Buying Here: Larimer
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Heavenly Vision Ministries and parsonage, formerly known as the Our Lady Help of Christians in the Larimer section of Pittsburgh, has a 6,000-square-foot rectory and a banquet hall in the lower level. It's on the market for $169,900. -
The ceiling and plaster walls have peeling paint at the former Our Lady of Help Christians church in Larimer. -
The cupola is missing stained-glass windows.
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Our Lady Help of Christians in Larimer was barely 5 years old when fire ripped through it in 1905, destroying the church at the corner of Meadow and Turrett streets. The Italian immigrants who had guided its construction in 1898, though, were a resolute bunch.
Within a year they'd rebuilt the Baroque-style structure, and until it closed in 1992, Help of Christians served as a center of Italian-American religious and social life, hosting not just Catholic Masses but everything from the annual celebration in honor of St. Agnello Abate to an array of sporting activities for neighborhood kids.
Like many churches in the city, however, its parish aged and dwindled and was merged in the 1990s with five others to form St. Charles Lwanga parish in Lincoln-Lemington. In 1995, the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese sold the church, which has a banquet hall in the lower level, and adjacent rectory to Heavenly Vision Ministries.
Three years ago, Heavenly Vision put 6513 Meadow St. back on the market, at first quietly through word of mouth, and then last year officially for $169,000 through Coldwell Banker Real Estate's Fox Chapel office (www.pittsburghmoves.com; MLS No. 838378; 412-963-7655).
At a glance
- Website: www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/district9/
- Size: .445 square miles
- Population: 2,602 (2000 census)
- School district: Pittsburgh Public, pghboe.net
- Enrollment: About 28,000
- Average 2010 SAT scores: (Peabody High School) 379 verbal; 410 math; 380 writing
- Taxes for a property assessed at $100,000 *: $2,870; City: $1,080 (10.8 mills); School district: $1,392 (13.92 mills); County: $398 (4.69 mills)
- Wage tax: 3 percent (1 percent to the city, 2 percent to the school district)
- Bet you didn't know: Originally settled by Germans in the mid-1800s, Larimer was Pittsburgh's "Little Italy" until the 1960s. It is named for railroad magnate and radical abolitionist General William Larimer, who built a manor home overlooking East Liberty along a path that would eventually become known as Larimer Avenue.
First Published November 20, 2010 12:00 am
