http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/travel/former-churches-blessed-with-new-lives-in-pittsburgh.html 2014-10-21 21:13:30 Former Churches Blessed With New Lives in Pittsburgh In places where the faithful once gathered you can now see a concert, take a class and sip a microbrew. === Like most American Rust Belt towns settled by European immigrant laborers, Pittsburgh in the early 20th century was a deeply religious place, where ornate Romanesque and Gothic chapels, churches and cathedrals rose in nearly every corner of the city. But partly as a result of the steel industry’s collapse, Pittsburgh’s population (now just over 300,000) has been in decline for decades, and congregations have been abandoning their grand old churches in search of smaller, more affordable spaces. Along the way, some of the Steel City’s savviest entrepreneurs have been purchasing many of Pittsburgh’s disused churches and adapting them into clubs, restaurants, theaters and concert venues. The latest edition is the A look at Pittsburgh’s many reused churches, in fact, remains a unique way of exploring the city. A chapel tour of the area, for instance, could include a singalong session at Charlie Murdoch’s Dueling Piano Bar (inside a century-old Presbyterian church built for Ukrainian immigrants), a pottery class at the Union Project (a community education center in the former Union Baptist Church) or even a visit to the Sphinx Cafe, a hookah bar in a rundown former church of unknown provenance in the city’s university district. Even those tourists who fall in love with Pittsburgh and decide to stay (it happens!) are well served by the city’s adaptively reused churches. In the South Side Slopes neighborhood, the former St. Michael the Archangel church is now known as Angel’s Arms Condominiums, where lofts and condos start at about $300,000. Hotels, too, have gotten in on the act. Among former churches that have become entertainment spaces is a labyrinthine concert hall known as For many business owners and developers, it makes economic sense to creatively adapt these old churches, especially in densely populated areas where demolition and reconstruction could prove difficult, said Arthur Ziegler Jr., the president of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. That’s the case at In Pittsburgh’s tourist-friendly Strip District, a neighborhood filled with ethnic grocery stores and nightclubs, the