Famous Givers and Their Gifts. Bolton Sarah Knowles

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      The Allegheny Free Library was formally opened by President Harrison on Feb. 13, 1890. Mr. Carnegie said, in presenting the gift of the library, "My wife, – for her spirit and influence are here to-night, – my wife and I realize to-night how infinitely more blessed it is to give than to receive… I wish that the masses of working men and women, the wage-earners of all Allegheny, will remember and act upon the fact that this is their library, their gallery, and their hall. The poorest citizen, the poorest man, the poorest woman, that toils from morn till night for a livelihood, as, thank Heaven, I had that toil to do in my early days, as he walks this hall, as he reads the books from these alcoves, as he listens to the organ, and admires the works of art in this gallery, equally with the millionnaire and the foremost citizen, I want him to exclaim in his own heart, 'Behold, all this is mine. I support it, and I am proud to support it. I am joint proprietor here.'" "Since the library opened four years ago," says Mr. William M. Stevenson, the librarian, "over 1,000,000 books and periodicals have been put into the hands of readers… The concerts have been exceedingly popular, and incidentally have helped the library by drawing people to the library who might otherwise have remained in ignorance of the popularity and usefulness of the institution."

      Mr. Carnegie's greatest gift has been the Pittsburg Library. It is a magnificent building of gray Ohio sandstone, in the Italian Renaissance style of architecture, with roof of red tile. The architects were Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow, their plan being chosen from the one hundred and two sets of plans offered. The library building is 393 feet long and 150 feet wide, with two graceful towers, each 162 feet high, and has capacity for 300,000 volumes. The entire "stack" or set of shelves for books is made of iron in six stories, and is as nearly fireproof as possible. The lower stories are for the circulating-books; the upper stories for reference-books.

      The library proper is in the centre of the building, reached by a broad flight of stone steps. Above, cut in stone, are the words, "Carnegie Library; Free to the People." The vestibule, finished in marble with mosaic floors, is handsomely decorated. On the first floor are the circulating-library, "its blue-ceiling panels bordered with an interlace in orange and white," a periodical room on either side, one for scientific and technical, the other for popular and literary magazines, with rooms for cataloguing and for the library officials.

      "The reference reading-room on the second floor, large, beautiful, and well-lighted," says the efficient librarian, Mr. Edwin H. Anderson, "is for quiet study. Here reference-books, such as encyclopædias, dictionaries, atlases, etc., are at hand, on the shelves along the walls, to be freely consulted." This room is of a greenish tone, with ivory-colored pilasters and arches, and a fleur-de-lis pattern painted in the wall-panels, from the "mark" of a famous Florentine printer and engraver four centuries ago.

      Across the corridor from the reference reading-room are five smaller rooms for special collections of books. One is occupied by a musical library of two thousand volumes, of the late Karl Merz, which was bought and presented to the library by several citizens of Pittsburg. Another will contain the collection to be purchased from the fund left by Mr. J. D. Bernd, and will bear his name. Another will be used for art-books, and another for science.

      The children are to have a reading-room, made attractive by juvenile books, magazines, and copies of good pictures. A large and well-lighted room in the basement is used for the leading newspapers of the country.

      The library has a wing on either side, one containing the art-gallery, and the other the science museum. The former has three large picture-rooms on the second floor, painted in dull red, with a wall-space of 8,300 feet for the exhibition of paintings and prints. A corridor 148 feet long, in which statuary will be placed, is decorated with copies of the frieze of the Parthenon. The basement of this wing will be devoted to the various departments of the art-schools of Pittsburg.

      In the science museum three large, well-lighted rooms on the second floor will be used for collections in zoölogy, botany, and mineralogy. "The closely allied branches of geology, the study of the earth's crust; paleontology, the study of life in former ages; anthropology, the natural history of the human species; archæology, the science of antiquity; and ethnology and ethnography, treating of the origin, relation, characteristic costumes and habits of the human races, will, no doubt, receive as much attention as space and funds will permit."

      It is also expected that works of skill and invention will be gathered into an industrial museum for the benefit especially of the many artisans of Pittsburg. Courses of free lectures will be given to teachers, to pupils, and to the public, as in the American Museum of Natural History of New York. Below the three rooms in the museum are three lecture-rooms, which can be used separately or as one room.

      In one end of the large library building, and separated from it by a thick wall so as to deaden sound, is the music-hall, semi-circular in plan, with seats for two thousand one hundred persons, and a stage for sixty musicians and a chorus of two hundred. Much Sienna marble is used, the floor is mosaic, the walls are painted a deep rose-color, and the architecture proper in a soft ivory tone, with gilded ornamentation. Two free concerts, or organ recitals, are given each week through the year, on the large modern concert organ, built expressly for this hall. Musical lectures are also given, free from technicalities, illustrated by choir, organ, and piano. This is certainly taking music, art, and science to the people as a free gift. To this noble work Mr. Carnegie has given $2,100,000. Of this amount, $800,000 was for the main building, $300,000 for the seven branch libraries or distributing stations, and $1,000,000 as an endowment fund for the art-gallery. From the annual income of this art-fund, which will be about $50,000, at least three of the pictures purchased are to be the work of American artists exhibited that year, preferably in the Pittsburg gallery.

      The city of Pittsburg agrees to appropriate $40,000 annually for the maintenance of the library system. Mr. Carnegie has always felt that the people should bear a part of the burden. He said at the opening of the library, Nov. 5, 1895, "Every citizen of Pittsburg, even the very humblest, now walks into this, his own library; for the poorest laborer contributes his mite indirectly to its support. The man who enters a library is in the best society this world affords; the good and the great welcome him, surround him, and humbly ask to be allowed to become his servants; and if he himself, from his own earnings, contributes to its support, he is more of a man than before… If library, hall, gallery, or museum be not popular, and attract the manual toilers and benefit them, it will have failed in its mission; for it was chiefly for the wage-earners that it was built, by one who was himself a wage-earner, and who has the good of that class at heart."

      Mr. Carnegie has said elsewhere, "Every free library in these days should contain upon its shelves all contributions bearing upon the relations of labor and capital from every point of view, – socialistic, communistic, co-operative, and individualist; and librarians should encourage visitors to read them all."

      The library stands near the entrance of the valuable park of about 439 acres given to the city by Mrs. Schenley in 1889. "This lady," says Mr. Carnegie, "although born in Pittsburg, married an English gentleman while yet in her teens. It is forty years and more since she took up her residence in London among the titled and wealthy of the world's metropolis; but still she turns to the home of her childhood, and by means of Schenley Park links her name with it forever. A noble use this of great wealth by one who thus becomes her own administrator."

      Near the library are the $125,000 conservatories given to the people by Mr. Phipps, and a source of most elevating pleasure. Mr. Carnegie's gifts in and about Pittsburg amount already to $5,000,000; yet he is soon to build a library for Homestead, and one each for Duquesne and the town of Carnegie. "Such other districts as may need branch libraries," says Mr. Carnegie, "we ardently hope we may be able to supply; for to provide free libraries for all the people of Pittsburg is a field which we would fain make our own, as chief part of our life-work. I have dropped into the plural, for there is one always with me to prompt, encourage, suggest, discuss, and advise, and fortunately, sometimes, when necessary, gently to criticise; whose heart is as keenly in this work as my own, preferring it to any other as СКАЧАТЬ