Saint Peter and Paul Church on Larimer Ave in East Liberty (Pittsburgh: neighborhoods, school)

[Caladium]

Originally Posted by Tinare

Or to brew beer where the alter once was...

Then again, Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine. So I could see that being done respectfully. No getting drunk on the premises, though.

[Lobick]

Originally Posted by Caladium

Then again, Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine. So I could see that being done respectfully. No getting drunk on the premises, though.

Clearly, Tinare was referring to this:

Church Brew Works, Award-Winning Microbrewery and Restaurant

I assure you, many people get drunk on the premises of the former St. John the Baptist.

[Tinare]

Originally Posted by Lobick

Clearly, Tinare was referring to this:

Church Brew Works, Award-Winning Microbrewery and Restaurant

I assure you, many people get drunk on the premises of the former St. John the Baptist.

A former employer had their Christmas party there shortly after it opened and one of my co-worker's husbands was totally mortified. Being a smart ass generally, I basically told him that if that was what church was like, I'd never have stopped going.

But once a church is desanctified and the congregation moves on, it's really just a great old building at that point. It would bother me to lose that architecture because there were no other use for the building but as a church. I love all of the reuses people find for them.

[Goinback2011]

Philip Larkin - Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snicker briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

[PreservationPioneer]

This is the Saint Peter and Paul School off of Enright St.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by Tinare

But once a church is desanctified and the congregation moves on, it's really just a great old building at that point. It would bother me to lose that architecture because there were no other use for the building but as a church. I love all of the reuses people find for them.

Pittsburgh really has a lot of decommissioned church buildings, now serving as residences, groceries, apartments, night clubs, reception halls, child care centers and other usages.

I lived in such an apartment building on the South Side several years ago.

[I_Like_Spam]

If St. Peter and Paul was razed, perhaps it would be a good thing.

Frick razed 3 churches on Grant Street in the first decade of the 20th Century and built the Union Trust, William Penn and Frick Buldings, all fine additions to that neighborhood.

And the churches all found appropriate sites and built other fine buildings elsewhere.

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

If St. Peter and Paul was razed, perhaps it would be a good thing.

It's a beautiful building from Pittsburgh's glory days. If we can afford to build new buildings there, we can afford to restore the old ones.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by alleghenyangel

It's a beautiful building from Pittsburgh's glory days. If we can afford to build new buildings there, we can afford to restore the old ones.

That's certainly true enough, but if the St. Peter and Paul building can't meet the needs of the 21st Century and beyond, why keep it?

Why not build something new, like when Frick built the Union Trust ( a fine building, I think you can agree) on the lot of St. Paul's Cathedral?

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

That's certainly true enough, but if the St. Peter and Paul building can't meet the needs of the 21st Century and beyond, why keep it?

Why not build something new, like when Frick built the Union Trust ( a fine building, I think you can agree) on the lot of St. Paul's Cathedral?

If the economy was such that I felt new buildings of the same quality and beauty of the Union Trust were still being built, I would say that would be wonderful. However, in the throw-away culture of today, the most we could hope for would be a strip mall or quickbrick concrete bunker, or glass shoebox on the site. That's if it didn't remain a vacant lot for decades before government-subsidized development came through. I see the church as urban architecture, whereas whatever would be built there would probably have a parking lot and look like something that should have been built in Cranberry or Robinson.

Besides, when the Union Trust was built, there were no vacant lots in downtown Pittsburgh to build on. That's why they had to move or demolish existing buildings to build new. There are many vacant lots to build new buildings on in today's East Liberty. We don't need to sacrifice an existing historic building to do that.

I also think we need to start thinking out of the box when it comes to re-using old buildings. There's no reason why a church shouldn't be able to serve a variety of different uses.