Calvary Episcopal Church in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh is a pretty impressive piece of architecture. I was there for a Chatham Baroque concert last Saturday evening. Rood screens, which separate a church’s altar from its nave, were jettisoned during the English Reformation, but they reappear in a lot of 20th century churches as a fanciful pretension. It’s a beautiful space, but don’t snoop around too much. There are pews roped off in places where the arches overhead are crumbling and dropping cement dust. It must cost hundreds of thousands each year to maintain these religious monuments. I wonder how much longer communities of faith will be able to remain in grand spaces like this.
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