St. Bernard’s RC Church
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was craving a pint of Guinness, which isn’t as commonly found on tap in Pittsburgh’s bars as it is in NYC. That instituted a short walk from HQ in the Dormont section to an Irish joint in the neighboring town of Mt. Lebanon. One has been passing the Roman Catholic Church pictured above, dubbed St. Bernard’s, and curiosity about the grand structure of the place has been growing.
To start, St. Bernard was known in life as Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153AD), and amongst other accomplishments he was a co founder of the Knights Templar. He was a Benedictine in Norman France, and was involved in the war of succession between Pope Innocent II and the Antipope Anacletus II. Bernard was the hype man for the Second Crusade, as well. You can read all about him here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
St. Bernard’s, in modernity, is home to the St. Michael the Archangel Parish outfit. As I understand it, the local Catholic Diocese was founded in 1843, although the Frenchers had brought Catholic priests along with them during the French and Indian war in 1754, so that predates the modern setup.
The number of congregants served by the Diocese declined in the late 20th century, part of the demographic collapse experienced by Pittsburgh when the steel industry began abandoning the place. The Bishops found themselves maintaining hundreds of empty churches and other buildings, which led them into financial hard times. The Diocese reacted by combining and compressing its congregations and parish structures together, and they sold off many of the churches and other real estate holdings which it had acquired in the first half of the 20th century. You can read all about that, right here. Currently, there’s 61 parishes under their administration.
I’ve observed several old churches with ‘For Sale’ signs out front, and many of these facilities have been taken over by other flavors of god worshippers – Evangelicals, Charismatics, etc. – whereas others have passed into secular usage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The St. Bernard’s church is actually a complex of several buildings, with a school and offices. After quaffing a couple of pints of the Guinness draft I was craving, a homeward bound humble narrator noticed that the doors of St. Bernard’s were open, and thereby I decided to peek inside the chapel building…
Hey, I’m not the first guy to drink a couple of Guinness Pints and then stop off at a church on his way home to the missus, Y’know…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Built between 1933 and 1947, the Gothic Revival style St. Bernard’s RC Chuch was designed by architect William Richard Perry, of the firm Comes, Perry and McMullen. Jan Henryk de Rosen provided the murals, and the stained glass is by Alfred Fisher and A. Leo Pitassi.
It was completely and utterly unoccupied except for myself, so I whipped a little tabletop tripod I always carry with me and got busy. Magnificent sacred space, this one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things I’ve learned about Pittsburgh is that its religious buildings are built like battleships. If the enemy is invading, or the storm winds are blowing, the point of retreat seems to be – by design – the local church. Within, there’s splendor.
I don’t know why this church isn’t called a cathedral. It’s easily the size of Old St. Patrick’s in Manhattan. What qualifies something as a Cathedral, versus a church?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pretty magnificent, huh?
Research on this post revealed that the Bishop at the top of the Diocese organization here in Pittsburgh allows the old Tridentine Latin mass to be conducted at St. Bernard’s, much to the chagrin of the current Papal orthodoxy in Rome. There’s a schism forming over this practice in the Catholic universe, I’ve read, and that the current Pope is at odds with several extremely conservative and “old guard” members of the American Synod, including those here in Pittsburgh.
Back tomorrow with something different.
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Very trusting
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I actually couldn’t believe what I was looking at, and knew that none of my friends from NYC would accept the story, so I took a picture of it. Some guy on my block left his car running, and driver’s side door hanging open, and then went inside his house for some reason. I stood there watching the car idle for a good five minutes, tamping down my innate desire to steal it, just to teach him a lesson. Brooklyn.
People in one of the Facebook groups for my Town/Borough here in Pittsburgh (Dormont) have been complaining of late about people breaking into their cars in the dead of night. The ‘break in’ they describe incorporates no broken windows or jimmied locks, instead their car doors are simply left unlocked. It’s inconvenient to lock them, they say…
The fuck? The stupidest thing in the world is an unlocked door. They apparently do this with their houses too. As in go to sleep at night with the doors open. Brooklyn? Wowza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Compared to the real life ‘Batman movie’ which I grew up and spent most of my adult life in back in NYC, Pittsburgh is comparatively ‘safe.’ The City of Pittsburgh is more or less entirely contained within Allegheny County, but the county also encompasses several other satellite communities as well. As of 2022, there were about 1.2 million residents who live in about 546,000 households here in Allegheny County. Also in 2022, there were 129 Homicides, as so reported by the cops. The vast majority of those homicides were ‘kid stuff,’ with gangland and drug trade motivations. That’s a murder rate of 0.01075%, statistically speaking.
“People walk around like they’re safe or something.” That’s something we used to say a lot back in the 1980’s. NYC has a 2022 population of about 8.5 million, and there were 433 murders during that interval, which creates a rate of 0.00509411765%. Thereby, believe it or not, Pittsburgh has a higher murder rate than New York. Saying that, the unlocked door thing contributes to a staggeringly high level of burglary and home invasion which no New Yorker would tolerate. Saying all that, statistics don’t really tell the whole story, and I wonder what those numbers would say if we were to superimpose Pittsburgh’s footprint over part of the NY/NJ metro area (say, I dunno, Western Queens), an area whose population represented just 1.2 million citizens, and then do a 1 for 1 comparison.
As I’ll often point out – Y’know who has most of the world’s lightbulbs, or toilet seat covers, or pencils… China, followed by India. Know why? Lots and lots of Chinese and Indian people who live in cities. Want to light up a Republican’s cloister? Tell them that China has more or something than America does.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I’ve mentioned a few times, I find the criminals and street people of Pittsburgh absolutely adorable. They’re so obvious. Saying that, there’s rough customers here whom you definitively don’t want to deal with, and this part of the country is extremely well armed. I recently saw a news report about the Cops holding a fair to make it easier to get a concealed carry permit for the pistoleer crowd. The Cops!
