A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
History
A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
Architecture -- Pennsylvania; Art -- Pennsylvania; Historic buildings -- Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania -- Guidebooks; Pennsylvania -- History
Near the Forbes Avenue entrance is the great central building of the
CARNEGIE INSTITUTE, established by Andrew Carnegie with large annual
fund, in perpetuity, for purchase of objects of art and scientific
collections; built 1892-95, Italian Renaissance, sandstone, architects,
Alden & Harlow, enlarged in 1904-07, contains Library, Music Hall,
Department of Fine Arts, and the Natural History Museum, in which are
large collections of ancient pottery, Chinese glass, and porcelains
representing various eras; jades and crystals; valuable collections of
coins and medals; illuminated manuscripts and early printed books, cut
and uncut gems; one of the largest collections of carved ivory in the
United States; and art metal work. The Library operates more than one
hundred and seventy agencies for free distribution of literature, within
“Greater Pittsburgh.”
On top of the building are four bronze groups, representing Science,
Art, Literature, and Music. Bronze statues, Michelangelo and Galileo,
are at entrance to Art Gallery. Entrance to Music Hall is through
exquisitely designed bronze doors, wrought in relief, with bronze
statues, Bach and Shakespeare, at either side. These bronzes were
designed and modeled in the studio of J. Massey Rhind, and cast in
Naples. Foyer to the Music Hall is considered the most beautiful portion
of the Institute; here are twenty-four huge columns of Tinos marble,
with gilded Corinthian capitals; and one of the finest organs in the
world, on which the greatest organists obtainable give concerts of
highly classical music, which are free, every Saturday night and Sunday
afternoon. The great Archer, Queen Victoria’s Jubilee organist, held
this position for many
[Illustration: GALLERY OF THE SCULPTURE HALL, CARNEGIE INSTITUTE,
PITTSBURGH]
years. The Hall of Sculpture, designed on lines of the Parthenon, is two
stories high, around the first story is a Greek Doric colonnade; above
this is a row of Ionic columns, all of the most flawless, milk-white,
Pantelicon marble, dug out of the quarries from which the marble of the
Parthenon itself was obtained; collections of sculpture represent,
chronologically, its history from early Egyptian to the Renaissance of
the sixteenth century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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