Part 4 (1/2)
and Colonies; Dr. John Rhys, Princ.i.p.al of Jesus College, University of Oxford; Dr. Ernest S. Roberts, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University; Mr. William Robertson, Member Dunfermline Trust; Dr. John Ross, Chairman Dunfermline Trust, and Dr. William T. Stead, editor ”Review of Reviews”; and from Holland, Jonkheer R. de Marees van Swinderen, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States, and Dr. Joost Marius Willem van der Poorten-Schwartz (”Maarten Maartens”), author.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Entrance to Highland Park]
Mr. Andrew Carnegie has founded this splendid Inst.i.tute, with its school system, at a cost already approximating twenty million dollars, and he must enjoy the satisfaction of knowing it to be the rallying ground for the cultured and artistic life of the community. The progress made each year goes by leaps and bounds; so much so that we might well employ the phrase used by Macaulay to describe Lord Bacon's philosophy: ”The point which was yesterday invisible is to-day its starting-point, and to-morrow will be its goal.” The Inst.i.tute has truly a splendid mission.
III
The University of Pittsburgh was opened about 1770 and incorporated by the Legislature in 1787 under the name Pittsburgh Academy. In 1819 the name was changed to the Western University of Pennsylvania, but, holding to the narrower scope of a college, it did not really become a university until 1892, when it formed the Department of Medicine by taking over the Western Pennsylvania Medical College. In 1895 the Departments of Law and Pharmacy were added and women were for the first time admitted. In 1896 the Department of Dentistry was established. In 1908 (July 11th) the name was changed to the University of Pittsburgh.
The several departments of the University are at present (1908) located in different parts of the city, but a new site of forty-three acres has been acquired near Schenley Park on which it is planned to bring them all together. These new plans have been drawn under the direction of the chancellor, Dr. Samuel Black McCormick, whose faith in the merit of his cause is bound to remove whole mountains of financial difficulties. The University embraces a College and Engineering School, a School of Mines, a Graduate Department, a Summer School, Evening Cla.s.ses, Sat.u.r.day Cla.s.ses, besides Departments of Astronomy, Law, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry. It now has a corps of one hundred and fifty-one instructors and a body of 1,138 students.
IV
The author ventures to repeat in this little book a suggestion which has been made by him several times, looking to a working cooperation or even a closer bond of union between the Carnegie Inst.i.tute and the University of Pittsburgh. In an address delivered at the Carnegie Inst.i.tute on Founder's Day, 1908, the author made the following remarks on this subject:
The temptation to go a little further into the future first requires the acknowledgment which St. Paul made when he wrote of marriage: ”I speak not by authority, but by sufferance.” There will soon begin to rise on these adjacent heights the first new buildings of the Western University (now University of Pittsburgh), conceived in the cla.s.sic spirit of Greece and crowning that hill like a modern Acropolis. With its charter dating back one hundred and twenty-five years the University is already venerable in this land. Is it not feasible to hope that through the practical benevolence of our people, some working basis of union can be effected between that inst.i.tution and this? Here we have painting, and sculpture, and architecture, and books, and a wonderfully rich scientific collection, and the abiding spirit of music. We have these fast-growing Technical Schools. And yet the entire scheme seems to be lacking something which marks its unfinished state. The Technical Schools do not and should not teach languages, literature, philosophy, and the fine arts, nor the old learned professions, but these must always rest in the University. Should not one school thus supplement the other? And then, the students on each side of this main building would find available here those great collections which, if properly demonstrated, would give them a larger opportunity for systematic culture than could be offered by any other community in the world. For we should no longer permit these great departments of the fine arts and of the sciences to remain in a pa.s.sive state, but they should all be made the means of active instruction from masterful professors. Music, its theory, composition, and performance on every instrument should be taught where demonstrations could be made with the orchestra and the organ. Successful painters and sculptors, the elected members of the future faculty, should fix their studios near the Inst.i.tute and teach painting and sculpture as well as it could be done in Paris or Munich. Architecture should thrive by the hand of its trained votaries, while science should continue to reveal the secrets of her most attractive mysteries. Then, as the ambitious youths of the ancient world came to Athens to obtain the purest culture of that age, so would our modern youths, who are already in the Carnegie Technical Schools from twenty-six States, continue to come to Pittsburgh to partake of the most comprehensive scheme of education which the world would obtain. Believing firmly in the achieving power of hopeful thought, I pray you think on this.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Carnegie Inst.i.tute]
V
In the East End is the Pennsylvania College for Women (Presbyterian; chartered in 1869), which has one hundred and two students. On the North Side (Allegheny) are the Allegheny Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian; founded in 1825), which has six instructors and sixty-one students; the Western Theological Seminary (Presbyterian; opened in 1827), with sixty-four students and twelve instructors, and a library of 34,000 volumes; and the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (founded in 1856). There are five high schools and a normal academy and also the following private academies: Pittsburgh Academy, for both boys and girls; East Liberty Academy, for boys; Lady of Mercy Academy, for girls and for boys in the lower grades; the Stuart-Mitch.e.l.l School, for girls; the Gleim School, for girls; the Thurston School, for girls; and the Ursuline Young Ladies' Academy.
