Part 3 (2/2)
Pittsburgh is also a port of entry, and for the year ending December, 1907, the value of its imports amounted to $2,416,367.
In 1806 the manufacture of iron was begun, and by 1825 this had become the leading industry. Among the earlier prominent iron industries was the Kensington Iron Works, of which Samuel Church (born February 5, 1800; died December 7, 1857), whose family has been resident in Pittsburgh from 1822 to the present day, was the leading partner. In the manufacture of iron and steel products Pittsburgh ranks first among the cities of the United States, their value in 1905 amounting to $92,939,860, or 53.3 per cent. of the total of the whole country.
Several towns in the near neighborhood are also extensively engaged in the same industry, and in 1902 Allegheny County produced about 24 per cent. of the pig iron; nearly 34 per cent. of the Bessemer steel; 44 per cent. of the open hearth steel; 53 per cent. of the crucible steel; 24 per cent. of the steel rails, and 59 per cent. of the structural shapes that were made that year in the United States. In 1905 the value of Pittsburgh's foundry and machine-shop products amounted to $9,631,514; of the product of steam railroad repair shops, $3,726,990; of malt liquors, $3,166,829; of slaughtering and meat-packing products, $2,732,027; of cigars and cigarettes, $2,297,228; of gla.s.s, $2,130,540; and of tin and terne plate, $1,645,570. Electrical machinery, apparatus, and supplies were manufactured largely in the city, to a value in 1905 of $1,796,557. The Heinz Company has its main pickle plant in Pittsburgh, the largest establishment of its kind in the world.
Pittsburgh's first gla.s.s works was built in 1797 by James O'Hara. In 1900, and for a long period preceding, the town ranked first among American cities in the manufacture of gla.s.s, but in 1905 it was outranked in this industry by Muncie, Indiana, Millville, New Jersey, and Was.h.i.+ngton, Pennsylvania; but in the district outside of the limits of Pittsburgh much gla.s.s is manufactured, so that the Pittsburgh gla.s.s district is still the greatest in the country. In Pittsburgh or its immediate vicinity the more important plants of the United States Steel Corporation are located, including the Carnegie Works at Homestead. Just outside the limits also are the plants of the Westinghouse Company for the manufacture of electrical apparatus, of air-brakes which George Westinghouse invented in 1868, and of devices for railway signals which he also invented.
Alexander Johnston Ca.s.satt, one of the greatest of the Pennsylvania Railroad presidents, and perhaps the most far-seeing and resourceful of all our captains of industry of the present generation, was born here.
James McCrea, the present wise and conservative president of that road, lived here for twenty years. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Phipps, and Henry C.
Frick were the strongest personalities who grew up with the Carnegie steel interests. George Westinghouse, whose inventive genius, as shown in his safety appliances, has so greatly reduced the hazards of railway travel and of operation, has long been one of the industrial and social pillars of the community. John A. Brashear, astronomer and educator, the maker of delicate instruments, is a well-beloved citizen.
Pittsburgh ranks high as a banking center. She is the second city in the United States in banking capital and surplus, and leads all American cities in proportion of capital and surplus to gross deposits, with 47.1 per cent., while Philadelphia ranks second with 26 per cent. In 1906, there were one hundred and seventy-nine banks and trust companies in the Pittsburgh district with a combined capital of $72,058,402, and a surplus of $87,044,622. The gross deposits were $395,379,783, while the total resources amounted to $593,392,069. Pittsburgh, with clearing-house exchanges amounting to $2,640,847,046, ranks sixth among the cities of the United States, being exceeded by the following cities in the order named: New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and St.
Louis, and often on a given day exceeds those of St. Louis.
