The Carnegie Lecture Hall is designed to put a large number of people close enough to hear a single lecturer. It was filled to capacity today with people who came to hear poetry, which makes the literate think good thoughts about Pittsburgh. The International Poetry Forum is back after fifteen years of silence, and the first poet to speak was its founder, Samuel Hazo, who at 96 years old seems to be aging backwards.
The interior of the hall as it was filling up.
One of the chief attractions of the main Carnegie Library is the Reference Department, a huge room with a vaulted ceiling where you can walk in and ask a librarian for help on any topic, and then have librarians scurrying back into the stacks looking for obscure volumes to aid you in your research. Think of it this way: at no cost to you, simply by walking into this room, you can have the experience of being a supervillain with an army of minions.
The coffered ceiling was originally full of skylights—a maintenance headache rendered less necessary by bright modern lighting.
Mural decorations—lost for years behind paint, found accidentally in 1995, and carefully restored—pay tribute to famous printers of the Renaissance. A report by Marilyn Holt (PDF) describes the murals in detail. Above, the mark of Aldus Manutius, perhaps the greatest of them all.
Reginaldus Chalderius (or Regnault Chaudière, as he would have been called at home), French printer at the sign of L’homme sauvage.
Balthasar Moretus, Antwerp printer of the middle 1600s.
Thielman Kerver, Parisian printer at the sign of the Unicorn.
Noli altum sapere—“Do not be proud”—say the Estiennes, Parisian printers.
Jean de la Caille reminds us that prudence beats force—Vincit prudentia vires.
Simon Vostre, early French printer.
Many of the details in the decorations are picked out in gold leaf.
Just walking upstairs in the main Carnegie Library is an aesthetic adventure.
The second-floor corridor. At the ends of the corridor are two cherub medallions, identical except for the motto.
Omne labore—“Everything with effort.”
Vivere est cogitare—“To live is to think,” as Cicero said.
There is often a greeter standing in the lobby of the main Carnegie Library in Oakland to say “Welcome to the Library” to every patron who walks through the door. But even when the greeter isn’t greeting, the building itself conveys the same message.
Ornate light fixtures hang in the vestibule and lobby.
The statue of Edward Bigelow by Giuseppe Moretti, with the Cathedral of Learning in the background.
Henry Hornbostel designed the front of the Fine Arts Building with niches that display all styles of architectural decoration, and more practically give students a place to sit between classes. The niches have continued to accumulate sculpture in styles from all over the world. The whimsical figures in the Gothic niche may have been done by Achille Giammartini.
In the classical niche, the three orders of Greek architecture: Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, demonstrated with correct proportions.
The front of the College of Fine Arts in sunset light. Above, the word CREARE (“to create”) inscribed above the entrance by decorative sculptor Achille Giammartini.
Reason.
Design.
George S. Orth was the architect of this palace of education, which was finished in 1894. It’s a little bit Flemish Renaissance, with eye-catching horizontal stripes and Rundbogenstil eyebrows over the arches.
