Efforts underway to preserve and reuse former Carnegie Library building in Hazelwood
Steve Paulovitch has fond memories of the old Carnegie Library branch on Hazelwood’s Monongahela Street.
Paulovitch, 77, of Monroeville, grew up in Hazelwood and said he started going to the library at age 5 or 6.
It was one of the town’s main social and cultural centers with a large foreign language section, a storytelling area for children and a basement auditorium where local theatrical groups staged plays and musicals, Paulovitch said.
“It was a very active library,” he said. “I would go to the library once a week, maybe twice a week. The head librarian was Mrs. Campbell, and they had a reading room for children. We would just gather and sit on the floor and Mrs. Campbell would read new books that Carnegie Library would pick up.”
The 119-year-old building closed in 2004, and Pittsburgh designated it as a city historical site. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has since opened a new branch on Second Avenue.
City and neighborhood officials are seeking a company to redevelop the old building as a “high quality, residential, community or special purpose facility” while preserving its historic character.
Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority owns it and put a sale price of $109,000 on the building and four adjoining vacant lots, according to a request for proposals issued in September.
Designed by Alden & Harlow architects, the building contains its original mahogany circulation desk sitting directly below a stained glass domed window. It also has a 250-seat auditorium in the basement and an upper floor balcony overlooking the neighborhood.
City Councilman Corey O’Connor, who represents Hazelwood, said various proposals have come in over the years, including such things as a bar, microbrewery and neighborhood event space.
“People have been interested,” he said. “They’ve taken tours, they’ve toured the neighborhood, but nobody’s done a full-blown plan for this whole building. That’s why the (request for proposals) is important, so we can see cost and what people are interested in doing with this. Then we can take it to the neighborhood and see what we come up with.”
A review committee, which includes representatives of the URA, O’Connor’s office and the Hazelwood Initiative community group, will review the proposals and vet developers.
Sonya Tilghman, executive director of Hazelwood Initiative, said the building is a community asset and residents want to see it preserved.
“Whatever is developed there should include some public or community component to it, and it should also reflect something of the history of Hazelwood,” she said. “I think the community just wants to see the building developed in a historically respectful manner.”
Hazelwood, which borders the Monongahela River, was once one of Pittsburgh’s main industrial centers. Jones and Laughlin Steel Co.’s Pittsburgh Works lined riverbanks in Hazelwood and the South Side and employed thousands of residents.
The neighborhood’s population peaked in 1960 with 12,757 residents and has since declined with the collapse of heavy industry in Pittsburgh to a little more than 4,000.
The former mill site is being redeveloped as Hazelwood Green, a center for high-tech companies. Hazelwood is also home to one of the city’s oldest structures — the 1792 John Woods House, also on Monongahela Street — which is being transformed into a Scottish pub and restaurant.
“The (library building’s) proximity to Hazelwood Green is definitely a bonus to whatever goes there, as well as the plans for the Woods House,” Tilghman said.
Glen A. Walsh, 64, of Mt. Lebanon, who has been researching Carnegie Libraries for more than two decades, said Andrew Carnegie funded the main library in Oakland, the former library branch in the North Side and eight other branches across the city.
He said the Hazelwood library was one of the first branches. Six of the original branch buildings are still standing and five — Lawrenceville, West End, Mount Washington, South Side and Homewood — are still in use as libraries, Walsh said. The former library on Wylie Avenue in the Hill District is now a mosque. The East Liberty branch was replaced by a newer facility and razed, he said.
“Andrew Carnegie actually considered neighborhood libraries even more important than the main library because this is where the people actually lived,” Walsh said. “It was giving the people more access to a library. Hazelwood was booming. It had the big J&L mill, and I guess he felt that this was one of the neighborhoods where people really needed a library.”
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