Andrew Carnegie, the man who more than anyone else made Pittsburgh what it is, gave the city the museum complex in front of you, one of the greatest in America. Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1835, came to America in 1848, and started as a bobbin boy in a Pittsburgh cotton factory at $1.20 a week. Through ferocious energy, intelligence, and ruthlessness he built the largest steel company in the world and sold it to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $480 million — approximately $17 billion today.
He spent the rest of his life giving it away. Carnegie is the greatest philanthropist in American history. He built 2,509 public libraries across the English-speaking world, believing free access to books was the foundation of democracy.
He gave Pittsburgh four museums, a music hall, a university, and a library system. The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh include the Museum of Art and Museum of Natural History in this building, the Carnegie Science Center on the North Shore, and the Andy Warhol Museum. The man who crushed unions with Pinkerton detectives also built more public libraries than any government in history.
Pittsburgh contains both truths simultaneously. Walk in and reckon with both.