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The former Allegheny Branch of the Carnegie Library on the North Side will become Museum Lab, part of the Children' Museum of Pittsburgh. It opens to the public on April 27.
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With Museum Lab, Children's Museum creates largest cultural campus for kids in the nation

Lake Fong/Post-Gazette

With Museum Lab, Children's Museum creates largest cultural campus for kids in the nation

Tweens and teenagers who pass under the soaring arches and vaulted ceilings of a renovated North Side library may think they are entering Hogwarts, the school where Harry Potter and other wizards learned to fly.

The magic of art, science and history fills these spaces. An arched stone entryway framed by ornately carved terracotta leads to a large, open gallery with decorative pillars. In Assembly Hall, a hexagonal room with a 25-foot ceiling, sunshine sparkles through a dozen arched windows. Next month, construction will begin on a “gymlacium,” a three-story structure made of tightly woven rope where youngsters can climb or relax in a hammock. Surrounded by dark blue walls, the gymlacium will occupy a three-story area that once held books.

Opened as Carnegie Library’s Allegheny Branch in 1890, the Richardsonian Romanesque building has undergone an 18-month renovation and been renamed Museum Lab, a learning space designed for teenagers and children ages 10-16.

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“The flow of the building is essentially back to what it was in 1890,” said Jane Werner, executive director of the Children’s Museum, which will open Museum Lab to the public April 27.

Event chairs Don and Audrey Heberle Friday, June 7, 2019, at the MuseumLab opening night Gala on the North Side.
Natalie Bencivenga
MuseumLab Gala

Museum staff have raised $18.5 million to transform the 48,000-square-foot building that was the first library that Andrew Carnegie commissioned. The nonprofit, which occupies four buildings, has created the largest cultural campus for children in the nation, Ms. Werner said.

In the former reference room — one of the largest spaces — the tile still spells out C-A-R-N-E-G-I-E L-I-B-R-A-R-Y, but the stained-glass skylight, grand fireplace and portraits of poets, writers and philosophers are long gone. The room’s new name is the Grable Gallery. FreelandBuck, a California-based architectural practice, is creating a layered, textured ceiling made of laser-cut fabric in Victorian-era hues to replace the huge skylight.

Museum Lab
Steel support structures, which used to be part of three-story book stacks in the former North Side Carnegie Library, are seen at what will be the newest wing of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Tuesday, April 2, 2019, on the North Side.(Alexandra Wimley/Post-Gazette)

In Studio Lab, a large, airy space filled with windows, visitors will create glass mosaic sculptures. On exhibit here will be colorful sculptures by Nek Chand, a self-taught artist who created a popular outdoor attraction in Chandigarh, India. The 18-acre rock garden filled with mosaic-encrusted animals, dancers and musicians is India’s second most visited attraction after the Taj Mahal. Sculptures made by visitors in Studio Lab will be exhibited outdoors, Ms. Werner said.

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A regular visitor will be Joshua Bard, an associate professor of architecture at Carnegie Mellon University who will teach robots how to plaster walls in the Studio Lab, Ms. Werner said.

In Tech Lab, children can put on virtual reality googles, use a stylus to draw in three dimensions, then walk around their creation, Ms. Werner said.

Make Lab offers band saws, jig saws, drill presses, lathes, laser cutters, routers and sewing machines. Drawers in a leftover library card catalog will be used to store tools for woodworking and other crafts.

Make Lab is bisected by a Carnegie Steel beam covered in a patina of coppery rust. One of the original granite walls is visible here, prompting Ms. Werner to point out the data lines up above.

This is an architectural rendering of the planned $4.1 million expansion of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh on Mount Washington. The project will add more than 2,700 feet of space  in a two-story addition in the back.
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Mount Washington library to close Saturday for major expansion

“You can’t run wire through granite walls,” especially when they are more than 3 feet thick, she said.

Make Lab
Make Lab offers band saws, jig saws, drill presses, lathes, laser cutters, routers and sewing machines. Drawers in a leftover library card catalog will be used to store tools for woodworking and other crafts.(Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)

In the 1970s, the grand old library was updated with plasterboard, dropped ceilings and orange carpet that concealed much of its architectural beauty. In 2006, lightning struck the library’s clock tower, shoving a 3-ton granite finial through the slate roof and into a third-floor lecture hall. Water and mold exacted their toll while the building sat empty for 10 years.

