Here is a relic of the genesis of the Electric Age. In the early days of electric light, the East End Electric Light Company supplied the rich East Enders with current to light their mansions. In 1899 it built this large substation, which is still in use by Duquesne Light today. Although it is clearly industrial, the building was put up at a time when an industrial building had to be ornamental as well as useful. It was therefore built in the style the ancient Romans might have used it they had built electric substations in their cities.
Officially the Andrew Carnegie Free Library, or the Carnegie Free Library by the inscription over the door, but the name “Carnegie Carnegie” is obvious and irresistible and adopted for the library’s Web site.
When the two Chartiers Valley boroughs of Mansfield and Chartiers merged in 1894, they decided to name the new town Carnegie after what was probably the most familiar name in the Pittsburgh area. In return, Andrew Carnegie gave them the jaw-dropping sum of $200,000 for this magnificent building (designed by Struthers & Hannah), plus money for books and—unusually for Carnegie—an endowment. His usual agreement with towns that took a library from him was that the town must undertake the upkeep, thus making the citizens ultimately responsible for their library; but in a few steel towns (where we suppose he felt more personally responsible) he endowed the library with enough of a fund to keep it going indefinitely.
Like Carnegie’s other steel-town libraries, this one was not just a library. It also had a music hall, a gymnasium, and a lecture hall.
Note the terra-cotta lyre over this window on the music-hall front of the building. Today the music hall is still delighting audiences, and the library sticks to its mission of being a welcoming place to go read a book.
Columns of the Composite order, the most elaborate of the five classical orders, send the message that this is not just a library but a palace for the people.
The lobby lets us know that we have entered a building of unusual richness. Marble panels cover the walls, and mosaic tile decorates the floor.
The Greek-key pattern in the tile is repeated in the risers in the stairs.
The interior of the library itself mimics the experience of being a rich man with a big library—like old Col. Anderson, whose library was Carnegie’s model. You walked in, sat in front of a big fireplace, and had servants bring you books, and for an hour or two you were just as wealthy as Carnegie himself.
Open stacks have eliminated the servants, but the fireplace is still there, with a familiar face over the mantel.
In days of gaslights and low-wattage early electric bulbs, natural light from outside was still important for a reading room. Fortunately no one ever had the money to block up these windows.
All the windows are surrounded with elaborate terra-cotta decorations.
A few months ago Father Pitt published a view of the front of the old Presbyterian Hospital on the North Side, which is where Presby lived before it moved to Oakland to become the nucleus of the medical-industrial complex there. Since he was walking by the building again the other day, old Pa Pitt thought he would add a few more details.
Taken in January, 2025, with a Kodak EasyShare Z1285.
After Presby moved out, this site was used as Divine Providence Hospital for many years. The last we heard, the building was mostly vacant, but was being considered for conversion to “affordable” apartments.
We can just make out the ghosts of letters spelling out “DIVINE PROVIDENCE HOSPITAL.”
If we cannot find a use for a building, Mother Nature will.
The Hall of Architecture in the Carnegie gives us a whirlwind tour of Western architectural history from Egypt to the Renaissance, through the medium of life-size plaster casts. Above, the sphinx on the Votive Column of the Naxians at Delphi. It originally stood on a column more than thirty feet high, and the Carnegie’s cast is elevated to give viewers an approximation of the angle at which the sculpture was meant to be seen.
Samuel T. McClarren, a very successful Victorian architect and a resident of nearby Thornburg, designed this landmark building, which was put up in 1896.
A small alteration to the front gives us an example of how important the little details are to the appearance of a building. The arched windows in the top floor have been shortened, as we can see by the slightly different shade of brick where they have been filled in. The original design would have created a single broad stripe from the arches at the top to the storefront below. Interrupting that composition makes the building look awkward and top-heavy. The ground floor has also been altered in a way that obscures the vigor of the design. Once we have said that, however, we should acknowledge that the building is generally in a good state of preservation and praise the Historical Society of Carnegie for keeping it up.
This building has a very difficult lot to deal with, and the architect must have found it an interesting challenge. First, the lot is a triangle. A kind of turret blunts the odd angle on the Main Street end and turns it from a bug into a feature.
The second challenge is that one long side of the lot is smack up against Chartiers Creek, a minor river that is placid most of the time but can be a raging torrent when storms make it angry. The foundations would have had to take all the moods of the river into account, and the fact that the building has stood through disastrous floods suggests that Mr. McClarren knew what he was up to.
A view from across Chartiers Creek shows us the sharp point of the triangle in the rear.
Allegheny High School, now the Allegheny Traditional Academy, has a complicated architectural history involving two notable architects at three very different times.
From Art work of Pittsburgh, part 3 (Chicago: W. H. Parish, 1893), with thanks to “Camerafiend” for making the picture available.
The original 1893 Allegheny High School on this site was designed by Frederick Osterling in his most florid Richardsonian Romanesque manner. This building no longer exists, but the photograph above gives us a good notion of the impression it made. The huge entrance arch is particularly striking, and particularly Osterling; compare it with the Third Avenue entrance of the Times Building, also by Osterling.
In 1904, the school needed a major addition. Again Osterling was called on, but by this time Richardsonian Romanesque had passed out of fashion, and Osterling’s own tastes had changed. The Allegheny High School Annex still stands, and Osterling pulled off a remarkable feat: he made a building in modified Georgian style that matched current classical tastes while still being a good fit with, and echoing the lines of, the original Romanesque school.
The carved ornaments on the original school were executed by Achille Giammartini, and we would guess that he was brought back for the work on the Annex as well.
A war memorial on the front of the Annex. Twenty-two names are inscribed. Everyone who went to Allegheny High in those years knew someone who was killed in the Great War.
By the 1930s, the school was too small again. The original school was torn down, and Marion Steen, house architect for Pittsburgh Public Schools (and son of the Pittsburgh titan James T. Steen) designed a new Art Deco palace nothing like the remaining Annex. The two buildings do not clash, however, because there are very few vantage points from which we can see both at once.
The auditorium has three exits, each one with one of the three traditional masks of Greek drama above it: Comedy, Meh, and Tragedy.
Large city parks often have picnic shelters, but it is not common for the shelters to be so elaborate. This one was built in 1902–1903, during the reign of Edward Manning Bigelow, the father of Pittsburgh’s system of boulevards and parks. The architect was young Harry Summers Estep, who would soon earn his place as a prominent architect with the McKeesport Masonic Temple.
The Hall of Sculpture was designed as a model of the interior of the Parthenon. It used to be crowded with plaster casts of antique sculptures; most of the casts have been moved to the Hall of Architecture, leaving the Hall of Sculpture mostly empty except when special exhibits are mounted there.
Back when tuberculosis was incurable, the best medical wisdom held that plenty of fresh air was essential for tuberculosis patients. Thus this hospital for tuberculosis was given a parklike setting with plenty of pleasant areas for sitting around in the healthful outdoors. Now that it is a retirement home called Milliones Manor, the beautifully landscaped grounds are just as welcome.
The main building was designed by E. P. Mellon, nephew of Andrew Mellon. Other buildings—Father Pitt has not sorted out which is which—were designed by other local stars, including Benno Janssen and Ingham, Boyd & Pratt.
