CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Frederick C. Sauer

American architect

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 12, 2025
Entity authorityQ5497476
Source-derived summary

Frederick C. Sauer (1860, Heidelberg, Grand Duchy of Baden – 1942 Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, United States) was a German-American architect, particularly in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, region of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Sauer, a German-born immigrant to the United States, was a stonemason, bricklayer and carpenter while studying at Technical school in Wittenberg, before studying at Stuttgart. He moved to Pittsburgh from Germany in 1880, established a Pittsburgh office in 1884, established the Aspinwall-Delafield Land Company in 1904, and built about a dozen Catholic churches in the area. Perhaps his most notable works are St. Stanislaus Kostka Church (1891) in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, St. Mary of the Mount Church (1896) on Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, Saint Mary Magdalene Church in Homestead (1895), Latimer School (1898) in East Allegheny on the North Side of Pittsburgh, the old St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church (1900) in Troy Hill, and the St. Nicholas Croatian Church in Millvale (1922). In 1898, Sauer built a home for himself in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania. After remodeling his chicken coop in an eccentric mode in 1928 and 1930, he gradually transformed a wooded hillside into an architectural fantasy, and a complex of castlesque buildings and landscape features in Fantastic architectural style gradually took shape and was progressively added to by Sauer until his death in 1942.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Frederick C. Sauer” as american architect. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1860, 1942, 1880, 1884—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1860-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Frederick, Sauer and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american architect. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5497476. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1860, 1942, 1880 and 1884.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Frederick C. Sauer”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Frederick C. Sauer primary sources, Frederick C. Sauer archive and Frederick research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Frederick C. Sauer”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Frederick C. Sauer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.