erie Canal in Buffalo paved over for a skating rink and other recreational purposes.

Bridge over an unknown canal
Old O Street Pump Station
New O Street Pump Station
Yard Park Bridge exterior 1
Yard Park Bridge exterior 2
Inside the Yard Park Bridge
Yard Park Bridge opening
Paved-over vestiges of the Washington City Canal 1
Paved-over vestiges of the Washington City Canal 2

Buffalo Bridges: Canalside

Posted on June 19, 2025 by Carolyn Ristau

There are several pedestrian-only bridges at Canalside, Buffalo. They pass over the end of the Erie Canal, a portion of which has been paved over with a skating rink. When I was there, one of these bridges was closed due to construction and I couldn’t figure out how to get to another one. I did walk over two others of these pedestrian bridges – one over the paved portion and one over the water portion.

Grove City Bridges

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Carolyn Ristau

I bought my first car in 2021. It ended up having a lot of problems. The first time I tried to drive to Erie, it started shaking like it was going to spontaneously break apart into a million pieces, just like a cartoon. Instead, it went into limp home mode and I turned around at the next exit, which was the middle of nowhere. After several repairs and a period of no further incidents, the following year I was ready to try again. But first, I tested the car to see if it could handle Rt. 79.

I knew of Grove City as an exit about halfway to Erie and as the closest outlet mall to Pittsburgh. I decided to aim for the actual Borough of Grove City¹ as a destination to explore while testing my car’s ability to handle the speed limit and hills of Rt. 79. Naturally, since I arrived safely and knew nothing about the town, I set out to walk the bridges.

A town of 2.7 square miles and less than 8,000 residents, Grove City has several bridges over Wolf Creek and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the town’s premier pedestrian bridge, Rainbow Bridge (pictured above), was closed due to construction activities in the area. I discovered a second, unmapped pedestrian bridge over a small tributary to Wolf Creek, which I crossed only to see a sign on the other side claiming the bridge was not a throughway and directing people to use the sidewalks on the street to reach Grove City College’s main campus.

While the bridges themselves were structurally uninteresting, except for the Rainbow Bridge, I visited a throughout cross-section of town in walking them….which is the point of my bridge walking habit. My path took me through the college campus, the now less prominent industrial area, the large homes built for the boss class of the industries, the small homes built for the industrial workers, and the business district, both the car oriented portion and the historic portion. There are several bridgeless neighborhoods that I did not visit, but even without them, I learned a lot about the town in a short space of time.

Grove City Bridges

Grove City Cross-Section

I don’t know if this is true in other states, but Pennsylvania lets municipalities of any size call themselves cities. ↩︎

Funding Bridges

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Carolyn Ristau

Bridges are a vital connectors that enable us to move around as we live our lives. Frequently, we don’t even realize there’s a bridge there…at least not until there’s a bridge disaster. Over the last few years, there have been several bridge disasters, some due to accidents, like the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024 after being struck by a malfunctioning container ship, and some due to deferred maintenance, like the collapse of Pittsburgh’s Fern Hollow Bridge on an icy, cold morning in January 2022.

We have seen recently that when there is motivation, the missing links caused by bridge disasters can be repaired in record time. Pittsburgh’s Fern Hollow Bridge was completely rebuilt and opened to traffic 11 months after collapsing, instead of the usual multi-year process to design and build a new bridge. In Philadelphia, when an elevated section of I-95 collapsed after an accident in 2023, the repaired section reopened to traffic 12 days later, compared to 26 days for a similar situation in Oakland, CA. (PBS News, June 23, 2023)

Despite President Biden’s repeated request to Congress to expedite funds to replace Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, Republicans in Congress are possibly motivated to delay so that President-elect Trump will get the credit for rebuilding this crucial transportation link. (Fox News Baltimore, November 8, 2024; WCBM, November 8, 2024) Unfortunately, Trump does not have a good track record for funding bridges.

It can be easy to overlook during the buzz of election season that there is often a delay between when a law is signed or a policy adopted and when the effects of that law or policy are felt. Bridges encapsulate that well. The memorable moments are when a bridge closes or collapses (typically viewed negatively) and when a bridge reopens (typically viewed positively). The moment when funds are allocated, the moment enabling a bridge to reopen at a later date, is not often remembered.

For example, it was front page news when the new Greenfield Bridge reopened in 2017, when Trump was President, but the funding that constructed the bridge was allocated when Obama was President. Similarly, the Charles Anderson Bridge has been closed to traffic for most of President Biden’s term in office, to the annoyance of many, but that is also when the funds were found to rehabilitate the bridge expanding the life of this historic bridge by decades. However, the reopening is projected to be in 2026, in the middle of Trump’s second term as President.

Assuming two years as the average time from funding to reopening on bridge reconstruction and rehabilitation projects, I pulled the Federal Highway Administration’s numbers for bridge construction and rehabilitation in Pittsburgh that would have been funded under the leadership of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. (FHWA InfoBridge) Given the delay between funding and completion, it is too early to measure the impact of funding under President Joseph Biden’s leadership.

Bush: 36 bridges total = 4.5 bridges per year

Obama: 76 bridges total = 9.5 bridges per year

Trump: 9 bridges total = 2.25 bridges per year

Bridge maintenance and repair rarely happens without support from federal funding. When the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed under President Biden’s leadership runs out of funds, or those funds get diverted to Project 2025, I am skeptical that new funding for bridges will be found under the leadership of President-elect Trump. Therefore, I expect more bridge disasters or, at the very least, more indefinite bridge closures in the coming years.

Walkway Over the Hudson

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Carolyn Ristau

I don’t remember how I first heard about the Walkway Over the Hudson, but it was several years before I developed the habit of walking bridges. Even at that time it sounded like a cool place to check out. Once I became a bridge-walker, it became a must-experience site. Over a decade later, I finally walked the Walkway Over the Hudson.

The Walkway Over the Hudson crosses the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, NY. It opened in 1889 as a railroad bridge. It closed in 1974 after being damaged by fire and reopened as a renovated pedestrian bridge in 2009. It is both a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. At 1.28 miles it claims to be the longest pedestrian bridge in the world.

It is also 212 feet above ground or river level. In discussing my experience of climbing to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, I glossed over the fact that I almost didn’t reach the top due to my discomfort with heights and instead focused on the fact that claustrophobia almost prevented me from coming back down. Proportions and railing heights have a significant impact on whether I can manage heights. The Whispering Walk inside the base of the dome in St. Paul’s was too narrow and enclosed for me to handle the height above the floor (98 feet). The Walkway Over the Hudson, on the other hand, was quite wide having once carried two railroad tracks side-by-side. And so despite being more than twice as high up as the Whispering Walk, I did not experience much trouble with the height. I was more concerned about the possibility of the wind tearing my phone/camera out of my hand and over the edge.

Despite the potential damage that objects falling off the side of the bridge could cause, extra high barriers to prevent that are only located over the railroad tracks. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, some bridges have extra fencing only along portions of their walkways, typically over railroads and sometimes over automobile roads. The extra fencing on the Walkway Over the Hudson is from a time after it was common to curve the top, creating a cage-like feel, but before the need for extra height was incorporated into the design of the bridge itself.

There is no shade on a deck-truss bridge 212 feet off the ground. On a hot, July day, you feel the full force of the sun when taking such an exposed 1.28 mile walk starting at 11:30. If I hadn’t discovered that there was another bridge that I could walk across, I probably would have opted to take the shuttle back.