III
The tax valuation of Pittsburgh property is $609,632,427. She mines one quarter of the bituminous coal of the United States. With an invested capital of $641,000,000, she has 3,029 mills and factories with an annual product worth $551,000,000, and 250,000 employees on a pay-roll of about $1,000,000 a day, or $350,000,000 a year. Her electric street-railway system multiplies itself through her streets for four hundred and ninety-two miles. Natural-gas fuel is conveyed into her mills and houses through one thousand miles of iron pipe. Her output of c.o.ke makes one train ten miles long every day throughout the year. Seven hundred pa.s.senger trains and ten thousand loaded freight cars run to and from her terminals every day. Nowhere else in the world is there so large a Bessemer-steel plant, crucible-steel plant, plate-gla.s.s plant, chimney-gla.s.s plant, table-gla.s.s plant, air-brake plant, steel-rail plant, cork works, tube works, or steel freight-car works. Her armor sheaths our battle-s.h.i.+ps, as well as those of Russia and j.a.pan. She equips the navies of the world with projectiles and range-finders. Her bridges span the rivers of India, China, Egypt, and the Argentine Republic; and her locomotives, rails, and bridges are used on the Siberian Railroad. She builds electric railways for Great Britain and Brazil, and telescopes for Germany and Denmark. Indeed, she distributes her varied manufactures into the channels of trade all over the earth.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Pittsburgh Country Club]
INTELLECTUAL
I
But while these stupendous industries have given Pittsburgh her wealth, population, supremacy, and power, commercial materialism is not the _ultima thule_ of her people.
Travelers who come to Pittsburgh, forgetting the smoke which often dims the blue splendor of its skies, are struck with the picturesque situation of the town, for they find rolling plateaus, wide rivers, and narrow valleys dropping down from high hills or precipitous bluffs throughout the whole district over which the city extends. Yet the surpa.s.sing beauty of nature is not more impressive to the thinking stranger than the work of man who has created and dominates a vast industrial system. The manufactories extend for miles along the banks of all three rivers. Red fires rise heavenward from gigantic forges where iron is being fused into wealth. The business section of the city is wedged in by the rivers, its streets are swarming with people, and there is a myriad of retail houses, wholesale houses, banks, tall office buildings, hotels, theaters, and railway terminals; but right where these stop the residence section begins like another city of happy homes--an immense garden of verdant trees and flowering lawns divided off by beautiful avenues, where some houses rise which in Europe would be called castles and palaces, with scarce a fence between to mark the land lines, giving an aspect almost of a park rather than of a city.
There are many miles of asphalt streets set off with gra.s.s plots. On the rolling hills above the Monongahela River is Schenley Park (about four hundred and forty acres) with beautiful drives, winding bridle paths, and shady walks through narrow valleys and over small streams. Above the Allegheny River is Highland Park (about two hundred and ninety acres), containing a placid lake and commanding fine views from the summits of its great hills. It also contains a very interesting zoological garden.
Close to Schenley Park are Homewood and Calvary Cemeteries and near Highland Park is Allegheny Cemetery, where the dead sleep amidst drooping willows and shading elms. Connecting the two parks and leading to them from the downtown section is a system of wide boulevards about twenty miles in length. On the North Side (once Allegheny) is Riverview Park (two hundred and seventeen acres), in which the Allegheny Observatory is situated. A large number of handsome bridges span the rivers. The Pittsburgh Country Club provides a broad expanse of rolling acres for pastoral sports.
II
In Schenley Park is the Carnegie Inst.i.tute, with its new main building, dedicated in April (11, 12, and 13), 1907, with imposing ceremonies which were attended by several hundred prominent men from America and Europe. This building, which is about six hundred feet long and four hundred feet wide, contains a library, an art gallery, halls of architecture and sculpture, a museum, and a hall of music; while the Carnegie Technical Schools are operated in separate buildings near by.
It is built in the later Renaissance style, being very simple and yet beautiful. Its exterior is of Ohio sandstone, while its interior finish is largely in marble, of which there are sixty-five varieties, brought from every famous quarry in the world. In its great entrance hall is a series of mural decorations by John W. Alexander, a distinguished son of Pittsburgh. The library, in which the inst.i.tution had its beginning in 1895, contains about 300,000 volumes, has seven important branches, and one hundred and seventy-seven stations for the distribution of books.