Me? I carry a camera, not a gun, at least not yet. I lock my car doors, and the last thing I’ll do before going to bed is to methodically visit all the doors and windows in the house to ensure that they are securely locked up. I don’t leave my car door open with the engine running, and whereas I hate the phrase ‘keep your head on a swivel,’ that’s the way I learned to live my life back in NYC.
Back tomorrow with something else, at this – your Paranoid Pentacle.
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Goodly Hue
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Riding on a double decker tourist bus in Pittsburgh, and which turned off the highway, and into the crowded and very urban area of Oakland. This is where the big universities are found – Carnegie Mellon and UPITT, and a bunch of smaller learning institutions and religious centers like Rodef Shalom Synagogue. This area looks a great deal more like a ‘city’ than most of Pittsburgh does. Dense, heavy traffic, lots of pedestrians and bike riders, street level retail – that sort of thing.
As mentioned earlier in the week, I was ‘shooting fast,’ meaning that I was using the sort of ISO sensitivity I’d normally use at night, with shutter speeds of 1/5000th to 1/8000th of a second to freeze the exposure and compensate for being onboard a moving vehicle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The bus rode past the Frick (oops) Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park, and negotiated a roundabout to ultimately head back towards its home base at the South Side Works development, on the other side of the Monongahela River. To be honest, I was glad that the trip was ending after spending about two hours baking in sunlight.
The bus routed back through Oakland, where I spotted a few things that I’d like to further explore when I come back on foot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of them is the Soldiers and Sailors monument, which is just down the block from the Hospital in which Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for Polio. Man, imagine that happening today. You’d have Republican Senators lining up to blame Polio on immigrants, or to intone that the viral disease was a sign of moral turpitude and societal decay. On the other hand, you’d have Democrat Senators decrying the need for a cure as it is perfectly ok to have Polio and it doesn’t make you a bad person.
One of my favorite dark aphorisms, which I often throw out to make people uncomfortable, follows :
That which does not kill you only makes you stronger… excepting Polio.
Back next week with something different – at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
On we sweep
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, older office and commercial buildings in Pittsburgh which were built before Willis Carrier invented what modernity calls ‘air conditioning’ (at a lithograph company at Newtown Creek back in Brooklyn, I would mention) sport an abundance of windows. Pittsburgh has a famously humid climate, sited as it is at the delta formed by the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (whose combined waters then become the Ohio River), and back in the old days your only comfort during the ‘hot’ could be found in cross ventilation.
This section of Downtown seems to be where the courts and governmental offices are found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The funny thing about this particular tourist bus ride is that over the last 8 or 9 months, I’ve walked many of the individual legs of this route while exploring. Instinct is as important to me as the camera, and I’ll often say to myself “that’s important” when encountering a thing or a place and crack out a shot without really knowing what I’m looking at. Later on, I’ll find out that a building was owned by a supervillain like Henry Clay Frick, as in the shot above.
The tour bus continued on…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The double decker bus got onto one of the highways found on the south side of Pittsburgh’s ‘golden triangle,’ and we were soon passing by the Birmingham Bridge which spans the Monongahela River. Another pathway I’ve scuttled down is found directly below this spot, the Eliza Furnace Trail, which has become one of my favorites for a longish walk.
Back tomorrow with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
What the Ravens may see
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Riding on a tourist double decker bus was actually kind of fun. One has been appreciating the esthetics of Pittsburgh while driving about, but for obvious reasons – largely not recording them. The bus allowed me to roll about freely, and enjoy the visual advantages of being about 15-20 feet above the street. I was shooting fast, as the bus was moving with traffic at anywhere between 25 and 45mph. It’s nice when someone else is driving, and I get to just ‘do my thing.’
We were heading from the Strip District towards Downtown Pittsburgh. Downtown has a decent collection of tower office and commercial buildings, which are of several different vintages. Older buildings in Pittsburgh have lots and lots of windows, having been built prior to the introduction of air conditioning in a famously humid climate. Post AC buildings in Pittsburgh are sealed up in glassine envelopes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For this part of the ride, I decided that I wanted to abstract things a bit and started looking up a whole lot. The streets in the downtown area are fairly well populated, and we passed a couple of small concerts in public parks as well as mobs of people heading north who were all dressed the same. I suspect that this ritual garb clad crowd were heading to some local sports ball stadium, for one of the weekly tourneys offered by the athleticists.
Me? I was dressed in the normal manner, and also wearing my $12 Costco fishing hat to shield away the radiates of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself from the noggin. I had a bottle of water with me, but it was a summer’s day and a humble narrator was baking in the heat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Philip Johnson’s PPG center, HQ of Pittsburgh Plate Glass – pictured above – the mirror box one with the castellated looking peaks on it. There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about this section of Pittsburgh in the interval since I’ve relocated here, an area referred to as the Business District by some, the Cultural District by others. The local powers that be are concerned about the effect that a fairly noisome homeless shelter has had on their bottom lines, and thereby have been pushing the government types to excise the haggard population that’s served by the shelter, which they perceive as having impacted their businesses. Fascinating, the way that the bosses think.
These powers that be, of course, are corporate landlords who believe that the reason their office buildings are emptying out is because of the homeless situation, rather than that there are better/cheaper options for your business to locate itself in the surrounding counties, which aren’t in a crowded downtown metro area, or that they’re maybe charging too much per square foot for the space. Also, corporate taxes are quite a bit lower in the surrounding counties than they are in Pittsburgh, but it’s definitely the homeless who are the problem.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 