The Phipps Conservatory (horticulture), the largest in America, and the Hall of Botany are in Schenley Park and were built by Mr. Henry Phipps.
There is an interesting zoological garden in Highland Park which was founded by Mr. Christopher L. Magee.
The Pittsburgh ”Gazette,” founded July 29, 1786, and consolidated with the Pittsburgh ”Times” (1879) in 1906 as the ”Gazette Times,” is one of the oldest newspapers west of the Alleghany Mountains. Other prominent newspapers of the city are the ”Chronicle Telegraph” (1841); ”Post”
(1842); ”Dispatch” (1846); ”Leader” (1870; Sunday, 1864); ”Press”
(1883); and the ”Sun” (1906). There are also two German dailies, the ”Volksblatt und Freiheits-Freund” and the ”Pittsburgher Beobachter,” one Slavonic daily, one Slavonic weekly, two Italian weeklies, besides journals devoted to society and the iron, building, and gla.s.s trades.
The publis.h.i.+ng house of the United Presbyterian Church is located here, and there are several periodical journals published by the various religious bodies.
The city has some very attractive public buildings and office buildings and an unusual number of beautiful churches. The Allegheny County Court-House, in the Romanesque style, erected in 1884-88 at a cost of $2,500,000, is one of Henry H. Richardson's masterpieces. The Nixon Theater is a notable piece of architecture. The Post-Office and the Customs Office are housed in a large Government building of polished granite.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Court-house]
The city has twenty or more hospitals for the care of its sick, injured, or insane, ten of which have schools for the training of nurses. There is the Western Pennsylvania Inst.i.tute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb in Pittsburgh, which is in part maintained by the State, where trades are taught as a part of the educational system. The State also helps to maintain the Western Pennsylvania Inst.i.tution for the Blind, the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women, and the Home for Colored Children. Among other charitable inst.i.tutions maintained by the city are the Home for Orphans, Home for the Aged, Home for Released Convicts, an extensive system of public baths, the Curtis Home for Dest.i.tute Women and Girls, the Pittsburgh Newsboys' Home, the Children's Aid Society of Western Pennsylvania, the Protestant Home for Incurables, the Pittsburgh a.s.sociation for the Improvement of the Poor, and the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Children, and Aged Persons. Under the management of Women's Clubs several playgrounds are open to children during the summer, where competent teachers give instruction to children over ten years of age in music, manual training, sewing, cooking, nature study, and color work.
The water supply of Pittsburgh is taken from the Allegheny River and pumped into reservoirs, the highest of which is Herron Hill, five hundred and thirty feet above the river. A slow sand filtration plant for the filtration of the entire supply is under construction and a part of it is in operation. In this last year the Legislature has pa.s.sed an act prohibiting the deposit of sewage material in the rivers of the State, and this tardy action in the interest of decency and health will stop the ravages of death through epidemic fevers caught from poisoned streams.
VI
Pittsburgh maintains by popular support one of the four symphony orchestras in America. She has given many famous men to science, literature, and art. Her astronomical observatory is known throughout the world. Her rich men are often liberal beyond their own needs, particularly so William Thaw, who spent great sums for education and benevolence; Mrs. Mary Schenley, who has given the city a great park, over four hundred acres in the very heart of its boundaries; and Henry Phipps, who erected the largest conservatory for plants and flowers in our country. There is one other, Andrew Carnegie, whose wise and continuous use of vast wealth for the public good is nearly beyond human precedent.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Zoological Garden in Highland Park]
If Pittsburgh people were called upon to name their best known singer, they would, of course, with one accord, say Stephen C. Foster. His songs are verily written in the hearts of millions of his fellow-creatures, for who has not sung ”Old Folks at Home,” ”Nelly Bly,” ”My Old Kentucky Home,” and the others? Ethelbert Nevin is the strongest name among our musical composers, his ”Narcissus,” ”The Rosary,” and many others being known throughout the world.
Charles Stanley Reinhart, Mary Ca.s.satt, and John W. Alexander are the best known among our painters. Henry O. Tanner, the only negro painter, was born in Pittsburgh and learned the rudiments of his art here. Albert S. Wall, his son, A. Bryan Wall, George Hetzel, and John W.
Beatty have painted good pictures, as have another group which includes William A. Coffin, Martin B. Leisser, Jaspar Lawman, Eugene A. Poole, Joseph R. Woodwell, William H. Singer, Clarence M. Johns, and Johanna Woodwell Hailman. Thomas S. Clarke is a Pittsburgh painter and sculptor.