PASTOR DALE B. SNYDER OF BETHEL AME CHURCH. (PHOTOS BY J.L. MARTELLO)
Bethel AME Church Pastor Dale B. Snyder has nothing but love for Epiphany Roman Catholic Church, which has a majority-White congregation, on the corner of Centre Avenue and Washington Place in the Lower Hill District.
“But we wish we would have gotten the same exemption as Epiphany Church got,” the reverend proclaimed.
Epiphany Church, built in 1902, is still standing. “Big Bethel,” as Bethel AME Church was known, was built in 1906 at Wylie Avenue and Elm Street, also in the Lower Hill. But, as Rev. Snyder said during a Friday, Nov. 18 news conference, “they took our church by eminent domain. They condemned it.”
Sure, other churches were torn down by the City of Pittsburgh and its Urban Redevelopment Authority as part of the city’s plan to redevelop the Lower Hill in the 1950s. But Bethel AME Church had a membership of over 3,000.
“We were doing everything good for our community,” Rev. Snyder said. “We were the voice of the community, we had everything…boy scouts, girl scouts, lodges, fraternities, sororities, Negro League Baseball team, we opened up the first school to teach Blacks how to read (in Pittsburgh)…”
These days, a significantly smaller Bethel AME Church sits at the corner of Webster Avenue and Morgan Street in the Middle Hill.
At that location, the “New Bethel,” was where Rev. Snyder spoke for his press conference, demanding that the Pittsburgh Penguins give back a piece of land in the Lower Hill, called Parcel F, that the church said is rightfully theirs.
The Penguins ultimately secured the rights to the land of which the old Civic/Mellon Arena sat. There’s now an agreement to redevelop the land into the new headquarters for First National Bank (a 24-story structure currently being built), along with an indoor music venue. The arena, now called PPG Paints Arena, where the Penguins play, sits across the street.
Parcel F includes the land where Bethel AME’s famed church once sat from 1906 to 1957. Reverend Snyder said the church wants to build affordable housing on the site, but Kevin Acklin, president of business operations for the Penguins, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the land in question is under an existing road and/or slated to be open space.
“This is our lot,” Rev. Snyder said. “It’s not under a freeway, it’s not under a highway. We want our historical land back.”
It’s unclear if there will be a “mediation-style” meeting between the Penguins and Bethel AME Church, with possibly Mayor Ed Gainey as the referee.
But what Rev. Snyder made clear at the news conference was that prior to the former church’s demolition, it was appraised at about $745,000. The URA, however, only gave the congregation $233,000 for the land, a difference of more than a half-million dollars.
“We were purposely discriminated against. We were targeted,” Rev. Snyder said about Bethel being demolished. It built the new church in 1959.
People under the age of 65 would have no recollection of “Big Bethel.” But there are plenty of people over 65 who remember the church’s sky-high frame, a structure that Mother Nature dare not mess with, a towering structure that could only be demolished by the city’s excavators.
Reverend Snyder discussed the historic church of yesteryear, noting its true significance. “If Black people can build a structure like this, there was nothing that was impossible for our people,” he said at the press conference.
He added: “We’re asking the Penguins to do what they said they were gonna do…correct an egregious wrong.”
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