To Bathe, or Not to Bathe: The Marys of McKees Rocks, Part 2

November 13, 20221 Comment

statue of Mary in front of house, next to gas meter — Lovely Mary, meter maid. One of many “bathtub Marys” in greater McKees Rocks/Stowe Township

To bathe, or not to bathe. That is the question.

OK, maybe it’s not much of a quandary for The Orbit‘s corner on both obsessive-compulsive and dirty-minded readers, but let’s accept that many of us (ahem) changed our hygienic standards with the onset of the pandemic. Mary—mother of all mothers, blessed virgin, you know, that Mary—seems to have recalibrated her priorities as well. If the Marys of greater McKees Rocks/Stowe Township are any indication, Mary is already comfortable with her proximity to godliness and content with an almost exact day-on/day-off schedule.

statue of Mary on retaining wall with No Parking signs — No Parking/no bathing Mary

In this electronic publication’s early days—before really digging into the subject—we naively thought Bloomfield held the title as the Mary capitol of Pittsburgh. In addition, South Oakland, Stanton Heights, and Lawrenceville all have sizable Mary populations that have earned their own surveys.

That said, McKees Rocks and Stowe Township—the distinction between the two is completely arbitrary to any outsider—may well lay claim to the greatest house-for-house percentage of Marys in metro Pittsburgh. Little Presston, a Rocks neighborhood of just two streets, had enough Marys to fill a whole story. Greater Sto-Rox has so many Marys—just about 50/50 with and without bathtubs—that we’ll not kid ourselves into thinking we won’t have a third or fourth edition on the topic.

So we’ll leave you to it. Enjoy your Marys with the clean aroma of Mr. Bubble or not and please let us know if you’ve got a Mary of your own or Mary story we should hear.

statue of Mary in front of older house — Mary with sleek modern design bathtub

statue of Mary in front of house — Classic bathtub Mary I

statue of Mary in front of house with fake flowers — Fall foliage Mary

statue of Mary in front of house with pumpkins — Decorative gourd Mary

statue of Mary in front of house with Halloween decorations — Trick-or-Treat/got-the-munchies Mary

statue of St. Barbara in front yard of house — NOT Mary! St. Barbara, “patron saint of armorers, artillerymen, military engineers, miners, and others who work with explosives” (Wikipedia). [Thanks to Orbit reader Joan for identifying this one!]

brick structure used to house statue of Mary with statue removed — Empty Mary grotto

Color Me In Presston: The Marys of McKees Rocks, Part 1

November 18, 2018November 12, 20224 Comments

statuette of Mary with deer statue in front yard of row house, McKees Rocks, PA

Going stag: Mary and uni-antlered deer on a front lawn in the Presston neighborhood of McKees Rocks.

You’ll not accidentally find yourself in Presston. No, those making the trip to the tiny residential neighborhood at the northernmost end of McKees Rocks either live there, are visiting someone who does, or–in the case of your particularly wayward author–are just dying to find out what’s on the other side of all those big factory buildings along the riverfront.

statuette of Mary in front yard of row house, McKees Rocks, PA

Mary and friends

The journey to Presston–yes, that’s spelled correctly with two S’s–involves a circuitous route over the little bridge at Chartiers Creek, down River Avenue, past Lane Steel and Six Star Service, and through the McKees Rocks “bottoms” [not “flats” like everywhere else] with its rows of worker housing and glorious trio of onion-domed Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches*.

From there, one must locate the only point to breach the massive concrete base of the McKees Rocks Bridge on Helen Street, hang a left on George, and then straight down Nichol Ave. You’ll run parallel with train tracks on one side and see the kind of enormous industrial buildings that don’t really exist in the city proper (at least, not anymore) on the other. This giant footprint is currently home to McKees Rocks Fabrication and Penn Waste Systems, PVS Nolwood Chemicals and Cargill Salt.

Our Lady of Perpetual Gas Service: Meter Greeter Mary

Finally, tucked away at the end of this half-mile of corrugated steel, guard booths, and security fencing, is a pair of dead-end residential streets. Each is lined up and down with matching two-story wood frame double-houses. Behind you lie factory buildings and train tracks; ahead is brownfield and the Ohio River. You’ve ended up–the only way you possibly can–in Presston.

A historical plaque on the site informs us the neighborhood was built as worker housing by the Pressed Steel Car Company–which is presumably where it gets its name and double-S spelling. The uniform duplexes had been built by 1909 when there was a workers strike leading to the “‘Bloody Sunday Uprising’ where at least 11 people died.”

Pennsylvania state historical marker for Presston

Presston historical plaque

The marker goes on to state that the company sold the houses–we assume to private individuals–after Pressed Steel Car ceased operation in 1949. Like we saw at Aluminum City Terrace in New Kensington and Donora’s Cement City, things get a lot more interesting when the company lets go of control and people get do to do their own thing with the houses they own.

Ain’t that aMARYca: patriotic Mary and big baby Jesus

We don’t know what the houses looked like when they were sold off in 1949, but now, seventy years later, there’s been a predictable divergence in styles and updates, adaptations and repair. Aluminum siding has been added to all but a just a few of the wood houses, porches reconfigured into front rooms, a couple of the duplexes were merged into single, larger homes. There are a few empty spots where fire or neglect have claimed some of the old houses, but for the most part, almost every lot is full.

