The ABC’s of Pittsburgh’s First Architectural Library: Anderson, Bernd and Carnegie (Mar/Apr 1996)

By Christopher Monkhouse
In the 1890s three significant architectural libraries came to the fore in the
United States in the cities of Boston, New York and Pittsburgh. Each of these architectural
libraries published catalogues of their books on architecture and the allied arts
during that decade, beginning with the Boston Public Library in 1894, the Avery Architectural
Library at Columbia University in 1895, and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in
1898. That Pittsburgh found itself in such good bibliographic company at this early
date is due entirely to three individuals: Edwin H. Anderson (1861–1947), Julius D.
Bernd (1830–1892) and Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919).
When Andrew Carnegie addressed the citizens of Pittsburgh at the dedication ceremony
of Carnegie Institute in Oakland on November 5, 1895, he had already given libraries
to neighboring communities, beginning with Braddock in 1889, and then Allegheny in
1890. In addition to a library, Oakland’s Carnegie Institute housed a museum of natural
history, a gallery of fine art and a music hall. In the course of his dedicatory address,
Carnegie took great pleasure in pointing out to the assembled guests that his gift
of steel and stone had already inspired others to follow his example, with the library,
the natural history museum and the gallery of fine art each receiving donations before
their doors had opened. Such an auspicious beginning established a healthy precedent,
of which Julius Bernd’s benefaction of 1892 to the library seemed particularly worthy
of notice to Carnegie, who referred to it in his speech:
“Mr. Bernd, honored be his memory, has the distinction of being the first to set
us all an example. His name will be first upon the tablet at the entrance which is
to record for all time the names of our benefactors. Funds have already been received
from his legacy exceeding $20,000 and appropriated for the use of the library.”1
Born into modest circumstances in Germany where he was the 12th of 13 children,
Bernd and his family emigrated to New York in the early 1830s shortly after his birth.
Eventually settling in Philadelphia, Bernd went to work at an early age. Thanks to
boundless energy and a good head for business, Bernd was able to establish in Pittsburgh
in 1862 his own wholesale and retail firm which specialized in millinery and straw
goods and later expanded to include kidskin gloves. Thirty years later he had amassed
an estate worth approximately $100,000, which upon his death in 1892 was liberally
distributed to relatives, friends and employees, along with special legacies to 22
charitable and six educational institutions: “Protestant, Jewish, Catholic and non-sectarian,-for
black and white,-for the aged and orphans,-for the sick and the homeless,- for schools,
scientific, artistic and technical; without regard to race, sex, sect or nationality.”2
Of all Bernd’s bequests, that which derived from the residue of his estate reflected
his strongest sympathy and interests. Divided in equal shares, half went to the Hebrew
University College of Cincinnati for the support of indigent students of Bernd’s faith,
while the other half went to the City of Pittsburgh for the purchase of books to be
placed in the Carnegie Library. Bernd’s one stipulation regarding the latter disbursement
was that it be used solely for the acquisition of books in a single category or department.
As Bernd had never expressed a preference for a particular area of literature, that
decision fell to the trustees of the Carnegie Library, and its librarian, Edwin Anderson.
After training in the only library school in the United States, the New York State
Library School in Albany, and a brief stint as a cataloguer at the recently established
Newberry Library in Chicago, Anderson came to Pittsburgh in 1892, initially as the
librarian of the Carnegie Free Library in Braddock, and then in 1895 as the first
librarian of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in Oakland. Committed to the ideas
and ideals of community service, Anderson quickly determined that the Bernd bequest,
if channeled into the fine arts, could over time contribute to the beautification
of the city in which the donor lived. In order to leave the principal intact by using
only the income, a “live” collection would be assured as a perpetual memorial to Bernd.
However, as that consisted of about $1,000 per year, such a sum could more adequately
support a small division, rather than a large class, and hence architecture and decoration
became the focus of the Bernd fund, rather than fine arts as a whole.
In order to ensure an informed audience for the Bernd collection of architecture,
Anderson made it possible for the first organizational meeting of the Pittsburgh Architectural
Club (briefly called at the outset “The Pittsburgh Architects’ Club”) to take place
within the walls of the Carnegie Library on December 9, 1896.3 By 1899 Anderson had
followed up that initiative by helping the club secure “permanent and commodious rooms
in the Carnegie Institute,” as well as exhibition galleries for surveys of contemporary
architecture, which started as early as 1898.4 In order to make the local architects’
link with the Bernd collection complete, Anderson from the beginning encouraged them
to suggest books for purchase, and that was still the policy in 1925.
