St. Mary's is the newest and smallest of the churches in Downtown Pittsburgh.  The church stands out by contrast with its neighbors, in its size and its red brick exterior, with Gothic details in stone.  St. Mary's has been built out at the sidewalk line, with its entrance located under a simple square tower at its corner.  The principal aisle inside the church follows the diagonal axis of the entry toward the altar.  The interior is relatively plain and auditorium-like: a modern church interior built before the Second Vatican Council. 

The First Presbyterian Church stands on land that was donated to the church in 1787 by the Penn family for religious purposes.  Its first brick church building was built in 1802; this structure was redesigned and expanded by the noted architect Benjamin Latrobe.  In 1851-53, a second church building (designed by Pittsburgh architect Charles Bartberger) was built, facing onto Wood Street.  The second building was demolished and replaced when the congregation sold the Wood Street frontage for the construction of the McCreery Department Store Building (300 Sixth Avenue, 1904, by Daniel Burnham).  The present church structure was designed by a Philadelphia architect who ended up designing three Presbyterian churches in Pittsburgh. 

The exterior design is in the English Gothic style, and its twin-towered facade is reminiscent of Gothic cathedral design.  The interior was laid out as a single large rectangular space, with the pulpit at one end and galleries raised along the sides.  In this way, the architecture emphasizes the preaching function of the service.  There are no full-height piers in the space because the roof is carried on two massive arched wooden trusses that span the length of the church, above the fronts of the galleries.  These structurally-daring trusses are encased in elaborately carved woodwork.  The ceiling between the arches is borne on hammer truss beams.  The curved paneled wall behind the stone pulpit opens to reveal a rear wing that is lined with three levels of Sunday-school classrooms.  The rough stone walls on the interior are opened up by significant stained-glass windows.  All of the nave windows, except one, were designed and produced by the Tiffany Studios in New York.  The large "east" window, in the Sunday-school wing, is the work of Clayton & Bell, of London, and depicts a "Jesse Tree", or genealogy of Christ.  The "west" window, in the facade of the church, was designed and built by William Willett of Boston.

The present church is the third building for Trinity Cathedral, which occupies another of the church lots donated by the Penn family in 1787.  It is located on a terrace, which is the remains of a low hill that was used as a graveyard by Native Americans, French, British, and American settlers; a portion of that graveyard still survives between Trinity and the First Presbyterian Church.  The first building - the octagonal "Round Church" - was not built at this location, but at the Sixth and Liberty Avenues, in 1805.  The growth of the congregation led to the construction of a second church, under the leadership of rector John Henry Hopkins, in 1824.  This was possibly the first Gothic Style building in Pittsburgh, complete with buttresses, a tower, pointed arches, and a painted fan vault ceiling, but it was not archaeologically-accurate and had no clerestory.  Hopkins' church was razed in 1869 to allow the construction of the present structure, which was dedicated in 1872.  The architect, Gordon Lloyd, was born and trained in England, and was greatly influenced by the English Gothic architects Pugin and Scott.  The parish house at the rear, on Oliver Avenue, was designed in 1907 by Crocker & Carpenter.  Trinity Church became Trinity Cathedral, seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, in 1928.

The exterior was designed in the Early Decorated English Gothic Style that was favored by mid-Victorian Episcopalians, with a single central steeple and side transepts.  The interior features a tall nave flanked by aisles and lit by clerestory windows; the plaster nave walls are supported by clustered stone columns.  The austere interior ornamentation, in which the pointed arch predominates, is reminiscent of the work of the American Gothicist Richard Upjohn.  Some of the stained glass windows in the nave were destroyed in a fire in 1967, and were replaced by new ones in a medieval style.  The rest of the windows date from 1872.  The carved stone pulpit was built in 1922 to the design of the renowned American architect Bertram G. Goodhue.

This congregation is the descendant of the original German Reformed Protestant church that received a land grant from the Penn family in 1787.  The first church building was constructed in 1792, and was replaced successively by new buildings in 1815, 1833, and 1875-77.  The Reformed congregation merged with a German Lutheran congregation to form the German Evangelical Protestant Church in 1812.  This church united with the Smithfield Congregational Church in 1925.  The present church building was built after the congregation sold or leased its land on Sixth Avenue, and the former church on the corner was demolished to make way for a commercial building.  The Smithfield Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) and the Smithfield Methodist Church joined in 1968 to create the Smithfield United Church.   

This Gothic-style building was an unusual design by one of Pittsburgh's premiere Classical architects.  Its constricted site and a program that included, besides the main sanctuary, a chapel, Sunday school classrooms, a social hall, a shelter, and a gymnasium, led to the design of a tall, blocky structure.  The mass of the building culminates in a square tower that is capped by an openwork aluminum spire, an early architectural use of aluminum.  The Gothic ornament on the exterior is a surface treatment, limited to the exterior stone panels attached to the steel structural frame.  The tall, relatively narrow sanctuary at the top of the building is focused on the eighteen-foot-diameter rose window, which was relocated from the 1875 church.  The side walls are lined with tall stained-glass windows that depict both the life and teachings of Christ, and the history of this congregation and of the city of Pittsburgh.  The interior ornament, like the exterior, is surface ornament dominated by Gothic arches, with plaster fan and groin vaults in the ceiling.

E) First Lutheran Church 1887-88        Architect: Andrew Peebles

Begun while the Allegheny County Courthouse was being completed, the Romanesque style First Lutheran Church reflects the design of the Courthouse with its rusticated stonework and vermillion-tinted mortar.  It is the successor of the first church built by this congregation in 1840 at Seventh Avenue and Montour Way.  Plans were drawn up in 1874 for a church building at Penn Avenue and Ninth Street, but were later abandoned when the lot on Grant Street was purchased.  The exterior of the present building is dominated by tall gabled roofs and a spire that rises 170 feet.

The plan of the church is in the form of a Greek cross, which gives it a centralized character.  The white plaster walls are broken with three tall windows; the window in the north transept ("The Good Shepherd") was designed by Frederick Wilson and fabricated by the Tiffany Studios in 1898.  The altar, which was installed after 1892, was designed in the Italian Renaissance style, with mosaics.

F) Church of the Epiphany (Roman Catholic) 1902 Architect: Edward Stotz

The Church of the Epiphany is one of the few reminders that the Lower Hill section of Pittsburgh was once a thriving residential neighborhood on the edge of the Golden Triangle.  It was designed in the form of an Italian Romanesque basilica, and built of redbrick with terra cotta trim.  The interior decoration, which includes frescoes, was designed by John Comes, a principal designer of Catholic churches in the Pittsburgh area at the time.  Epiphany Church served as the temporary Roman Catholic cathedral from 1903 to 1906, when the new St. Paul's Cathedral was opened in Oakland.  The church is the center of a complex of four buildings, including a parish house (1902), a school (1910), and the St. Regis Residence (1914).