Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall

Pipers come to Carnegie
for Namesake’s Birthday Celebration
 

Pictures from the birthday Party

Joanne McGarry (Collier) and Chris Fischione (Penn Hills) are part of the large crowd
that turned out for the Carnegie Birthday celebration.

Members of CMU's Pipes and Drums perform
in front to the Music Hall Skibo Castle (Carnegie's castle in Scotland) curtain.

Leon Zionts from Stage 62's "Fiddler on the Roof"
made a surpise cameo to sing "If I were a Rich Man."

Members of Carnegie Mellon University’s Pipes and Drums will be coming to the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall on Thursday, November 15th to mark the ACFL&MH’s celebration of Andrew Carnegie’s 172nd birthday. 
 

The program will also include a special showing of WQED’s On Q’s special feature on the Library & Music Hall.  Correspondent Tonia Caruso, who wrote the On Q piece on the Library & Music Hall will be on hand to introduce the program and to offer insight into On Q’s role in the community.  Ms. Caruso is an Emmy Award-winning correspondent for On Q who specializes in in-depth features focusing on the region’s businesses, arts programs, and human interest stories.
 

Carnegie Mellon University is the only university in the United States to offer a major in piping. (A piping major is also offered at  university in Scotland and one on Prince Edward Island, though CMU bears the distinction of being first to provide this rigorous training.)  CMU’s Pipes and Drums has been led by Allisdair Gillies since 1997.  Mr. Gillies, who recently won the Glenfiddich Piping Competition at Blair Castle in Scotland for the third time in the past eight years, is one of the world’s greatest solo pipers.
 

Six pipers playing the great highland pipes and one drummer playing the Scottish snare drum will perform on November 15.
 

“We think it’s only fitting that we commemorate Andrew Carnegie’s birthday,” says Library Director Diane Ragan.  “Our library has such special ties with Mr. Carnegie.  The Andrew Carnegie Free Library is the only Carnegie library (he funded more 2,500 around the world) that goes by the philanthropist’s first name.  The Andrew Carnegie Free Library is one of only four libraries in the United States that Mr. Carnegie endowed.  The other three – Braddock, Homestead and Duquesne – were built in towns where Carnegie had his steel mills.  Carnegie got its library – an indeed its name – when the leaders of what were then Chartiers and Mansfield promised to merge and become Carnegie in return for the philanthropist funding a library.  Carnegie Borough incorporated in 1894.  The Andrew Carnegie Free Library opened in 1901.

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland on November 25, 1835.  “We figured that, like the Queen of England, we can take a few liberties as to when we celebrate, says Executive Director Maggie Forbes.  “I can’t tell you what a thrill it is to bring bagpipes to this wonderful town with its signature “onion-dome church” profile and Scottish name!”  

Carnegie’s birthday celebration begins at 7:00 p.m., and is free and open to the public.  The program will be followed by a dessert and coffee reception.  
 

The Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall is in the midst of an $8.6 million capital campaign to restore, renovate and revitalize its 106 year-hold historic landmark facility.