First Carnegie Hall in the U.S. no longer bears Andrew’s name
CARNEGIE FREE LIBRARY OF ALLEGHENY
Some say that Andrew Carnegie gave away his vast fortune out of guilt. They clearly haven’t read his prenup. Carnegie married Louise Whitfield in 1887, long before his relationship with organized labor turned bloody. He had his bride sign a document that guaranteed her an annual allowance of $20,000 — an enormous sum at that time — but stipulated that the rest would be donated for educational and charitable purposes.
Whitfield, who by all accounts was quite a generous and noble person and influential with her husband, was in full agreement.
It was around this same time that Carnegie commissioned his first library, the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, which included a music hall, in the modern-day Allegheny Center on the North Side. (Pittsburgh annexed Allegheny City in 1907.) Although this library was the first to be commissioned, construction on the Braddock library was completed first. Braddock’s
music hall was added later in an addition.
The Allegheny Carnegie, completed in 1890, was the first Carnegie Hall in the United States. It is the only Pittsburgh hall that no longer bears his name.
Carnegie’s motivations were never simple. The steel trusses for the hall’s ceiling — a high, vaulted affair — likely were used as a demonstration of new technology and building possibilities offered by the rapidly expanding Carnegie Steel Co.
As Pittsburgh’s population winnowed out in the latter half of the 20th century, funding for the library and music hall plummeted, and the city nearly demolished the building. Community funders stepped in, raising enough cash to renovate the space.
What was once an elegant, 1,000-seat theater that closely resembled the Carnegie Halls in Homestead and Braddock became a more industrial space, with exposed stone and its windows walled up to create a black-box theater.
The plaster was ripped off the walls. The balcony was removed. Half of the theater was walled off to become a lobby on the first floor and a rehearsal space on the second, leaving a more intimate performing space with dry acoustics and adjustable seating. The hall’s new capacity is about 500.
Of the remaining Steel City music halls, this one least resembles its original design, though it still upholds its founding purpose as a site for community art and performances.
Pittsburgh Public Theater operated the building from the 1970s to the 1990s, and it was renamed the New Hazlett Theater in 1980 in honor of Theodore L. Hazlett Jr., a Pittsburgh power player and a fierce supporter of the arts who had died the year before.
In 2006, five local arts organizations joined forces to create the New Hazlett Theater of Performing Arts, which currently occupies and manages the space.
“The city actually still owns the theater, but the deed is lost,” said Scott Conklin, director of operations at the New Hazlett Theater.
The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh operates the library space, which reopened in 2019 after closing in the mid-2000s due to a lightning strike on the clock tower. (“It’s very ‘Back to the Future,’ ” Conklin said. “The clock still doesn’t work.”)
Another peculiarity for this hall: It also served as a place of religious retreat for the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, one of the main entities that distributes doctrinal material for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“They still show up on tour buses all the time,” Conklin said.
The renovated theater has a high-end sound system and hosts a variety of small-scale theatrical productions and concerts, weddings, bat mitzvahs, proms and more. Philanthropic funding ensures that rental prices remain affordable for small local organizations.
In recent years, the hall installed a state-of-the-art HVAC system with COVID-19 pandemic funding and has done significant work on its front steps, to the tune of about $300,000.
“Now we just need to cover up the odd bullet hole here and there,” Conklin said, pointing out examples of shots, some fairly recent.