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 Standiford writes that in the US and abroad Carnegie constructed "some 2,800 public libraries" (Meet You in Hell p. 13)). As a point of comparison, Standiford converts Carnegie's worth to modern currency, finding Carnegie to be significantly wealthier than Bill Gates and second only to John D. Rockefeller. So that's the economic history lesson. . . 

Then there's Carnegie's complex legacy, hinted at in the plaque at the building's entrance: 

Note "the evolution of Carnegie's vision of himself as a public benefactor of the working class." Hmmmm, yes, well, there was the brutal putdown of the Homestead Strike, and there were the low wages and the consolidation of companies which led to job losses. . . A Scottish immigrant who spent his younger years in the grit of Slab Town (Allegheny City, now Pittsburgh's North Side), Carnegie founded and funded institutions which would allow the uneducated to educate themselves, primarily via the use of lending libraries open to the public (rare in the day), but also, as in the case of the Braddock Library's second iteration,  as community centers encouraging exercising the body, as well as the mind.

Stack Room (entrance)

Pool

Gymnasium

The building really is magnificent. Metal, as you would expect, and marble.

Hopefully, the vision for the building will be ushered in with the necessary funds. 

The community Braddock Library now serves is predominately African American. Walking up the street to my car, I watched some masters of the court (notice the zip code on the wall mural--something I'm seeing a lot of in Pittsburgh; saw it in Sewickly, too, but on a necklace there, pride of place expressed through a zip code). I didn't go in, but a micro-brewery called Brew Gentlemen looks really promising. Another reason to go back to Braddock.

I drove 10 feet and came across something totally unexpected, although Braddock's eponymous origins were clear. . .

So that's what those two older gentlemen with the open containers were trying to tell me! . . . A statue of Colonel Washington was right up the hill, marking the site where General Braddock, attempting to take Fort Duquesne, got his behind handed to him by the French and Indians. Historical anecdote has it that Washington (who served under Braddock) also first bypassed Queen Aliquippa of the "Mingo" Seneca tribe here in Braddock and then thought better of it and payed his respects. 

What a site of upheaval and struggle: the French and Indian War, the Whiskey Rebellion (a marker for this is also at Braddock Field), the Homestead strike right across the river, and now attempts at urban renewal. More parting images crossing the Rankin Bridge--Kennywood Park overlooking a nexus of steel mills founded by Carnegie.

So what did the laborers think of Andrew Carnegie? It's hard to know, but if I had to guess, it is not a coincidence that. . . look closely. . .

. . . the men installing the steel beams of the library managed to do so with his name upside down. Nah, I don't believe in coincidence.

P.S. The book I was reading was Carnegie's Maid by Marie Benedict, but if you want to read a really well-written novel about a wealthy man who fashioned himself a benefactor of the people--same time period--read Barbara Kingsolver's Unsheltered. Also, see Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert if you are interested in coincidence, serendipity, and synergy.