[4][5] An active parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, it is known for offering a Sunday evening service of Jazz Vespers.

They do not have a rough surface, moldings, belt courses or other projections to break up the planes or produce shadow lines, though the bricks do project from the main wall surface just below the eave line in two steps of different dimension to give a pleasing string course effect.

Richardson having died a month after the building's dedication, the church hired his former employees, Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, to fix the problem.

However, when the firm added the parish house to the far side of the church, the wall's slope stopped increasing.

In 1867, Emmanuel Episcopal Church began as a mission fulfilling the need for a Sunday school for the children of English workmen.

H. H. Richardson was selected as the architect at the same time he was designing Pittsburgh's Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail in January 1884.

[4] Over the next 20 years, the neighborhood became much less fashionable, larger mansions were torn down, and new houses were built for the working class.

The simple design gives vitality via the delicate brick detailing and the laminated truss system.

[6] The entrance facade is on the north side with an unadorned high gable and subtly patterned brickwork.

The semicircular apse at the south end of the building is partially cut off from the nave by banks of organ pipes at either side.

A narrow rectangular open narthex at the north end with a small enclosed winder stair on the west wall leads to the balcony.

[6] The walls have marble reredos, made by Leake and Greene of Pittsburgh, with bands of mosaic in the chancel.