Places I Hadn't Been Before - St. Paul's Cathedral

After riling myself up with the last two blog posts, I decided to try to calm myself down. I have been going a bit stir crazy in my condo. I got mad at a rug the other day. True story. Since the weather turned out so nice today, I decided this would be a fantastic day to do a Pokemon walk and see what I could find! As I was walking down Fifth to find more Pokemon, I ended up right outside St. Paul's. I have lived in Pittsburgh since I started at Duquesne in 2004. I have never been in St. Paul's until today.

Outside St. Paul's today

Now, a huge part of it is that I am definitely not religious. The going to Duquesne could confuse some people, but that was about the location not the religion. I've seen a lot of churches while traveling. I may not be religious, but I can definitely appreciate the stained glass, architecture, and historical value of these places. When I am in NYC or Boston or somewhere else, I have no issues just wandering right up into the church and looking around. If I didn't wander like that, I never would have seen Alexander Hamilton's grave! For some strange reason, I feel weird about doing this in my hometown. No reason other than I don't feel like I should be a tourist here. I was there today at 11:55am, and they had a mass at noon, so I decided to go in.







It is so beautiful in there! I arrived right before their mass was starting, so I was able to see the church with some people in it. The stained glass work is amazing. I didn't stay long enough to figure out what each window was, but they are all amazing like this.

When Pittsburgh became a Catholic diocese seat in 1843, St. Paul's was named the cathedral. This version of the church existed at Fifth Avenue and Grant Avenue downtown. When people starting moving out of town, that land was sold to Henry Clay Frick. This version of St. Paul's was built in 1906. I'm sure someone more religious would be able to give a much better explanation of the history of the church and the Diocese in Pittsburgh.

St. Paul's also happens to be a Pokemon gym. I didn't see anyone playing inside - it would appear that trainers keep their activities to out front.

I'm glad that I finally went in there to see the stained glass and the architecture. If you haven't been in there yet, you should definitely check it out at least once!

 All four pictures taken 1/12/17 by myself!