What Do I Know? Carol Brown

I was born in Columbus, Ohio. my father was the youngest of 10 children from an immigrant German family, and my mother hailed from a family of Irish immigrants. They fell in love very young and decided to get married, even though their parents did not approve.

My mom was an amateur artist, and a pretty good one. She tried sculpting, but found that she was better at painting. My dad was scientific. And while nobody in his family had gone past the eighth grade, he earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Ohio State University, and taught there for several years.

When I was about 2, my dad got an offer to work for the Koppers Company in Pittsburgh, so we moved there and lived in a place called Chatham Village, a lovely little oasis, until I was about 5 years old. In those days, Pittsburgh was visually spectacular. At night, my older sister, my younger brother and I, with my parents, would cross the Liberty Bridge by car heading home, and at the end of the bridge was a huge billboard advertisement for “Duquesne Pilsener” beer, featuring a character named “Duke” — dressed in a royal Duke’s outfit, no less. Duke would raise a glass of beer, which was mechanically moved upward on the billboard, and drink from it, after which the glass would drop down, again mechanically. Then, of course, he would have another. I can still see it in my mind’s eye.

Anyway, crossing that bridge, we could see the blast furnaces and coke ovens light up along the Monongahela River. Their flames would flash into the air and the reflections could be seen on the water. It was an amazing thing to see as a youngster. The steel industry was booming and, therefore, so was the city. We were an industry town, and one of great renown. Those are my earliest memories of Pittsburgh.

In time, our family moved to Mt. Lebanon and built a new home, and my siblings and I enjoyed playing in the streets there with our friends after dinner, when it was still light. But when World War II broke out, my parents shipped my sister, brother and me to boarding school in Ohio, and I stayed there through sixth grade. As a result, I didn’t experience much of Pittsburgh during my elementary school years, but I did like boarding school, and I always came home for summer, which was very pleasant.

Just as I was finishing sixth grade, my dad was promoted at Koppers to vice president, and ran the company’s Engineering and Construction Department out of its offices in New York’s Chrysler Building. So, we moved to Connecticut, and my parents bought a house in Westport, in Fairfield County, the part of Connecticut that juts out into New York State. From there, my dad commuted to work into Grand Central Station via railroad.

In Connecticut, I attended junior high and high school, in a very privileged setting. And given that my dad worked in New York, we would often take the train into the city and meet him for dinner before seeing a Broadway show. So, we had the extra privilege of getting an early taste of New York, which was fabulous.

When it came time for college, I was accepted at Connecticut College for Women, but was uncomfortable there because I was Catholic, and there were very few Catholics on campus. So, I decided to try a Catholic Jesuit university (at a time when some of the top-ranking Jesuit universities weren’t really accepting women). I was interested in writing, English, and philosophy, so I picked Marquette University, in Milwaukee, and transferred there.

For three-and-a half-years, Marquette was a great school for me. I got a very good general education, but was also able to take courses in philosophy and theology, which helped me to understand who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. Those extra courses enabled me to assess my relationship to my faith, which was important to me. I graduated magna cum laude, missing “summa” by only half a point.

I always enjoyed school. I liked doing research and writing papers. But one of the most important things I remember from my college days is my dad saying to me and my sister, “Girls, you can do anything you want to do. Decide what you want, and pursue it.” Most young women weren’t taught that in those days. I loved and respected my dad, and I believed what he said. Sadly, he died when he was just 60, and I don’t know that I ever told him clearly what he meant to me. But his guidance enabled me to go many places and do all kinds of things that I hadn’t dreamed of doing before.

When I graduated from Marquette, I applied for its graduate program in English, but decided that I didn’t want to go to grad school right away. I wanted to learn more about life. So, I took some of the money I had been saving and, with help from my parents, went off to Europe for a year. And although I had exposure to the arts in New York as a kid, in college and beyond, I started to develop a real passion.

After returning from Europe, I got a job working in Washington, and took some graduate courses at Georgetown. I continued to work hard, and applied to graduate programs at several top universities. In the end, I had to decide between Yale and The University of Chicago. I picked the latter, and never regretted it.

My field of study was English literature, and the “great books” were a large part of the university’s curriculum. Chicago’s theory was that one had to have an understanding of what the great thinkers thought, through the generations. That was just what they believed. The University of Chicago was about great ideas.

So, I earned a master’s degree, and was aiming to get a Ph.D. But, unbeknownst to me, at Chatham College in Pittsburgh, the woman who was then head of the English Department (who had done her graduate work at Chicago, too) asked some contacts from her grad-school days to recommend a graduate student who might consider teaching at Chatham for a year or two. They recommended me, and I said, “I’ll try it.” So, I came to Pittsburgh in August of 1959, rented an apartment in Shadyside, and started looking for the cultural life of the city — which was very hard to find in those days because there wasn’t much of it.

