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PrintThe 201st anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth will be celebrated Friday with the grand reopening of the Civil War Room in the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall in Carnegie.
The occasion will feature the display of 100 photographic portraits of the man who was president when Union and Confederate soldiers clashed on battlefields in the North and South.
Here are some of the activities surrounding the Espy Post grand reopening at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall, 300 Beechwood Ave., Carnegie:
• Opening reception, 5:30 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $50.
• Free tours of the Espy post, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
• Keynote address, 1 p.m. Saturday, "The Strange Career of Lincoln the Loser" by Scott Sandage, Carnegie Mellon University professor of cultural history.
• 100 portraits of Lincoln displayed in the second-floor Reception Hall through March 27. The photographs were printed by photographer Norman Schumm, of Mt. Lebanon. The exhibit is free.
• One-man show, 8 p.m. Saturday: "An Evening with Mark Twain," starring Dr. Alan Solter and presented by Stage 62. Tickets are $20; $15 for seniors and students.
• Other events scheduled in April will be a month-long national traveling exhibit, "Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Time, a Man for All Times." The free exhibit was developed by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
For information on these and other events, visit www.carnegiecarnegie.com.
Titled "100 Aspects of Lincoln," the stark black-and-white photographs range from an 1847 daguerreotype to the only photograph of Lincoln in his coffin in 1865. They will be mounted on the wall sequentially by date.
"You can see President Lincoln aging picture by picture," said Bernadette E. Kazmarski, a local artist and writer who matted and framed the photos.
The artifacts are housed on the second floor in the Capt. Thomas Espy Post No. 153 of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The historic collection has been closed since last year during renovations to the Espy post.
"The opening is a big deal, but the room is here forever," said Margaret Forbes, executive director the library. "I believe it will be a venue for Civil War Tourism and Civil War Scholarship."
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh will preside over the opening reception at 5:30 p.m. Friday. Admission will be $50.
Gov. Thornburgh, a member of the board of the Gettysburg Foundation, played basketball in the library building when he was growing up in Rosslyn Farms, Ms. Forbes said. The gym, which is in the basement, has not been used for years because it sustained heavy water damage.
Free tours of the Espy Post room will be offered from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Docents will staff the room on future Saturdays, and appointments can be made to tour it.
The Espy Post was chartered in 1879 and members custom-furnished a room at the library in 1906, five years after the Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall opened on Beechwood Avenue.
The founding fathers named their town for the steel baron-turned-philanthropist, and he in turn built the library and music hall.
The Espy Post room is full of artifacts, including a 1903 Bible on a stand and an 1888 Bible in a glass case. On display are swords and guns and a drum that was owned by Capt. Espy.
The exhibit contains odd and unusual items such as a canteen encrusted with a hornet's nest, cotton tufts plucked from a Virginia battlefield and badges made from melted Confederate guns.
In the late 19th century, there were nearly 7,000 Grand Army posts. Starting in 1866, they were founded as organizations for soldiers who served in the Union Army and Navy. Only about six remain, and the Espy post is one of the most intact.
"Most GAR posts did not have relics and artifacts," Ms. Forbes said. They were social groups that met regularly.
"This one has relics because of this building, the grandest building around."
Documents and receipts indicate the veterans agreed to furnish their meeting room for "$1,100, which was a lot of money then," Ms . Forbes said.
Using photographs and written records, the goal of the restoration work was to restore the room to its original appearance.
"We didn't pick the colors. The veterans did," Ms. Forbes said.
Describing the "before" wall color as "water-damaged dull gray," the room was painted a shade of orange that she calls "pumpkin chiffon." New carpet mimics the pattern and colors of the original rug, which contained shades of orange, teal and burgundy.
The Lincoln portraits will be displayed in the Reception Hall through March 27.
They were printed by fine arts photographer Norman Schumm of Mt. Lebanon. He obtained the negatives in 1995 from photojournalist and author Stefan Lorant, well known in Western Pennsylvania for his picture book, "Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City."
Mr. Lorant also published a book, "Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life." He commissioned Mr. Schumm to print the negatives, which turned out to take three weeks in the dark room. As part of his pay, Mr. Schumm got to keep a copy of each portrait.
Some treasures from the Espy post are not on public display, including manuscripts that scholars can study by appointment.
Library director Diane Klinefelter said the staff is working on getting that information onto microfilm so it is easily available to the public with no risk of damage to the original documents.
Ms. Klinefelter is a professional genealogist in addition to being a librarian and author of two books on the Civil War. Some of her mother's relatives fought on the Confederate side, while Klinefelter relatives fought for the Union.
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