In May of 1925, The Charette, A Little Journal of Rejuvenation Published Every
Month by the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, included an article by K. Salome Stamm
of the Carnegie Library titled “Architectural Books in the Carnegie Library, The Bernd
Collection.” Stamm’s concluding paragraph ended with the following request: “Any suggestions
for purchases, have always been very welcome, and the library considers these suggestions
from local architects a great advantage. We are glad to know what is useful and in
demand.”5
To increase the audience for every class of literature included in the Carnegie
Library, Anderson initiated the idea of issuing annotated book lists, which were sold
widely. In this way the first catalogue of the Bernd collection came to be published
in Pittsburgh in 1898. A slim volume of 33 densely printed pages, it included a short
history of the bequest and the benefactor. Many of the extensively annotated entries
which followed were provided by the architect and architectural bibliophile, Russell
Sturgis, who was well qualified for this task after playing a significant role in
the formation of the Avery Architectural Library at Columbia University starting in
1890.
The catalogue for the Avery Architectural Library appeared in print in 1895, and
it served as an invaluable reference tool for Anderson in the formation of the Bernd
collection begun that very same year, as did the catalogue for the collection of architectural
books in the Boston Public Library, published in 1894. Of additional assistance to
Anderson was a paper delivered to The Society of Architects in England on December
4, 1894, by Herbert Batsford, entitled Reference Books on Architecture and Decoration
with Hints on the Formation of an Architectural Library. Printed in 1895 for private
circulation by the London bookseller and publisher B.T. Batsford, the author encouraged
those about to begin such a collection to concentrate on recent works, as older volumes
were hard to come by and, to his mind, of limited utility in proportion to their cost.
Anderson took Batsford’s advice to heart, as evidenced by the titles in the 1898 catalogue
of the Bernd collection. Out of the 300 titles listed, all but one date from the 19th
century, and with the vast majority published after 1850. The one exception was a
copy of Architecture Libri Decem by Vitruvius Pollio published in Amsterdam in 1649.
Today the Bernd collection contains 232 titles that predate 1850, and the vast majority
have been purchased with funds generated by the Bernd bequest. Some of the greatest
rarities, however, have been added to the Bernd collection either by gift or purchase
from other sources.
The earliest book in the Bernd collection is Philibert de L’Orme’s Nouvelles Inventions,
published in Paris in 1578. Acquired in 1926, it was formerly in the Burnham Library
of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago. That great collection of architectural
books and drawings, incidentally, was established in 1912 with a generous bequest
from Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, whose name it bears. Over the years the Burnham
Library has had occasion to sell duplicates, and this would explain how Pittsburgh
came to acquire its earliest architectural book from such a distinguished collection.
Of the several 17th-century volumes in the Bernd collection, Wendel Dietterlin’s
Architectura, published in Nuremberg in 1655, is one of the most striking. With approximately
200 plates of Dietterlin’s designs in the strapwork grotesque style for windows, chimneypieces,
doors, fountains and monuments, this volume served as a source of inspiration not
only for designers in the 17th century, but the 19th as well. This particular volume
bears the bookplate of John Gregory Crace (1809–1889) who headed up one of England’s
foremost decorating firms during the middle years of the 19th century. In addition
to working with A.W.N. Pugin on the decorations in the New Palace of Westminster starting
in 1843, Crace also actively participated in the London 1851 and 1862 Exhibitions,
not to mention the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. Furthermore, the decorating
scheme provided by his son, John Diblee Crace (1838–1917) for the Elizabethan interiors
at Longleat in Wiltshire could well have been informed, if not inspired, by plates
in this very volume.
Of books dating from the 18th century, the Bernd collection is rich in folio volumes
produced more for the benefit of gentlemen amateurs than architects and builders.
Included among these “coffee-table books” for the Age of Enlightenment are Robert
Adam’s Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, published
in London in 1764, as well as his greatest rival, Sir William Chambers’, Plans, Elevations,
Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew, in Surrey, published
in London in 1763. Both of these volumes were featured in The Age of Adam exhibition
at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1992 in honor of the 200th anniversary of the death
of Robert Adam. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, a close associate of Adam and Chambers,
is also well represented in the Bernd collection, and selections from his Works (1748–1807)
have been shown on a rotating basis in the the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Perhaps the greatest rarity to be found among the 18th-century books in the Bernd
collection is a gift from the Lehman family of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. It is a nearly
pristine copy of the first architectural design book ever published in America, Abraham
Swan’s British Architect, printed by Robert Bell for John Norman in Philadelphia in
1775. Because this edition was a faithful copy of an English pattern book first published
in London in 1745, it would not be until 1797 that the first truly American builder’s
guide, The Country Builder’s Assistant, would be published by Asher Benjamin in Greenfield,
Massachusetts. And even that book was deeply indebted to English publications, and
in particular William Pain’s The Practical House Carpenter (1788).
While the Bernd collection does not as yet include Benjamin’s Country Builder’s
Assistant, it does contain a copy of Pain’s The Practical House Carpenter, as well
as his The Practical Builder, both of which did much to disseminate the Adam style
throughout the English-speaking world. For graphic evidence of their extended influence,
the Bernd copy of The Practical Builder bears the inscription of a carpenter and housewright
first living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1804, and then in Tobago, West Indies, in 1805.
