Frick's Monument to Himself

The Frick Building towers over Grant Street in Pittsburgh.

Henry Clay Frick was a colossus among titans during the Gilded Age and beyond. Frick initially made his mark by creating a firm that turned Southwestern Pennsylvania coal into coke, a prime ingredient in the steel-making process, which brought him to the attention of steel baron Andrew Carnegie.

Frick became a Carnegie partner and the two made plenty of tax-free profits until the violent Homestead Strike and other frictions ruptured their personal and business relationships permanently. (Years later, Carnegie reportedly requested a face-to-face meeting with Frick, who supposedly told a go-between, "Tell Mr. Carnegie I'll see him in hell.")

Befitting his stature, Frick commissioned Chicago architect Daniel Burnham to create what would become the tallest building in Pittsburgh when it opened in 1902. Frick wanted it to be so tall that it would put the neighboring Carnegie Building in a perpetual shadow.

When it opened, the building had 20 floors, including a basement. But when the level of Grant Street was lowered in 1912, a new entrance had to be created in the basement.

Burnham also designed an annex, seen here in the left of the photo, which opened three years later.

In the marble-clad lobby are two bronze lions sculpted by Alexander Proctor and a stained-glass window, "Fortune and Her Wheel," made by John LaFarge.

The Frick Building and Annex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Burnham was a skyscraper pioneer who created the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, and supervised the "White City" of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

For more on Burnham's fascinating career, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Burnham

It's a Grand Old Flag

The Flag Monument, which was dedicated on the 150th

anniversary of the U.S. flag, was made possible by the pennies

of more than 180,000 Allegheny County school children.

While this is too late for Flag Day, it’s early for flag waving on the Fourth of July.

With the 150th anniversary of the American flag's creation approaching, the now-defunct Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph announced it would mark the occasion with the erection of a bronze tablet funded by the pennies of school children.

In four weeks, the students contributed 188,163 pennies and their names were inscribed on an honor roll buried in a monument built in Schenley Park, near the future site of the Westinghouse Memorial, and dedicated June 14, 1927, on Flag Day.

Here's an editorial that ran in the Chronicle Telegraph the following day:

Flag Day in Pittsburgh, 1941

Most significant of the many interesting features of Pittsburgh's Flag Day celebrations was the unveiling of the monument commemorating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our national emblem, made possible by the contributions of Allegheny County's school children.

More than 188,000 boys and girls participated in this notable tribute to the flag and gift to the community by giving one penny each through The Chronicle Telegraph in cooperation with the American Flag Day Association. The names of all contributors were printed in this newspaper and have been placed in a niche of the memorial tablet for permanent preservation.

This monument, consisting of a giant granite base and bronze tablet suitably inscribed, is unique both in design and purpose. Our community is the first in the land thus to mark the sesquicentennial of the country's flag, and never before has there been such a practical expression of their patriotism by a host of school children, eager to prove their devotion to America's beautiful emblem.

The Chronicle Telegram is proud to have had the privilege of cooperating in this great work in which the boys and girls of Allegheny County have so loyally assisted. Thanks to their generous response, our city will possess a beautiful and enduring reminder of the origin and meaning of the Stars and Stripes, teaching its impressive lesson to all frequenters of Pittsburgh's principal pleasure ground.

A closer look at the flag monument

Schenley Farms

As part of developer Franklin Nicola’s plans for Oakland that I touched on in the previous post on the Schenley Hotel/William Pitt Union, he desired a residential district that would fit his vision. He got it with Schenley Farms

The area is chock-full of well-maintained, early twentieth-century domestic structures that feature a variety of architectural styles, such as the above-pictured Tudor.

Nicola insisted that the homes laid out on wide streets named for British and American literary figures be well-crafted, including 13-inch thick brick walls, and plenty of attention was paid to the slightest detail. Beautiful wooden floors and wainscoting, as well as a finished basement, were part of the houses designed by the cream of Pittsburgh architects.

Modern conveniences also were part of Nicola’s strategy to attract the middle-class buyers who were his targets. The plumbing was state of the art and every structure had refrigerators with an entrance door connected to a porch (to keep the iceman from walking through the house), four telephones, lighting fixtures that used both gas and electricity, and a central vacuum cleaner system.

One of the best innovations was Nicola’s insistence that wires be buried and not hung overhead as is still the custom today. For those buying the houses, Nicola saw the buried wires as a way to save on insurance. But I’m sure all who have lived in the them through the years have appreciated that the visual beauty of the neighborhood wasn’t marred by those wires.

Bigelow Boulevard, once called Grant Boulevard, provides a City Beautiful-inspired buffer between the residential area and the civic and educational sections that make up the Schenley Farms Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For a glimpse into a more genteel past and to see gracious homes that would take the price of two or three McMansions to re-create and that have many times more charm, take a walk down these leafy streets.

Here is an elevated view of Schenley Farms I captured from
the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning.

Schenley Hotel/William Pitt Union

At the turn of the twentieth century, what would become the Oakland section of Pittsburgh was mostly open fields until Andrew Carnegie built his library and museum there. Carnegie’s construction inspired a grand vision in a real estate developer named Franklin Nicola.

With the City Beautiful movement as an additional inspiration, Nicola wanted a civic center that would house cultural institutions and progressive housing in a much more pleasant atmosphere than that offered by the smoky city a few miles to the west.

Nicola sold his idea to such shrewd businessmen as Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, H.J. Heinz and Andrew Mellon, who backed his venture. After buying land from Mary Schenley, who inherited vast tracts of property in the Pittsburgh area, he began to make his vision a reality.

Over time, the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) and a fine housing development — Schenley Farms — were created and grew in the area.

A grand hotel that would cater to upscale clients also was part of his scheme.

While it now serves the university as the William Pitt Union, the above-pictured Beaux Arts beauty designed by Rutan and Russell — successors to H.H. Richardson — began its life in 1898 as the Schenley Hotel.

Many famous people, including four presidents, signed the hotel’s register. It also was the site of a dinner celebrating the formation of  U.S. Steel in 1901 and a speech by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during his American tour in 1959.

Lillian Russell, a major showbiz star of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, lived in Suite 437 — now the offices of the Pitt student newspaper — and married Pittsburgh newspaper editor Alexander Moore in the hotel.

Italian actress Eleonora Duse, a contemporary of Russell’s who wowed audiences on two continents, died of pneumonia April 21, 1924, in Suite 524.

With the 1909 opening of Forbes Field across Forbes Avenue, the Schenley Hotel became the Pittsburgh base for visiting major league baseball teams and hosted Hall of Famers such as Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Stan Musial. Visiting reporters also bunked there, a short walk from the ballpark, but that didn’t stop some of them from submitting vouchers for taxi rides to their editors.

The coming of the automobile age brought the building’s service as a hotel to an end. With competition from downtown hotels and the lack of parking pressuring the profitability of the Schenley Hotel, it was sold to Pitt in 1956.

The hotel originally served the university as a dormitory before rising enrollment led to an 1980 renovation that transformed it into the student union.

More recent work created a food court, space for student organizations, a home for the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame and a makeover that restored some of the old hotel’s Gilded Age glamor.

Pitt’s ever-expanding presence in Oakland certainly hasn’t been welcomed by all, but the university should be saluted for repurposing such grand structures as the Schenley Hotel.

A stairway to nowhere is now part of the William Pitt Union's Tansky Family

Lounge, which once was the lobby of the Schenley Hotel. The plaque at

the center honors Italian actress Elenora Duse, who died in the hotel in 1924.

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