Carnegie's Layered Legacy
I believe that happenstance is often synergy in disguise. So I figured it couldn't be a coincidence that the novel I had just finished ended in 1900 with the protagonist mounting the stairs of a library built by Andrew Carnegie, while that very same night, I heard about the anniversary celebration of Carnegie's first library in Braddock on NPR. So I drove to Braddock on Saturday and climbed the steps to Carnegie's first library, built 130 years ago. The day was many-layered--layers of paint peeling off a grand old structure, layers of history spanning the French Indian Wars and current efforts to vitalize a community, layers of economic power and want. If you've ever been to Pittsburgh, it's impossible not to notice the Carnegie libraries founded and funded by the iron and steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, starting in the late 1800s. There are 19 of them in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County alone and 34 in Pennsylvania, thousands more elsewhere (Les Standif...