What really impressed this outsider is how Presston’s residents have gone nuts with yard decoration. The little space in front of each house may only be a hundred square feet or so–that’s just not enough real estate to warrant keeping up a grass lawn. In a neighborhood where everyone simply must know everyone else, it also seems unlikely either theft or vandalism is a problem.

Squirrel Mary

At least that’s The Orbit’s hypothesis for why, house-for-house, Presston has an off-the-charts quantity of front yard ornamentation: tiny angels and garden gnomes, holiday displays and concrete statuary, repurposed toys and patriotic signs. It’s an exaggeration, but it feels as if nearly every one of Presston’s hundred-and-fifty-or-so little houses had stepped up to make a front-facing effort to greet the neighbors and express itself to the world.

Mary, garden gnome, and autumn friend

… which brings us to Mary.

Yes, the quantity of holy mothers standing guard and blessed virgins decorating and protecting the front porches, steps, and sidewalks of Ohio and Orchard Streets is staggering. The über-pious residents of Bloomfield and South Oakland–not to mention McKees Rocks proper–likely put in extra hail Marys just to try to keep up with the blue-robed wave of tiny Presston.

We’re gonna paint the blessed mother pink! Little pink house for Mary and me.

Why, it kills a nebby blogger that between the ticking of the clock, a lack of connections, and the fear of getting a boot in the keister, he just couldn’t make it around to check out the alley-side view of these houses. Given the opportunity, we may have found just as many–or more–Marys holding court around back as they had pointing street-side.

Sigh. The thought of another dozen loose Marys–getting it done between the charcoal grill and patio set, next to the garden hose, or in the shadow of the tool shed–is almost too much to bear…almost.

statuette of Mary in gravel front yard of row house, McKees Rocks, PA

White stone Mary

Shy Mary

To the good citizens of Presston: we’re hooked. We know your collection of street-facing Marys is only one small detail in the rich story of a neighborhood that doesn’t just have a unique spot on the map, but promises a fascinating history–complete with strikes and conflict, economic upheaval and population change, pressed steel cars and, yes, a whole lotta Mary.

If you’ll have us, we’d love to know more about that history. Give us a holler. Until then, color The Orbit impressed with Presston.

statuette of Mary on front porch of row house, McKees Rocks, PA

Hiding in the corner Mary

Solar light Mary

* In fairness–depending on which direction you’re coming from–one may skip these first steps by taking the Helen Street exit off the McKees Rocks Bridge. That wasn’t how we got to Presston, and it’s still one-way-in/one-way-out no matter how you get to Nichol Avenue.

Good Friday Special: The Father, The Sunoco, The Holy Ghost

April 3, 2015Leave a comment

Crucifixion scene with Sunoco gas station in background

Jesus/Sunoco, Carnegie

Sometimes these things just fall into your lap. That is, if your lap happens to be hanging out around the Russian Orthodox church in Carnegie. Or maybe it’s more like discovering an Easter egg: we came looking up toward the roofline from the street, but found this little gem around the corner in the side yard.

Either way, there it was: the photo-blogger’s cheap, visual joke laid out on a platter like an Easter ham with all the fixins. Jesus crucified twice: once on the old-school cross, and then again bisected by the Sunoco station roof, just in time for Easter. We threw in a shot from Holy Ghost Byzantine just to, you know, complete the trifecta.

I wonder if the site planners for Sunoco even considered their neighbors when locating this mega-station on Mansfield Blvd. next to Holy Virgin Church. I’m a so-so photographer, but I always pay attention to what’s in the background of the shot. Maybe they considered all that and just wanted to make the gas station look better.

Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church, McKees Rocks, PA

Holy Ghost, McKees Rocks

Onion Dome Fever: Rocks Bottoms Orthodox

March 18, 2015February 8, 20162 Comments

St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, McKees Rocks

Growing up in the South, we had plenty of churches, but they tended to be Baptist, Methodist, and A.M.E. They worshipped in unremarkable generic brick buildings, scaled-down budget classics, old wooden country churches, and occasionally unfortunate modern takes that would make even the most pious consider a life of sin.

There were a handful of Catholics in every decent-sized town, but they weren’t the wine-swilling, cigar-chomping, fish-frying variety that exist in the North. One of my earliest new-to-Pittsburgh memories was going to a church carnival in my neighborhood where the fund-raising priest hosted a cash-on-the-table spinning wheel gambling game where the prizes were all bottom shelf liquor. That just doesn’t go on in Appalachian Virginia.

Around Pittsburgh, there are dozens of amazing Eastern Orthodox churches with an architecture that still strikes me as otherworldly. Byzantine crosses and elaborate stained glass. Gold-leafed tableaus and, above all (literally), glorious (usually) gold-painted onion domes that routinely mark the skylines of otherwise humble brick factory towns and glow on gray and rainy days.

Here’s a first post wherein we honor the amazing church architecture in Pittsburgh. The small neighborhood of “The Bottoms” in McKees Rocks boasts at least three different Eastern Orthodox churches, each with their own interesting features. Let’s start with St. Nicholas.