Valuable atlases, maps, and large plate books that show the colorful breadth of Western civilization have been stolen from the rare books room of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in Oakland, right under the gaze of Andrew Carnegie’s portrait.
The theft of 314 items was discovered last April when an appraisal for insurance purposes began of the rare materials in the Oliver Room, library spokeswoman Suzanne Thinnes said. Deemed a crime scene, the room has been closed since April 3, 2017. Since that time, detectives from the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office have been investigating the complex case.
“We’re very saddened by the breach of trust. This theft occurred over an extended period of time” by a knowledgeable individual or individuals, Ms. Thinnes said. She said the library could not provide an exact value of the missing materials.
Michael Vinson, a rare book dealer for 26 years, who reviewed a detailed list of the missing items, was more direct.
“I think the value would easily be $5 million. This is an immense cultural crime,” he said.
Among the missing books is a first edition of Isaac Newton’s “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” from London, dated 1687. Mr. Vinson noted that another copy of this book sold for $3.7 million in 2016 at a Christie’s auction in New York City.
Also gone is a first edition of Adam Smith’s book “The Wealth of Nations,” which, Mr. Vinson said, would be worth $150,000. Nine books printed before 1500 were stolen, too. These texts are called incunables because they were printed in the first 50 years after Johannes Gutenberg began printing. Mr. Vinson said the nine incunables would be worth a total of $50,000.
Mr. Vinson received an email earlier this month from a trade association detailing the theft.
Books Stolen from Carnegie Library
Use the search bar and sorting options to filter the list of over 300 items stolen from the Carnegie Library.
At the urging of Detective Lyle Graber from the Allegheny County DA’s office, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America alerted its 450 members. Detectives Fran LaQuatra and Perann Tansmore also are investigating the case.
The New York City-based organization’s email, dated March 6, included a spreadsheet listing the stolen items with titles, authors, publishers, publication date and a brief description of each work, but not in every case.
“We are hopeful the release of this list will lead to their recovery and could produce information that strengthens their investigation,” Ms. Thinnes said.
“This is a great loss to the Pittsburgh community,” she added. “Trust is a very important component of what we do on a daily basis. The library takes very seriously the security of all its collections.”
The staff member responsible for the collection is no longer employed by the library, she said, declining to elaborate.
“This was part of a magnificent collection that would cover the entire breadth of Western civilization. [Edmund] Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’ is a landmark in literature,” said Mr. Vinson, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M. and holds a master’s degree in library science from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in the history of the book.
The list, obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, includes a first folio edition of Spenser’s classic poem that was published in London in 1609.
A three-volume set by Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall, titled “History of The Indian Tribes of North America,” is worth $100,000, Mr. Vinson said.
Also missing is John James Audubon’s oversized book “The Quadrupeds of North America,” an octavo edition of his illustrations of four-footed mammals published in the 1850s in New York City.
Gone is “The North American Indian,” a photographic record of native American cultures created by Edward Curtis from 1907 to 1930. The list does not say whether the library owned the complete, 20-volume set or just a few volumes of this landmark work.
A complete set of the Edward Curtis volumes would be worth between $1 million and $2 million, Mr. Vinson said.
Herman Moll’s “Atlas Manuale” is an early, important work that is gone along with more than 20 maps of the Americas and Bermuda. An accordion-style folder holding 35 Japanese prints was taken, too.
Located on the Oakland library’s third floor, the Oliver Room was named in 1992 for William Reed Oliver, a benefactor and trustee who served on the library board for more than 40 years. Mr. Oliver, an assistant treasurer for Jones & Laughlin Steel, was 94 when he died in 1994.
Susan Benne is executive director of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, which maintains a database of missing books.
“It’s in no one’s interest to have stolen materials in the marketplace. It can create victims along the way. Sometimes the alleged thieves are sophisticated and they have a very good story that seems believable,” Ms. Benne said.
Last month, Ms. Benne said, she was contacted by Detective Graber and asked to distribute the list.
“There’s demand for good material all over the world,” Ms. Benne said, adding some items could be recovered. Garrett Scott, a book dealer in Ann Arbor, Mich., “was an excellent liaison between people who were trying to recover books in Italy after thefts there and a Swedish library that had some thefts there.”
Plate books consist of text with hand-colored aquatints, lithographs or engravings. Books showing the costumes of China, Austria and Turkey are missing. Complete atlases are attractive to thieves, but even incomplete atlases are, too, because they can be sold plate by plate.
“A thief very well may break up an atlas plate by plate because that makes it difficult to detect ownership,” Mr. Vinson..
Joyce Kosofsky, co-owner of Brattle Book Shop in downtown Boston, has worked in the book trade since 1978 and agreed with Mr. Vinson. She called the list “jaw-dropping. It’s an impressive list of books — the range of what’s there,” she said.
“These are high-end rare books. I’ve never seen a list this big. This is a major theft,” Ms. Kosofsky said.
At Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book Library, security is strict and no one is above suspicion, Mr. Vinson said.
Beinecke library curators cannot take their keys home, checking them in with a guard when they leave. Bags are searched every time someone leaves the building, Mr. Vinson said.
At the Carnegie, the Oliver Room is not accessible to the public, Ms. Thinnes said. Before the lockdown last April, visitors needed to make an appointment so materials could be pulled in advance. A few staff members had card key access to the room. Lockers were provided for visitors. Security cameras are located in the stacks and some materials were kept under lock and key.
Mr. Vinson believes that the thief may have been a library employee or employees because only a handful of people knew the security procedures.
“The books were immensely valuable. But they were also across a wide variety of fields,” he said.” Only a few people have that knowledge — a general antiquarian bookseller, a librarian or a curator would know the value. It has inside written all over it.”
“They are probably all in a storage unit or an attic somewhere if it is insider theft,” Mr. Vinson said.
Marylynne Pitz at mpitz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1648 or on Twitter:@mpitzpg.
First Published: March 19, 2018, 9:30 a.m.