Beginning in the 19th century, there was a growing response to the picturesque
movement in both architecture and landscape gardening, and a spate of pattern books
illustrating relatively modest rural residences appeared on the publishing scene.
One of the most prolific authors was Thomas D.W. Dearn, who is represented in the
Bernd collection by two titles: Sketches in Architecture; Consisting of Original Designs
for Cottages and Rural Dwellings, Suitable to Persons of Moderate Fortune, and for
Convenient Retirement (London, 1807); bound together with Designs for Lodges and Entrances
to Parks, Paddocks, and Pleasure Grounds, in the Gothic, Cottage, and Fancy Styles
(London, 1811). What makes these volumes of particular relevance to the history of
architecture in western Pennsylvania is that one of them is inscribed by their owner,
Harmar Denny (1794–1852).
Along with a distinguished career as a lawyer in Pittsburgh and as a congressman
in Washington (1829–1837), Denny made significant contributions to agriculture. At
his model farm near Lawrenceville, Denny imported new breeds of livestock and introduced
improved farming implements. Therefore the presence of Dearn’s pattern books in his
library would seem to suggest that Denny’s desire for rural improvements embraced
the architecture of farm buildings as well.
Today, the rising costs of contemporary architecture books, and the proliferation
of new titles since World War II, have meant ever-shrinking resources with which to
purchase books published before 1850 for the Bernd collection. The problem has been
compounded by the fact that antiquarian books in the fields of architecture and design
are now more actively collected by individuals and institutions than ever before.
The Dearn volumes were accessioned in 1948 and were among the last to join the earlier
books in the Bernd collection.
While The Heinz Architectural Center has the acquisition of architectural drawings
and models as its primary mission, efforts will be made whenever possible to add architectural
books to the collection. The Bernd collection is still housed in The Carnegie Library,
with the pre-1850 volumes kept in the William Reed Oliver Special Collections Room
(open by appointment). For example, one of the first gifts to the Center was a copy
of Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine’s Recueil de décorations intérieures (Paris,
1812), which complements Palais, maisons, et autres édifices modernes, dessinés à Rome
(Paris 1798), already in the Bernd collection. What makes this copy of Percier and
Fontaine’s Recueil particularly significant for the entire Carnegie Institute is that
it was acquired in London in 1893 by Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow while he was actively
collecting source material with which to enhance his designs for the original Institute
building. In her recently published account of the architectural evolution of the
Carnegie Institute, Margaret Henderson Floyd traced the designs of the plasterwork
and gold leaf ornament of the Music Hall interior back to the delicately detailed
plates which had originally inspired Longfellow.6
Even if earlier architectural books are no longer being added to the Bernd collection,
it deserves to be much better known. The Bernd collection contains several of the
most significant volumes ever published in the field of architecture, a number of
which are further enhanced by their provenance. In addition, the Bernd collection
keeps alive the memory of an enlightened local citizen whose bequest in the 1890s
forever links Pittsburgh with the development during that decade in Boston and New
York of two of the greatest architectural libraries ever assembled. The Heinz Architectural
Center celebrates this legacy by highlighting selections from the Bernd collection
on an ongoing basis. In addition, the Music and Art Department has published and made
available to the public a short title list of all the architectural and design books
published before 1850. Edwin Anderson, Julius Bernd and Andrew Carnegie would be pleased
by the significance of the Bernd collection one century after it was created.
Christopher Monkhouse, founding curator of The Heinz Architectural Center of
the Carnegie Museum of Art, is now The Bell Memorial Curator, Department of Decorative
Arts, Sculpture and Architecture, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Notes:
1.Publication of Dedication Ceremony, November 5, 1985, p. 21. Perhaps owing to
the excitement of the occasion, Andrew Carnegie slightly exaggerated the amount of
the legacy, which was closer to $19,000.
2.Julius Stern, “Julius D. Bernd. A Short Biographical Sketch Prepared by his Nephew,”
in Catalogue of the J.D. Bernd Department of Architecture in The Carnegie Library
of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, 1898, p.10.
3.Notices of the founding of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club at Carnegie Institute
appeared in: Architecture and Building News (December 19, 1896), pp. 299–300; and
The American Architect and Building News (December 26, 1896), p. 111.
4.”Club Notes,” The Brochure Series, (April 1899), p. 9. For an account of the
1898 exhibitions, see The American Architect and Building News (March 5, 1898), p.
74.
5.K. Salome Stamm, “Architectural Books in The Carnegie Library, The Bernd Collection,”
The Charette (May 1925), p. 3.
6.Margaret Henderson Floyd, “Longfellow, Alden & Harlow’s First Carnegie Library
and Institute (1891–1895),” Carnegie Magazine, (January/February, 1993), p. 30.