Print Size: 24" x 30" (Frame Size: 24" x 30")
Machinery Hall was designed by architect Henry Hornbostel in a winning competition entry for the campus of the Carnegie Institute. The master plan was modeled after Thomas Jefferson’s academic village at the University of Virginia, but in place of UVA’s focal library, Hornbostel terminated his main campus axis with Machinery Hall. That the building housed the central power plant and the flanking departments of mechanical and electrical engineering was an appropriate focus for a school dedicated to the applied sciences. But realizing that the gritty reality of the power house would be offensive to the fine new campus buildings and their park-like site, Hornbostel surrounded the great steel chimney with a circular arcade that he called the Temple of Venus. It was a creative architectural response to turn-of-the century technology that gave the school a strong and iconic identity.
