Like most American Rust Belt towns settled by European immigrant laborers, Pittsburgh in the early 20th century was a deeply religious place, where ornate Romanesque and Gothic chapels, churches and cathedrals rose in nearly every corner of the city. But partly as a result of the steel industry’s collapse, Pittsburgh’s population (now just over 300,000) has been in decline for decades, and congregations have been abandoning their grand old churches in search of smaller, more affordable spaces. Along the way, some of the Steel City’s savviest entrepreneurs have been purchasing many of Pittsburgh’s disused churches and adapting them into clubs, restaurants, theaters and concert venues.

The latest edition is the Braddock Community Cafe, which in late 2012 was installed on the ground floor of the former First Presbyterian Church of Braddock, a squat stone structure now known as the Nyia Page Community Center. In the city’s suburban South Hills, the Overbrook Presbyterian Church was transformed less than a decade ago into the Church Recording Studio (thechurchrecordingstudio.com), a music production facility.

A look at Pittsburgh’s many reused churches, in fact, remains a unique way of exploring the city. A chapel tour of the area, for instance, could include a singalong session at Charlie Murdoch’s Dueling Piano Bar (inside a century-old Presbyterian church built for Ukrainian immigrants), a pottery class at the Union Project (a community education center in the former Union Baptist Church) or even a visit to the Sphinx Cafe, a hookah bar in a rundown former church of unknown provenance in the city’s university district.

Even those tourists who fall in love with Pittsburgh and decide to stay (it happens!) are well served by the city’s adaptively reused churches. In the South Side Slopes neighborhood, the former St. Michael the Archangel church is now known as Angel’s Arms Condominiums, where lofts and condos start at about $300,000.