Christopher Magee Memorial

Although Christopher Magee, the boss of the Pittsburgh political machine during the Gilded Age, and his partner William Flynn were called the most corrupt politicians in the country by muckraking  journalist Lincoln Steffens, Magee still managed to receive a memorial, which stands outside the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh  in Oakland.

In his book “Pittsburgh: A New Portrait,” Pitt professor Franklin Toker writes that Magee's help in getting city land for the library probably explains its erection and dedication in 1908..

It also didn’t hurt when Magee, who also was the transit baron of Pittsburgh, came to Andrew Carnegie’s aid again when he offered a cabbage farm he owned for the site of Carnegie Technical School.

However, according to Toker, the powers that be – possibly Carnegie  himself – vetoed the addition of a bust of Magee on the monument.

Noted architect Stanford White designed the base. But after White's 1906 execution at the hands of crazed Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw at New York’s Madison Square Garden, it was left to Henry Bacon, who became the architect of the Lincoln Memorial,  to execute White’s design.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who also created the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common, the Sherman monument in New York and the nude statue of Diana on the tower of White’s Madison Square Garden that scandalized Manhattan, designed the bronze relief.

Unfortunately, both Magee and Saint-Gaudens were dead before the monument’s dedication July 4,  1908. Henry Hering, Saint-Gaudens' longtime assistant, completed the work.

A 2008 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story published for the memorial’s centennial offers more information about Magee and Saint-Gaudens, whose studio and home in Cornish, N.H., is a National Historic Site. 

The Christopher Magee Monument features a woman holding a Horn of Plenty, or cornucopia.	It also displays lines from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” (Click for larger images)