Architects: Vrydaugh & Wolfe
Contractor: F. Hoffman & Co.
Dedicated: 1916
Educational Building
Contractor: Calvin Crawford
Building Description
The Christian Church of Wilkinsburg was constructed in 1916 in the Colonial Revival style. The church is a masonry building standing three bays wide on a concrete foundation, clad in red brick, and capped with a gable roof. The church is accessed on Wallace Avenue via an elevated platform porch with brick knee wall balustrade topped with decorative stone bollards and light fixtures. The building still retains many of its original Colonial Revival trademarks, including an excellently preserved set of five-panel front entry doors topped with an exaggerated divided-light fanlight. A rose window with stone surround with keystone accents decorates the front-facing gable pediment. Other Colonial Revival elements include decorative brickwork, including a frieze band that wraps around the structure at the level of the fanlight and arched niche openings on the facade (north elevation) imitating arched fenestration, stone sills and keystones, and a tripartite painted wood entablature. Fenestration consists of one-over-one double-hung vinyl replacement windows and original divided light fixed pane. Ground-level fenestration has been replaced with glass block. A corbeled brick chimney pierces the roofline on the western slope.
History
The congregation was founded in 1901. The original building on Wood Street was burned to the ground on January 7, 1915. Construction for the current building began the following year. An addition with a gym and additional classroom space was added later in the 1950s. The church’s congregation was significant in assisting with local racial and poverty issues during the Civil Rights Era, providing an inter-racial place of worship.
– Justin GreenawaltThe Construction Record for September 11, 1915 carried the notice,
Architects Vrydaugh & Wolfe, Cameraphone building, have plans in progress and will take bids about September 21 on rebuilding a brick church on Wallace avenue near Wood street, Wilkinsburg, for the First Christian Church Congregation. Building includes auditorium and gallery, gymnasium, 2 social rooms, basement and Sunday school rooms. Cost $40,000.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for December 12, 1915, tells,
A contract has been awarded to F. Hoffman & Co. to erect a new edifice for the congregation of the First Christian Church of Wilkinsburg, in Wallace avenue, opposite the high school that is to cost, with organ, about $33,000. The former home of the congregation was in South avenue at Wood street, and was destroyed by fire last winter. The site was sold and the proceeds applied provision for a new building fund and a new location. The congregation has about 400 members, and the Rev. Walter Scott Cook is pastor.
The congregation selected Calvin Crawford to be the contractor and builder for the education wing added to the back of the building in 1951.
Vrydaugh & Wolfe
Martin U. Vrydaugh trained with his father who was a Belgian architect and had studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Vrydaugh apprenticed in Kansas City with Adrian Van Brunt. He met Charles Shephard and they partnered in Vrydaugh & Shepherd with a specialty in churches. A commission of Vrydaugh & Sheperd and T. B. Wolfe for the Calvary Methodist Church in Allegheny West brought Vrydaugh to Pittsburgh. Martin U. Vrydaugh and Thomas B. Wolfe formed Vrydaugh and Wolfe.
Thomas B. Wolfe trained as carpenter. He was born in Sewickley Heights on a farm. He worked for Vrydaugh and Sheperd before the partnership with Vrydaugh.
The Vrydaugh & Sheperd and Wolfe design for the gothic Calvary Methodist Church built in 1893–1895 is so very different from the Dilworth School designed by Vrydaugh and Wolfe in 1914. “Dilworth School was consciously elegant, stylistically unique in the city, and echoed European school designs of the 1910s. It also incorporated progressive educational features such as a well-lit kindergarten. . . . The school reveals progressive trends in school design to be found in Chicago and St. Louis, particularly in regard to detailing.” The design of the entranceway with the combinations of architectural elements remains fresh decades later.
The Christian Church is very different from the Calvary Methodist Church and the Dilworth School. The Christian Church has a symmetry that is part of its basic design, of its fundamental form. The designs of Vrydaugh & Wolfe are not a variation on one theme. Vrydaugh & Wolfe had the ability to respect and understand the people they were designing for, and their designs reflect this.
Calvin Crawford
A newspaper article has the headline “ ‘Gentleman Builder’ known for quality, philanthropy.” Calvin Crawford graduated from Washington and Jefferson College. His father owned a large brick contracting company and wanted him to go into a different field. He agreed to his son join the company.
During World War II Calvin Crawford served in the Navy as the captain of an LCT [landing craft tank] ship, and he was the group commander of six ships in the battle of Okinawa.
Calvin Crawford returned home, built one house, sold it, built another house, sold it, and started the Crawford Construction Company. The company built nearly 5000 homes over five decades. The homebuilder J. Roger Glunt gave this description, “Cal Crawford was a true gentleman. He was articulate, polite, always well-dressed. He was a gentleman builder.” Glunt said Crawford was tough competition, “ But you knew when it was a Crawford home that it was well-built and a good value.” Calvin Crawford served on the board of directors at Columbia Hospital in Wilkinsburg. He served as an elder at the Beulah Presbyterian Church and donated land to the church. Calvin Crawford lived to the age of 101.
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The Construction Record, vol. 45, no. 7, September 11, 1915, p. 4.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 12, 1915, p. 25.
Albert M. Tanner, “Mystery Deepens at Emsworth ‘Castle‘ ” Trib Live, February 15, 2021.
https://archive.triblive.com/news/mystery-deepens-at-emsworth-castle/
Albert Tanner, “20 Pittsburgh Public Schools Designated as City of Pittsburgh Historical Structures,”PHLF News, March 2001, Dilworth: p.4.
Bill Vidonic, “ ‘Gentleman Builder’ known for quality, philanthropy,” Trib Live, October 4, 2014. Quotations.
https://archive.triblive.com/news/obituaries/gentleman-builder-known-for-quality-philanthropy/
“Calvin D. Crawford,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette October 3–5, 2014.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/postgazette/obituary.aspx?n=calvin-d-crawford&pid=172671251&fhid=9906