The Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science was the big science museum on the North Side before it merged with the Carnegie and moved into the Science Center.
For a while the Art Deco classical building, designed by Ingham & Boyd (or Ingham, Boyd & Pratt; Father Pitt is not sure when Pratt came into the partnership) was sparsely used for classes and other activities, but after the Carnegie moved everything into the Science Center, the Children’s Museum took over the building for a huge expansion.
The Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, Andrew Carnegie’s first donation (and the second one to open, after Braddock), set the pattern for many of the larger libraries to come: it included not only a library but also a music hall, so that the building gave the people of the city a palace of culture. This is the first Carnegie Hall ever: the one in Braddock was a later addition to the library. The architects of this building were Smithmeyer & Pelz, who had earned their library-drawing credentials by winning the competition to design the Library of Congress. First Smithmeyer and then Pelz would later be thrown off the Library of Congress job, because it’s hard to work on a huge government project that’s eagerly watched by every newspaper in the nation and supervised by the entire United States Congress. They probably found it much easier to deal with Mr. Carnegie. Nevertheless, all Mr. Carnegie’s other libraries in Pittsburgh were designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, or just Alden & Harlow, who became his preferred firm and knew exactly what he wanted.
The music hall is now in use as the Hazlett Theater.
The main library was damaged years ago by a lightning strike, which provoked the library to move out to a new building on Federal Street; but the Children‘s Museum has taken over and restored this historic building and uses it as the Museum Lab.
The restoration of the Garden Theater, built in 1914 from a design by Thomas Scott, is nearly complete. The storefronts on North Avenue will be filled again for the first time in decades. Old Pa Pitt will try to get back when the rubbish bin is gone from the front, but these pictures give a good impression of how carefully the external appearance has been maintained and refreshed.
Urban legend says that these structures are chapels where the privileged can repent of their sins, but in fact they house the elevator mechanics and other rooftop necessities.
The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie could not quite get a foothold downtown, but it had the next best thing: a station right on the Smithfield Street Bridge, so that it was only a short walk from downtown to the P&LE trains—or a short trolley ride, since the streetcars ran on the bridge.
