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20th Century Context: Cramped Spaces and a Smoky City
Abstract
The Westinghouse Memorial is a monument to George Westinghouse, a Pittsburgh-based engineer who was one of the city’s icons at the peak of its industrial past. The memorial, erected in 1930 and restored in 2016, is placed in Schenley Park, bordered by the built environment of the city. Drawing upon scholarship of spatial rhetoric, urban communication, bioregionalism, and public memory, this investigation analyzes how different aspects of the memorial function rhetorically within the changing narratives of the city, both in the early 20th and 21st centuries. In the early 20th century, the natural beauty of the memorial served as an escape from the pollution of an industrializing city, while its built elements and celebration of Westinghouse as an emblem of industry’s excellence argued for the continued value of industrial progress. In the 21st century, the nature-culture integration and rebranding of Westinghouse as a beacon of creativity speak to the sustainable, green-city narrative of a post-industrial Pittsburgh. Additionally, this analysis of the Westinghouse Memorial’s rhetorical appeals demonstrates how the efficacy of Pittsburgh’s chosen narrative at any point in time is necessarily limited by how accessible such appeals are to the city’s working class.
Introduction
In the early 20th century, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania’s landscape, appearance, and economy were deeply affected by its steel, iron, coal, and glass industries. Therefore, titans of industry such as George Westinghouse, a Pittsburgh based engineer responsible for pivotal advancements in transportation and electricity, were the city’s iconic figures of the time. Westinghouse in particular founded several companies, obtained innumerable patents, and had famously good relations with his workers. In fact, he was so beloved by his employees that after his death, they pooled their resources to personally fund his memorial (Skrabec 2). In 1926, twelve years after his death, the Pittsburgh City Council decided that the memorial would be built in Schenley Park. After hiring architects Henry Hornbostel and Eric Fisher Wood to design the memorial and sculptors Daniel Chester French, Paul Fjelde, and Massaniello Piccirilli to create the sculptures, the city began the monument’s three year construction. On October 6, 1930, it was unveiled in Schenley Park, to a crowd of 15,000. (“The Memorial Story”). The Westinghouse Memorial remains there today for visitors to admire as they amble through the park.
The memorial consists of landscaping, architectural, and sculpted elements. Foliage is planted alongside two side paths leading to a lily pond surrounded by a Norwegian granite path and Phipps Run stream. At the front of the lily pond are three panels standing in a semicircle faced by a bronze statue of a boy standing on a pedestal which itself stands on a granite peninsula jutting into the pond. A small granite wall stands on the perimeter of the peninsula, intended to make the boy appear as though he is standing at the prow of a boat. Behind the boy is a granite bench. The boy, formally titled The Spirit of American Youth, marvels at each of Westinghouse’s industrial achievements as depicted on the two side panels in front of him, explained on plaques underneath. The center panel features a medallion sculpture of Westinghouse, flanked by a mechanic on one side and an engineer on the other. Underneath these figures is an inscription identifying them as well as a plaque depicting an engraving of the first air brake system, invented by the industrial giant himself.
As a space, given its physical and historical context, the Westinghouse Memorial is an intriguing artifact for rhetorical study. Though it is a celebration of industry, it is nestled within the natural environment of a park, a space which is experienced quite differently than its surroundings are. Just a short distance from the natural oasis of the memorial are both Carnegie Mellon University’s campus and Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, two spaces which feel unmistakably man-made. These notable differences between the park and its surroundings were especially pronounced in the early 20th century when the built environment of the city was characterized by pollution and cramped living spaces. For Pittsburghers of this era, the Westinghouse Memorial memorialized not just Westinghouse, but an experience of nature they had long since lost access to in an industrialized city.1 However, the rhetorical function of the memorial today is much different than it was then.
In this article, I explore how the Westinghouse Memorial has served a dynamic rhetorical purpose for Pittsburgh over the years, positioning itself within shifting narratives of the city’s identity. To do this, I examine how it reflected the city’s aspirational image at its unveiling in 1930 and then again in 2016 after its most recent restoration. In the context of its origins, I use comments about the memorial from the press and from important city figures at its unveiling to situate the memorial within the broader rhetorical project promoting Pittsburgh’s image as an industrial powerhouse which was occurring at the time. I also consider the challenges inherent in valorizing industry given the emotional toll Pittsburgh’s rapid industrial growth had on Pittsburgh’s working class. In order to explain how choices regarding the memorial’s design and subject matter might have served to mitigate these challenges, I apply scholarship of the bioregional movement to discuss how the natural beauty of the memorial might have promoted affiliation with rather than alienation from the space of the city. In a similar way, I consider how George Westinghouse’s reputation as an enlightened employer might have promoted similar affiliation with an industrial city.
In the context of the 2016 restoration, I address how the memorial has evolved to fit the narrative of a transformed post-industrial city. I consider how changes to the memorial’s design following the restoration as well as press coverage of the event serve as evidence of the memorial’s new focus on creativity and nature’s integration with the urban landscape rather than on industry and seclusion from the city. In both contexts, I also briefly discuss the consequences of the changing narratives of the city by evaluating how accessible each is to the experience of Pittsburgh’s working class. My exploration of the Westinghouse Memorial’s unveiling and its restoration contributes to scholarship of the rhetorics of public memory, space and place, and urban design by providing a case study of a distinctive memory place deeply tied to two different rhetorical constructions of Pittsburgh over time. Furthermore, by offering a bioregional interpretation of how natural spaces come to be rhetorically appealing, this study expands on the rhetorical space and place scholarship that specifically focuses on spaces lying at the intersection of man and nature.
[1] In the early 20th century, a large proportion of Pittsburgh’s population was composed of immigrant millworkers, primarily from Italy and Poland (Faires 10). These workers came from primarily agricultural regions (Sister Lucille). The urban industrial landscape of 20th century Pittsburgh would have been a novel experience to immigrants who for the first time had little access to nature.