A short history of Pittsburgh : 1758-1908Church, Samuel Harden
History
A short history of Pittsburgh : 1758-1908
Church, Samuel Harden
Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- History
In Schenley Park is the Carnegie Institute, with its new main building,
dedicated in April (11, 12, and 13), 1907, with imposing ceremonies
which were attended by several hundred prominent men from America and
Europe. This building, which is about six hundred feet long and four
hundred feet wide, contains a library, an art gallery, halls of
architecture and sculpture, a museum, and a hall of music; while the
Carnegie Technical Schools are operated in separate buildings near by.
It is built in the later Renaissance style, being very simple and yet
beautiful. Its exterior is of Ohio sandstone, while its interior finish
is largely in marble, of which there are sixty-five varieties, brought
from every famous quarry in the world. In its great entrance hall is a
series of mural decorations by John W. Alexander, a distinguished son of
Pittsburgh. The library, in which the institution had its beginning in
1895, contains about 300,000 volumes, has seven important branches, and
one hundred and seventy-seven stations for the distribution of books.
Mr. Edwin H. Anderson inaugurated the library at the time of its
creation, and, after several years of successful service, was followed
by Mr. Anderson H. Hopkins, and he by Mr. Harrison W. Craver, who is now
the efficient librarian. The Fine Arts department contains many casts
of notable works of architecture and sculpture, sufficient to carry the
visitor in fancy through an almost unbroken development from the
earliest times in which man began to produce beautiful structures to the
present day. It is now the aim of this department to develop its
galleries on three lines: first, to gather early American paintings from
the very beginning of art in this country; second, to acquire such
portraits of eminent men as will, in the passage of years, make these
halls to some extent a national portrait gallery; and, third, to obtain
such pieces of contemporary art as will lead to the formation of a
thoroughly representative collection of modern painting. The Art Gallery
is already rich in this latter purpose, and is renowned for its annual
competitive exhibits which are open to the artists of all countries for
prizes offered by the Carnegie Institute. Mr. John W. Beatty, Director
of Fine Arts, has made the building up of this department his ripest and
best work. The Museum embraces sections of paleontology, mineralogy,
vertebrate and invertebrate zooelogy, entomology, botany, comparative
anatomy, archaeology, numismatics, ceramics, textiles, transportation,
carvings in wood and ivory, historical collections, the useful arts, and
biological sciences. Its work in the department of paleontology is
particularly noteworthy as it has extended the boundaries of knowledge
through its many explorations in the western fossil fields. The
success of the Museum is largely due to the energy and erudition of Dr.
W. J. Holland, its amiable director. In the music-hall, a symphony
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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