Mr. Edwin H. Anderson inaugurated the library at the time of its creation, and, after several years of successful service, was followed by Mr. Anderson H. Hopkins, and he by Mr. Harrison W. Craver, who is now the efficient librarian. The Fine Arts department contains many casts of notable works of architecture and sculpture, sufficient to carry the visitor in fancy through an almost unbroken development from the earliest times in which man began to produce beautiful structures to the present day. It is now the aim of this department to develop its galleries on three lines: first, to gather early American paintings from the very beginning of art in this country; second, to acquire such portraits of eminent men as will, in the pa.s.sage of years, make these halls to some extent a national portrait gallery; and, third, to obtain such pieces of contemporary art as will lead to the formation of a thoroughly representative collection of modern painting. The Art Gallery is already rich in this latter purpose, and is renowned for its annual compet.i.tive exhibits which are open to the artists of all countries for prizes offered by the Carnegie Inst.i.tute. Mr. John W. Beatty, Director of Fine Arts, has made the building up of this department his ripest and best work. The Museum embraces sections of paleontology, mineralogy, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, entomology, botany, comparative anatomy, archaeology, numismatics, ceramics, textiles, transportation, carvings in wood and ivory, historical collections, the useful arts, and biological sciences. Its work in the department of paleontology is particularly noteworthy as it has extended the boundaries of knowledge through its many explorations in the western fossil fields. The success of the Museum is largely due to the energy and erudition of Dr.
W. J. Holland, its amiable director. In the music-hall, a symphony orchestra is maintained, and free recitals are given on the great organ twice every week by a capable performer. When the orchestra began its work thirteen years ago, it is doubtful if there were very many persons in Pittsburgh, other than musical students, who knew the difference between a symphony, a suite, a concerto, and a fugue. To-day there are thousands of people in this city who can intelligently describe the shading differences in the Ninth Symphony and give good reasons for their preference as between the two movements of the ”Unfinished.” The first conductor of the orchestra was Frederic Archer, for three years, who was followed by Victor Herbert, for three years, and then came Emil Paur, who is now in charge. The Technical Schools embrace a School of Applied Science, a School for Apprentices and Journeymen, a School of Applied Design, and a School for Women, and already possess a capable faculty of one hundred and fifteen members, and a student body numbering 1,916. Dr. Arthur A. Hamerschlag is an enthusiastic and capable director of this educational scheme. The Inst.i.tute is governed by a Board of Trustees, of which William N. Frew is President, Robert Pitcairn, Vice President, Samuel Harden Church, Secretary, and James H. Reed, Treasurer. Charles C. Mellor is chairman of the Museum committee, John Caldwell, of the Fine Arts committee, George A. Macbeth, of the Library committee, and William McConway, of the Technical Schools committee.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Panther Hollow Bridge, Schenley Park]
The annual celebration of Founder's Day at the Carnegie Inst.i.tute has become one of the most notable platform occasions in America, made so by the ill.u.s.trious men who partic.i.p.ate in the exercises. Some of these distinguished orators are William McKinley and Grover Cleveland, former Presidents of the United States; John Morley and James Bryce, foremost among British statesmen and authors; Joseph Jefferson, a beloved actor; Richard Watson Gilder, editor and poet; Wu Ting Fang, Chinese diplomat, and Whitelaw Reid, editor and amba.s.sador. At the great dedication of the new building, in April, 1907, the celebration of Founder's Day surpa.s.sed all previous efforts, being marked by the a.s.sembling of an ill.u.s.trious group of men, and the delivery of a series of addresses, which made the festival altogether beyond precedent. On that occasion there came to Pittsburgh, as the guests of the Inst.i.tute, from France, Dr. Leonce Benedite, Director Musee du Luxembourg; Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, Member of the French Senate and of the Hague Court of Arbitration; Dr. Paul Doumer, late Governor-General of Cochin China, and Dr. Camille Enlart, Director of the Trocadero Museum; from Germany, upon the personal suggestion of his Majesty, Emperor William II, His Excellency Lieutenant-General Alfred von Loewenfeld, Adjutant-General to his Majesty the Emperor; Colonel Gustav d.i.c.khuth, Lecturer on Military Science to the Royal Household; Dr. Ernst von Ihne, Hof-Architekt Sr.
Maj. d. Kaisers; Dr. Reinhold Koser, Princ.i.p.al Director of the Prussian State Archives, and Prof. Dr. Fritz Schaper, sculptor; from Great Britain, Mr. William Archer, author and critic; Sir Robert S. Ball, Director of Cambridge Observatory; Dr. C. F. Moberly Bell, manager London ”Times”; Sir Robert Cranston, late Lord Provost of Edinburgh; Sir Edward Elgar, composer; Mr. James Currie Macbeth, Provost of Dunfermline; Dr. P. Chalmers Mitch.e.l.l, Secretary Zoological Society of London; Sir William Henry Preece, Consulting Engineer to the G. P. O.
<script>