October 24, 1939 through August 31, 1991
[Operated by Carnegie Institute
from January, 1987 through
February, 1994]
Photograph 17 shows The Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science and the Allegheny Regional Branch of The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in the 1950s, prior to creation of the Allegheny Center complex. Photograph 18 shows the Buhl building in 1956.
Photo 6 (1) ***Photo 7 (1) ***Photo 8 (1) ***Photo 9 (1) ***Photo 10 (1) ***Photo 11 (1)
Photo 12 (1) ***Photo 13 (1) ***Photo 14 (1) ***Photo 15 (1) ***Photo 16 (1)
(Note: Photographs 1 through 16, and the photograph of the Civil Defense Sign,
were taken by Pittsburgh area free-lance photographer Lynne S. Walsh in October of 1998 -
© Copyright 1999-2005 Lynne S. Walsh, All Rights Reserved.)
In theory, citizens could live in these shelters for a few weeks, to avoid most of the radiation fallout from the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the vicinity. Particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962, school children were trained to "duck and cover" and to assemble in the school's fallout shelter, as children participate in school fire drills today.
This system for protecting the public from fallout radiation was never tested on a large scale and, fortunately, was never needed for an actual emergency. About ten to fifteen years after these radiation fallout shelters were conceived, it was determined that the cracker rations and water were no longer fit for human consumption. These supplies were never replaced; they were simply discarded. Other supplies were also, eventually, discarded. The metal drums (which included the Civil Defense logo), which held water, were often reused for other storage by the host building. In one instance, the Geiger Counter provided for the fallout shelter in the basement of the Shaler High School, in the northern Pittsburgh suburb of Glenshaw, was given to the high school science department.
The basement of Buhl Planetarium was designated as a radiation fallout shelter. As with all such designations, the Office of Civil Defense provided a yellow and black sign, with the Civil Defense logo, which was placed at the entrance to a building or other prominent location. After about twenty years since the dissolution of the Office of Civil Defense, these historic relics of the "Cold War" are rapidly disappearing; only about a dozen or two such signs still exist in the Pittsburgh area (mostly on government and other public buildings). The sign on Buhl Planetarium was mounted just above and east of the main entrance to the building. At the bottom of the sign, it reads "BASEMENT." This sign continued to be mounted at this location until December of 2002. Here is a photograph of the sign, as it appeared in October of 1998:
Postcard of Buhl Planetarium, with Allegheny Square Fountain in foreground (circa 1970s):
Front ***
Rear
Other postcards from the Save the Buhl web site
Image 1 (4) shows a view of Allegheny City's Diamond Square(a short time later to be transformed into "Ober Park;" during the urban renewal of the late 1960s, this park became "Allegheny Square," in the middle of the Allegheny Center shopping mall, office, and apartment complex development by ALCOA) showing the former Allegheny City Hall(on the left) and the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny(on the right), with Carnegie Hall to the right of the Library clocktower. A small section of the North Side Market House can be seen to the extreme right. The original 18-floor tower of Allegheny General Hospital can be seen in the background. This photograph was taken by S.J. Link of Pittsburgh's Beaudry Studio, from the window of Henry Buhl, Jr.'s office in the Boggs and Buhl Department Store, on April 23, 1937.
Image 2 (4) shows the former Allegheny
City Hall from across Federal
Street at
the Colonel James Anderson Memorial(then located at the corner of Federal
and East Ohio Streets), next to the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny.
The North Side Post Office(now, The
Pittsburgh
Children's Museum)
is located in the background on the left(with a small and large dome).
Date: April 23, 1937; Photographer: S.J. Link.
Image 3 (4) shows the former
Allegheny City Hall from across West Ohio
Street at
the Diamond Square. The Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny can be seen in
the background, on the right.
Date: April 23, 1937; Photographer: S.J. Link.
Image 4 (4) shows the former Allegheny
City Hall(rear view), photograph
taken from the northwest. To the right of City Hall, in the background,
can
be seen the Boggs and Buhl Department Store. Henry Buhl, Jr. was the
co-owner of the Boggs and Buhl Department Store, which catered to the
carriage trade, many customers coming from the Ridge Avenue mansions
in Allegheny City(several of these homes form the main campus of the
Community College of Allegheny County, five blocks from the Buhl
Planetarium building). In 1927, an $11 million bequest, from the estate of
Henry Buhl, Jr., was used to found the Buhl Foundation(then, the
thirteenth largest foundation in the country). One million dollars of
this bequest was used to construct The Buhl Planetarium and Institute
of Popular Science in 1939. Boggs and Buhl closed in
the late 1950s, and the building was razed to make-way for the Allegheny
Center shopping mall, office, and apartment building complex in the late
1960s.
Date: April 23, 1937; Photographer:
S.J. Link.
Image 5 (4) shows demolition of
the former Allegheny City Hall, to make
way for construction of The Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular
Science. This view, taken from the Carnegie Free Library, shows the upper
floors of the North Side Post Office(now The
Pittsburgh Children's Museum), in
the background.
Date: November 29, 1937; Photographer: S.J. Link.
Image 6 (4) shows excavation for The Buhl
Planetarium and Institute of
Popular Science. Note that the steam shovel has been removed from the
hole and the work on the footers has begun.
On the extreme right can be seen part of the Carnegie
Free Library building. In the background can be seen the Hahn Furniture
Building and Allegheny General Hospital.
Date: May 2, 1938; Photographer: S.J. Link.
Cornelius Scully, Mayor of the City of Pittsburgh, and other public officials had participated in the official groundbreaking for Buhl Planetarium on April 14, 1938. Of course, this event was covered by Pittsburgh newspapers and radio stations. Dave Garroway, who went on to be the first host of NBC-TV's "Today Show" in the 1950s, covered this event for Pittsburgh's KDKA Radio[the nation's first commercial radio station which had started by broadcasting the Harding--Cox U.S. Presidential Election Returns on November 2, 1920].
