Photo of the Day: Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

I took the attached photo last month, while being driven through Pittsburgh. I never attended Carnegie Mellon University and have not toured the campus, but I was much taken by the façade of this building and resolved to learn more about it when I got home.

The industrialist Andrew Carnegie regarded his mother, Margaret Morrison Carnegie, as the person “to whom [he] owes everything,” according to a letter he wrote to the Board of Trustees of a major educational institution he endowed, Carnegie Technical Schools. He honored her in concrete fashion by founding the Margaret Morrison Carnegie School for Women in 1906. 

Six years after the 1967 merger of the Carnegie Institute of Technology and Mellon Institute, Margaret Morrison Carnegie College was closed. Since then, Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall has housed students and faculty in the Public Policy, Drama, Architecture, Music schools and now is home to the School of Design. It is also recognized as the campus women’s building.

 

I’m not sure even the most skilled biographer can sort out all the complications in Andrew Carnegie’s character. But I can’t think of many better ways of honoring the legacy of a mother than what he did with this building and the curricula associated with it for more than a century.

Photo of the Day: Nyack Public Library, Rockland County, NY

I took this photo in late December, when I was walking around in Nyack, an upstate New York village on the west side of the Tappan Zee Bridge, notable for its Victorian homes. But one should not forget its library, either. I know I don’t.

I like the Nyack Public Library at least partly for the same reason that I like the village: its charming architecture. While the library began serving patrons back in 1879, this cobblestone building at the corner of South Broadway and Depew dates to 1903, when it was constructed with funds from Andrew Carnegie. Like most structures resulting from his largesse (1,600 built in 46 states), it is modest but built to endure.

Even though I’m from northern New Jersey, I make it a point to stop in to visit this library whenever I’m in the area. Like other libraries these days, it is high tech, but the physical appeal of this vintage building remains undeniable.

Quote of the Day (Andrew Carnegie, on Libraries)

“The man who enters a library is in the best society this world affords; the good and the great welcome him, surround him, and humbly ask to be allowed to become his servants; and if he himself, from his own earnings, contributes to its support, he is more of a man than before.”—Andrew Carnegie, “Address at the Dedication of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh,” November 5, 1895