Steven Foster Statue

This tribute to Pittsburgh-born songwriter Stephen Foster stands beside Carnegie Music Hall, near the Forbes Avenue entrance to Schenley Plaza in Oakland.

Stephen Foster, the composer of many timeless songs, such as “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Camptown Races” and “Old Folks at Home,” was born July 4, 1826, in Lawrenceville, which was laid out by his father and later became part of Pittsburgh.

The statue of Foster that now stands beside Carnegie Music Hall near Forbes Avenue in Oakland’s Schenley Plaza began its life in 1900 in Highland Park. The Pittsburgh Press drummed up a campaign to raise money to create the sculpture, and Foster's popularity in his hometown made it an easy job.

From the pennies of school children to the checkbook of Andrew Carnegie, the people of Pittsburgh made it possible for sculptor Giuseppe Moretti to create a suitable sculptural salute.

Morrison Foster, the composer’s brother, assisted Moretti, who was determined “to have the likeness photographically exact,” a story in the Press reported.

When the work was dedicated in 1900, thousands lined up along Highland Avenue as a parade worked its way to Highland Park, where 3,000 children sang Foster's songs and his daughter unveiled the statute.

However, respect for the statue didn't last forever, as vandals took advantage of its out-of-the-way spot in Highland Park, stealing the pen and banjo several times.

The continuing vandalism caused the sculpture to be moved to its present site, which also is across the street from The University of Pittsburgh’s Stephen Foster Memorial. It was rededicated on June 29, 1944.

The statue isn’t without controversy, as some have objected to the depiction of a barefoot black man sitting below Foster, which is supposed to indicate his subservience to a white man.

Source: “Discovering Pittsburgh’s Sculpture” by Marilyn Evert and Vernon Gay, 1986, University of Pittsburgh Press

Hamerschlag Hall

Through trips to the Carnegie Library and Museums, most Pittsburghers are familiar with the backside of  Carnegie Mellon University’s Hamerschlag Hall. Here is the side that faces the CMU campus. Photos by Perry

Handed the assignment of designing a building to house workshops and a boiler room at Carnegie Technical School, which became Carnegie Institute of Technology, then Carnegie Mellon University, architect Henry Hornbostel certainly made the most of it.

The exteriors of this and the original campus buildings are made of Kittanning brick, a cream-colored brick that normally was used for industrial purposes, which showed the world this would be a practical and modern institution instead of a red-brick Ivy League school.

Right: This is a copy of the piece that graced the bow of the cruiser U.S.S. Pittsburgh. The original once rested at Hamerschlag Hall.

The great arch at the entrance, as at the other campus buildings Hornbostel designed, employs Guastavino tile, which is a patented system that allows tiles to follow the curve of a roof.

Here’s how Franklin Toker, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, described Hornbostel’s handiwork in his book “Buildings of Pittsburgh”:

"Machinery Hall, renamed Hamerschlag for the school's first director, is an architectural silk purse made from a sow’s ear. The building program demanded little more than a boiler plant below and workshops above, but Hornbostel decked it out in the guise of Leon Battista Alberti’s St. Andrea at Mantua, with a high temple pediment surmounting an enormous ceremonial entrance arch.

"The crowing touch was the most poetic (and risqué) smokestack in the nation: an industrial-brick cylindrical Temple of Venus penetrated by a circular brick chimney, the whole further enriched by helical stairs recalling the spiral minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra."

Modernist architect Philip Johnson once called it "the most beautiful smokestack in the world."

Left: "The most beautiful smokestack in the world."

While I’m certainly not in the league of Johnson or Toker when it comes to critiquing architecture, I call Hamerschlag Hall a delight.

I think it’s delightful because of Hornbostel is talent evident and because no expense was spared to create a fantastic structure to serve such a down-to-earth purpose.

The  building now houses the CMU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and laboratories for the Department of Mechanical Engineering

Hornbostel left his mark in Oakland and other parts of Pittsburgh, and his work will turn up often in this blog. For the basics on Hornbostel, see Wikipedia.

Hamerschlag Hall looms over Junction Hollow.