A short history of Pittsburgh : 1758-1908Church, Samuel Harden
History
A short history of Pittsburgh : 1758-1908
Church, Samuel Harden
Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- History
The temptation to go a little further into the future first
requires the acknowledgment which St. Paul made when he wrote of
marriage: "I speak not by authority, but by sufferance." There will
soon begin to rise on these adjacent heights the first new
buildings of the Western University (now University of Pittsburgh),
conceived in the classic spirit of Greece and crowning that hill
like a modern Acropolis. With its charter dating back one hundred
and twenty-five years the University is already venerable in this
land. Is it not feasible to hope that through the practical
benevolence of our people, some working basis of union can be
effected between that institution and this? Here we have painting,
and sculpture, and architecture, and books, and a wonderfully rich
scientific collection, and the abiding spirit of music. We have
these fast-growing Technical Schools. And yet the entire scheme
seems to be lacking something which marks its unfinished state. The
Technical Schools do not and should not teach languages,
literature, philosophy, and the fine arts, nor the old learned
professions, but these must always rest in the University. Should
not one school thus supplement the other? And then, the students on
each side of this main building would find available here those
great collections which, if properly demonstrated, would give them
a larger opportunity for systematic culture than could be offered
by any other community in the world. For we should no longer permit
these great departments of the fine arts and of the sciences to
remain in a passive state, but they should all be made the means of
active instruction from masterful professors. Music, its theory,
composition, and performance on every instrument should be taught
where demonstrations could be made with the orchestra and the
organ. Successful painters and sculptors, the elected members of
the future faculty, should fix their studios near the Institute and
teach painting and sculpture as well as it could be done in Paris
or Munich. Architecture should thrive by the hand of its trained
votaries, while science should continue to reveal the secrets of
her most attractive mysteries. Then, as the ambitious youths of the
ancient world came to Athens to obtain the purest culture of that
age, so would our modern youths, who are already in the Carnegie
Technical Schools from twenty-six States, continue to come to
Pittsburgh to partake of the most comprehensive scheme of education
which the world would obtain. Believing firmly in the achieving
power of hopeful thought, I pray you think on this.
[Illustration: The Carnegie Institute]
V
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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