Image 7 (4) is a close-up view of the
construction sign, facing West Ohio
Street, at the corner of
the excavation site. The sign says "THE BUHL
PLANETARIUM, W.F.TRIMBLE&SONS CO. ---GENERAL CONTRACTORS---, INGHAM &
BOYD, Architects."
Date: May 2, 1938; Photographer: S.J. Link.
Image 8 (4) and Image 9 (4)(close-up view of building) show construction progress of The Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science on October 22, 1938(a year before the building opened to the public). The frame of the outer planetarium dome is shown under construction; click here for more information about the construction of Buhl Planetarium's dome. The photograph, from which these two images were taken, was taken from the roof of the Boggs and Buhl Department Store. The Diamond Square(with the fountain now removed) is in the foreground of photograph 8, with part of the North Side Post Office(now The Pittsburgh Children's Museum) seen on the left and part of the Carnegie Free Library seen on the right.
Notice that a new
Presidents' Conference Committee(PCC) streetcar(which had its
Pennsylvania premier
in 1936 in Pittsburgh) can be seen on West Ohio Street in front of
the
Buhl building; an older model streetcar can be seen coming down Federal
Street. Being in the center of the former downtown business district of
Allegheny City, Buhl was built where several streetcar lines
converged, providing excellent transportation to the planetarium and
science center. Today, most North Side and North Hills bus routes serve
Allegheny
Center, with the Buhl Planetarium building in the middle of the complex.
By the end of the first decade of the new millenium, Light Rail Transit
should return to serve the North Side, with stations serving Allegheny
Center(and the Buhl building) and The Carnegie Science Center; this rail
line will connect with the Downtown Subway System. The last PCC
streetcar
to operate revenue service in
Pennsylvania(and one of the last in the United States) ended
service, on the Drake Loop
to Castle Shannon Station rail line in Pittsburgh's South Hills, with a
return to the South Hills Village Light Rail station(prior to proceeding
into the South Hills Rail Yard, adjacent to South Hills Village) on
Saturday, September 4, 1999 at 10:29 p.m. PCC
streetcars can still be seen at the Pennsylvania
Trolley Museum in Arden, near Washington, Pennsylvania.
Date: October 22, 1938; Photographer: S.J. Link.
Image 10 is a color photograph of the Buhl building, with a PCC streetcar in the foreground. This photo shows Port Authority of Allegheny County/PATransit(originally Pittsburgh Railways Company) streetcar number 1652-5 turning from Federal Street(inbound) onto East Ohio Street. Shown in the background, behind the domed Buhl Planetarium building, is the domed North Side Post Office(formerly Allegheny City's main Post Office), which is now the home of The Pittsburgh Children's Museum. This photograph was taken in April of 1966.
Note that Federal Street was the dividing line between East Ohio Street and West Ohio Street. At the intersection of Federal Street and East Ohio Street was The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Allegheny Regional Branch(north side of East Ohio Street) and the Allegheny Market House(south side of East Ohio Street). At the intersection of Federal Street and West Ohio Street was The Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science(north side of West Ohio Street) and Ober Park(south side of West Ohio Street). With the urban renewal of the late 1960s, the Market House and Boggs and Buhl Department Store were razed to make-way for Allegheny Center, which included a two-level shopping mall, three office buildings(including the new IBM Building), and four high-rise apartment buildings; a three level parking garage was constructed under Allegheny Center. Sections of Federal Street, East Ohio Street, West Ohio Street, and a few other side streets in the area were closed to traffic to make a pedestrian mall. Ober Park became Allegheny Square, with a new fountain(which could also be used as an amphitheater) right in front of The Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science. Although some retail shops remain in the plaza outside of Allegheny Center Mall, the shopping mall has become a new office complex. A Senior Citizen mid-rise apartment building is now being constructed, just to the west of the Allegheny Center Mall(in a parking lot that was known as the "Farmers' Market" site, as this site was used for a weekly farmers' market, in the good-weather months, after the Market House was razed).
The domed Post Office building, next to Buhl, was replaced by a modern Allegheny Station Post Office on Federal Street(on the former site of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Fort Wayne Railroad Station, the main railroad station for Allegheny City), just south of the Allegheny Center Mall. Buhl Planetarium had been offered the old Post Office building for one dollar, as an expansion of Buhl's Institute of Popular Science, but Buhl management declined the offer. The Allegheny Center master plan included razing the old Post Office, for construction of a fifth apartment high-rise. However, the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation purchased the old Post Office and transformed it into a city history museum.
On June 12, 1983, The Pittsburgh Children's Museum started operations in the lower level of the Old Post Office city history museum. In 1987, the Children's Museum was granted use of all three floors of the building. Noting the Children's Museum's "total and positive" association with the Old Post Office building, the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation presented the deed for the building to The Pittsburgh Children's Museum in June of 1991. The programs of the Children's Museum were recently enhanced by a major building rehabilitation, completed in December of 1998. The Pittsburgh Children's Museum is one of eight sites in the nation chosen for National Public Science Day.
Although the Old Post Office city history museum no longer exists, the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania has created a new Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center in Pittsburgh's Strip District(corner of Smallman and Thirtheenth Streets), just east of Downtown Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle.
This Internet, World Wide Web Site administered by Glenn A. Walsh.
Unless otherwise indicated, all web pages in this account are © Copyright
2000, Glenn A. Walsh, All Rights Reserved.
Additions and corrections to:
photoalbum@planetarium.cc
Last modified : Tuesday, 24-Jul-2007 18:42:06 EDT.
