East Liberty Branch Carnegie Library Pittsburgh elevation drawing

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The East Liberty Branch of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh is the subject here, rendered as an elevation drawing, a flat architectural view that shows the building's front face without perspective. Andrew Carnegie funded a large network of public libraries in the early twentieth century, and Pittsburgh, his hometown, received many of them. Drawings like this one were used to plan construction, to communicate the design to builders, and to record a building's proportions, so the image reads as both a working document and a portrait of a civic institution.

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