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The current Smithfield United Church of Christ complex was built in 1927 for a congregation of more than 1,000 members. Like so many churches, we have been experiencing a decline and no longer require such a large space for our current worshipping community. 

 

The church building is a downtown Pittsburgh landmark, designed by Henry Hornbostel, a nationally significant architect. The increasingly urgent maintenance and functional needs of the church complex has prompted the Smithfield UCC congregation to explore new strategies for stewardship of this important built resource. Smithfield UCC currently has neither the financial nor human resources needed to preserve the building and make necessary internal updates, including accessibility items.  

 

Therefore, we created Envision Smithfield- which is a committee of church leaders and industry visionaries to imagine a vision for the future use of our beloved building. We are actively recruiting downtown stakeholders to join in a planning process to determine a viable strategy for the future of this property. We envision that the planning process will be facilitated by an independent church reuse committee composed of public, nonprofit, and private sector downtown stakeholders. We hope that the Envision Smithfield planning process will identify the feasibility of preserving the church building and, additionally, the relationship of the re-purposed church building to the proposed redevelopment of the adjacent Smithfield Building, which stands on land owned by the church under the provisions of a ground lease.  

 

It is Smithfield UCC's strong preference that any new use of the church building and some portion of the Smithfield Building will be community-serving. When the planning process is complete, the autonomous Smithfield reuse committee will have primary responsibility for taking the steps needed to implement a viable mixed-use reuse strategy. To learn more about this exciting, transformative work, please contact us at smithfield@verizon.net