Over the course of the semester, I have been researching the architect Ralph Adam Cram, the Mellon family, their coming together to create East Liberty Presbyterian church and its effect on the Pittsburgh neighborhood of East Liberty.
The initial goal of this project was to prove that Cram considered this church his proudest work because it aligned with his ideological views of what a utopian society should look like. It very quickly became clear that this would be difficult to prove; there was little specifically about Cram in our university archives, and the deliverable library portion of my work was to create a LibGuide that organized and streamlined the materials that we did possess. With this in mind, I started to look at newspaper clippings, and social work reports from East Liberty to see how the neighborhood changed over the century in which the church was built: how life looked before the church versus after.
While I hope to still be able to explore more correspondences between the architect and the Mellon family, it has been interesting to see the efforts that the church has made and continues to make to be a trailblazer in the community. It seems to have always been intentionally inclusive of marginalized communities, and conscious of addressing the needs of the neighborhood as they changed and developed and in this, stayed true to Crams’ ideals.
As I complete the conference paper, that is my other deliverable, I hope to continue looking at the Mellon family and more primary sources from Cram. Looking at the Mellons, at the inconsistencies between how they presented themselves, how the community saw them, and the outcomes of the architectural projects they sponsored seems like another step towards understanding all the players that were a part of the church’s construction. This in turn will solidify our knowledge and understanding of the importance and intention of this monumental building as it stands in a historically turbulent and fascinating Pittsburgh neighborhood.
