Carnegie, Andrew (1835-1919)
Role:Dates:
Portrait Location: Library Annex
Artist: Mora, Francis Luis (1874-1940)
Portrait Date:
Medium:
Dimensions: 24 1/2 x 20 in. (62.23 x 50.8 cm.)
Framed Dimensions: 27 3/4 x 23 1/2 in. (70.49 x 59.69 cm.)
Brown Portrait Number: 136
Brown Historical Property Number: 2257
Andrew Carnegie, industrialist and philanthropist, made his fortune in the steel business during the Industrial Revolution. The son of a weaver and political activist, he was born in 1835 in Dunfermline, Scotland. To escape their poverty, the Carnegie family immigrated to the United States in 1848 and settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where Andrew Carnegie's rags-to-riches story began. Starting to work in a cotton mill at the age of 13, Carnegie worked his way up and held jobs at Western Union and, from 1853 through 1865, at the Pennsylvania Railroad. Recognizing the rapid expansion of the railroad and other industries, the growing demand for iron and steel, and the profit of modern production means, Carnegie created his own business and became involved in various entrepreneurial projects. In 1875, he opened his first steel factory in Braddock, Pennsylvania, soon expanding to nearby rural Pennsylvania river towns. The Carnegie Steel Company eventually became the wealthiest and most powerful industrial enterprise in the country. It made Pittsburgh the capital of America's steel industry and America the world's foremost industrial power. Carnegie's reputation as a captain of industry with sympathy and support for labor unions was shattered in 1892 with the violent breakdown of a labor strike and lockout at the Homestead plant.
The sale of Carnegie Steel in 1901 to J.P. Morgan's United States Steel Corporation made Andrew Carnegie one of the richest men in the world. Instead of amassing money, Carnegie now started to give it away in order to benefit society, true to his social convictions put forth in "The Gospel of Wealth," written in 1889, and based on his dictum that "The man who dies rich dies disgraced." During his lifetime, Carnegie contributed over $350 million to cultural and educational institutions. With education and world peace as his main charitable causes, the Carnegie trusts, foundations and endowments benefited schools, universities, as well thousands of libraries worldwide. He contributed half of the $300, 000 building costs for the John Hay Library at Brown University, which opened in 1910; and asked to name it after the 1858 Brown alumnus. In 1911 Carnegie founded the Carnegie Corporation, which maintains until this day his philanthropic mission and legacy. Andrew Carnegie died in 1919 in Lenox, Massachusetts.
It was the custom of the Carnegie Corporation to provide the institutions it endowed with lithographic reproductions of a portrait of Andrew Carnegie. Brown University acquired two of these prints, which in years past were erroneously catalogued as original oil paintings. This fundamental misunderstanding has been disseminated so widely that the University Archives occasionally receives inquiries from researchers wishing to see the original painting, which has never been at Brown and whose location is now unknown.
See also BP 135.