Before renovations began, Chris Cieslak had to satisfy her curiosity. As project director, she needed to know the condition of the ceiling in the former lecture hall.

“I wanted to know how much patching we would have to do if we uncovered it. That’s the ceiling that the finial fell through,” she said in a telephone interview.

In the summer of 2017, Ms. Cieslak got a flashlight and a ladder and began investigating. She climbed into an 8-foot-high bulkhead that surrounded the room and wedged herself up between the wall and bulkhead for a better look.

“I could peek over the 1970s ceiling and look way up into the far recesses of the room. I could see the big hole that the finial had made when it fell through the 1890 ceiling.

“That’s when I realized that I had this beautiful vaulted ceiling,” she said.

Initially, the library used this room for readings and performances. In the 1930s, it became the children’s reading room. Now called Assembly Hall, the 1,700-square-foot room is illuminated by a dozen arched windows. It’s available for rentals and two weddings are already scheduled in the space.

On a mild, sunny Sunday last December, Ms. Cieslak and her 17-year-old daughter, Cara, joined Ms. Werner and her husband, Bob. They planned to salvage and reuse teal and burgundy ceramic tiles from throughout the library.

“We were completely covered in dust by 2 p.m., crawling around the floor on our hands and knees. We went over to Federal Galley to get lunch. We looked like coal miners,” Ms. Cieslak recalled.

They had a pattern in mind for the tiles’ reuse.

“I had printed out a photo of the librarian’s office from the 1800s. It had a tapestry of tile in the middle of the floor,” she said.

The following week, Ms. Cieslak asked a tilesetter to install the tiles according to the old pattern.

“That actually took him about five days. They had to scrape every tile down. It was a puzzle for sure to try to get them all to fit and to line up,” she said.

The former library’s second floor will house Manchester Academic Charter School, which has about 140 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students.

Ms. Werner is delighted with the building’s transformation. The additional space in Museum Lab, Ms. Werner said, is welcome because the three-story building the museum opened in 2004 was designed for 150,000 visitors each year. Now it sees 320,000 visitors.

Marylynne Pitz: mpitz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1648 or on Twitter @mpitzpg

First Published: April 4, 2019, 11:30 a.m.
Updated: April 4, 2019, 8:44 p.m.

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The former Allegheny Branch of the Carnegie Library on the North Side will become Museum Lab, part of the Children' Museum of Pittsburgh. It opens to the public on April 27.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
Hand-carved foxes and ornately decorated terra cotta frame the entry of the former Carnegie Library Allegheny Branch, built in 1890. Now called Museum Lab, it opens on April 27.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
In February, Chris Cieslak examines a decorative archway from the old Carnegie Library that was discovered by construction crews working on Museum Lab.  (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
Arches frame the main lobby of the former Allegheny Branch of Carnegie Library, now part of Museum Lab.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
Decorative mosaic tile on the floor of the former Allegheny Branch of the Carnegie Library, now part of Museum Lab.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
The Grable Gallery is the new name for the former reference room of the Carnegie Library's Allegheny Branch.  (Koning Eizenberg Architecture )
The former reference room of the Allegheny Branch of the Carnegie Library, which opened in 1890.  (Children's Museum of Pittsburgh )
Andrew Carnegie's name appears on a steel beam in the Make Lab of the new Museum Lab.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
In April 2006, lightning struck the Carnegie Library. A granite finial atop the building's clock tower fell through the ceiling and into this third-floor space, now called Assembly Hall.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
The Assembly Hall on the third floor of Museum Lab has an ornate ceiling and arched windows.  (Alexandra Wimley/Post-Gazette)
Steel support structures fill a three-story space where the book stacks were in the North Side Carnegie Library. As part of Museum Lab, architect and designer Manca Ahlin will install a climbing structure called a gymlacium in the space.  (Alexandra Wimley/Post-Gazette)
Steel support structures, which used to be part of three-story book stacks in the former North Side Carnegie Library, are part of Museum Lab.  (Alexandra Wimley/Post-Gazette)
A classroom for Manchester Academic Charter School on the second floor of Museum Lab.  (Lake Fong/Post-Gazette)
Lake Fong/Post-Gazette
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