Location:\u00a0Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie, PA<\/p>\n
Featured guests:\u00a0Marlee Gallagher, executive director, Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall; Walker Evans, library director; Nate Wyrick, associate library director\/facility manager; and Heidi Matthews, music hall director.<\/p>\n
3 things that surprised me:<\/p>\n
1. In the late 1890s, the towns of Chartiers and Mansfield went to Andrew Carnegie with a proposition. If he made a sizable donation to their towns, they would merge and rename their newly formed borough after him. Carnegie agreed, and the town\u2019s new library was one of only five that Carnegie personally endowed. That endowment ran out in the 1980s, but in the early 2000s, the Chartiers Valley Partnership raised the funds to save the library.<\/p>\n
2. Nate, the facility manager, took us into a secret stairwell and showed us the studio, which now houses events, club meet-ups and performances, but used to be a gym. Legend has it that famed shortstop Honus Wagner used to play basketball there.<\/p>\n
3. Marlee walked us into the The Capt. Thomas Espy Post No. 153, where veterans of the Civil War would meet up until the late 1930s. After the last local soldier died, the room was frozen in time, though following a 2010 restoration, it\u2019s now open for visits.<\/p>\n
One thing that didn\u2019t make the final cut:\u00a0Walker, the library director, showed off their new teen space, which included a trinket exchange cabinet where teens can leave their crafted creations and discover new ones.<\/p>\n
Additional info:\u00a0You can learn more about the history of the Carnegie Carnegie on their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Want more\u00a0Yinzer Backstage Pass<\/a>?\u00a0Check out our visit to the secret room<\/a> inside the Tenth Street Bridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Location:\u00a0Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie, PA Featured guests:\u00a0Marlee Gallagher, executive director, Andrew Carnegie Free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-242894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}