Where a tycoon made it just to give it away

PITTSBURGH -- Andrew Carnegie wasn't born in Pittsburgh, nor did he die there, but Pittsburgh was where he made his money, and making money was something very dear to Carnegie's heart.

When it came time to dole it out, Carnegie saw to it that Pittsburgh made out handsomely. Libraries, of course, a university, splendid museums, a gilded concert hall: Carnegie's largess to Pittsburgh is still overwhelming even a century after the Gilded Age.

The steel tycoon's imprint on the city of three rivers goes deeper than buildings and bequests. The steel mills that once lined those rivers are mostly gone, and the curtains of soot they spewed have lifted to reveal a vibrant 21st century city. Even so, Pittsburgh remains a place where the gulf between capital and labor is large.

Nobody had more capital there than Carnegie, and nobody tried harder to bridge the gulf. The fact that the region's only steel industry museum commemorates Carnegie's failure to resolve the bloody Homestead Strike is a sign of how controversial his legacy remains.

Traces of him elusive

Modern Pittsburgh may be unimaginable without Carnegie, but intimate traces of the man are somewhat elusive. He was 12 in 1848 when his father, William, transplanted the family from Fife in Scotland in the hopes of setting himself up as a cotton weaver. The elder Carnegie never made much of a living, and the family lived modestly in Allegheny City (since absorbed into Pittsburgh). The Carnegie house on Rebecca Street vanished when Heinz Field went up in the 1990s.

At age 33, Carnegie confided in his personal ledger that to continue devoting his life to "the amassing of wealth must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery," but he couldn't help himself. By the time he was 40, Carnegie had almost total control of steel production in western Pennsylvania. He spent the next 25 years squeezing every penny he could out of his mills.

"Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves" was Carnegie's famous motto.

When he sold out to J.P. Morgan for half a billion dollars in 1901, he was the richest man in the world.

As soon as he could afford it, Carnegie moved his family out to the salubrious suburb of Point Breeze. By 1870, he had relocated to New York, leaving his less enterprising brother, Tom, to look after the family properties at Point Breeze. Today, all that remains of the Carnegie estates is Tom's carriage house.

To get a sense of Carnegie's life at Point Breeze, visit Clayton, the neighboring estate that Carnegie's partner-turned-enemy Henry Clay Frick bought in 1882. Actually, estate is too grand a word for the stodgy Frenchified house and its five acres of rustling shade trees, roses, hydrangeas and lawns.

"Carnegie, unlike Frick, never really cared about personal artifacts or splendid houses," Pittsburgh historian Robert Gangewere said. "He was more interested in giving stuff away."

What he gave to Pittsburgh was, pre-eminently, the 10-acre complex of museums, music hall and library east of downtown.

"Carnegie firmly believed that those who made the money were the best qualified to give it away," Gangewere said. "He was convinced that workers would just drink higher wages away, whereas he would spend it wisely to benefit mankind."

A century later, that mix of condescension and open-handedness is apparent in the Beaux-Arts complex. In the Art Museum, pride of place is given to the immense plaster casts of classical and European statues and buildings. Carnegie reasoned that copies were better than nothing for art students who could not afford to see the originals.