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

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.