Looking back to the late-1950s and 1960s, Pittsburgh was not a great city for the arts. Sure, it had a symphony and an opera, but there was no real theater, and no dance. There was, of course, The Carnegie Museum of Art but, other than that, there were no art galleries. I remember thinking, “I’ll spend one or two years in this town; then I’m out of here.” I loved teaching, and loved Chatham, but Pittsburgh wasn’t Paris, and did not offer the kind of life I wanted. So, I thought, “I’ll go back to grad school, finish my Ph.D., and move on to a better place.” Then, in the late-fall of 1959, I met a man named Clifford Brown, and fell in love.

Cliff wanted to marry me early on, but I said, “I can’t. I’m going back to grad school,” and that dialogue went on between us for several months. Finally, before summer came, I thought, “This is crazy. I love this guy. He’s the most fabulous person I’ve ever met” — low-key, extremely intelligent, gentle and caring, and with a great sense of humor as well. And while I did want to marry Cliff, I knew that doing so would mean staying in Pittsburgh because he was working at Federated Investors, and was set to manage part of the firm’s burgeoning mutual fund business. So, we got married, and the rest is history.

After we married, Cliff and I bought a big, old house in Shadyside and fixed it up ourselves. And before long, we had a couple of sons, and then adopted two daughters from Korea. All are well-educated, and are now in their 50s. But when we adopted our older daughter, I knew that it was time to become a full-time mom, so I stopped teaching. Then, tragically, in 1973, when our younger daughter was only 2, Cliff was diagnosed with cancer. He died two years later.

As a stay-at-home mom, I was still connected at Chatham, and gradually started to get involved in the arts scene in Pittsburgh. It was where my heart was. But when Cliff died, our children were very young, and we had that big, old house in Shadyside that had to be tended to — and paid for. At the time, I told Cliff’s attorney, a family friend, while sitting at our dining room table one evening, “I realize that I’ll have to go to work, and must sell this house to pay off the mortgage. Then, with whatever’s left, I will have to buy a new home for me and the kids.” And it just so happened that somebody he knew had recently been elected Allegheny County Controller, so he asked me, “What would you think about being Deputy Controller?” I responded, “But I’m an English literature scholar, not an accountant.” He said, “Carol, I know you could do it.” So, I said, “OK.” Soon thereafter, I purchased two books — “Accounting Made Simple” and “Bookkeeping Made Simple” — and started reading them at night after the kids were asleep.

In January of 1976, I went to work for Allegheny County, worked there for about 10 years, in various positions, and I cannot tell you what a fabulous education that was for me. For years, I had lived in academia, with cultivated but rather isolated people. But that was only one side of life, and I hadn’t seen the others, where most people live and work. Many who worked for the county were what we, in academia, would have called “under-educated.” They had only high school educations and had been trained to do trades, yet they were some of the smartest people I ever worked with, and the kindest. To be sure, I was scared, having four little kids to raise. But surprisingly, I liked the job. I found it challenging and rewarding.

Even though that job felt good for my brain and my heart, after two years, I decided that I wanted to move on, for personal reasons. So, I sought out a position with the Allegheny County Commissioners, who respected what I had been doing in the Controller’s Office. Before too long, I was offered a job in the County Planning Department — and I took it.

By way of that job, I started to look at things that the county might be able to do to help the local arts community. Providentially, a Bureau of Cultural Programs was soon created. I was put in charge of it, and started to raise money for special arts programming, such as taking touring programs to elementary schools. I even took some to a local juvenile detention center, and to the county jail. I built the performance stages at Hartwood Acres, and created a sculpture park there. (I’m proud to say that, a couple of months ago, the county named it “Carol Brown’s Sculpture Garden,” which was really sweet.)

While I was doing all this stuff with the county, I was also doing a lot with the local arts community and other not-for-profit organizations, helping to develop new programs, sitting on boards, and so on. In essence, my career in the arts started then. I was named to the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and, ultimately, became chair. Then, under Gov. Robert Casey, I became chair of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and served again under governors Tom Ridge and Ed Rendell. I was really spreading my wings and seeing opportunities for cultural development in our region. (I later served as chair of the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, among other national arts organizations.)

In 1980, I was named director of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation, a job that gave me more clout and enabled me to open more doors. Soon, I learned that the county was planning to build a light-rail transit system, the first of its kind in the region. So, I said to the commissioners, “If we’re going to build stations Downtown, we really ought to commission some arts projects for them. And, if we can get the Port Authority to pay for a percentage of the construction for the stations, I will raise a matching amount from the private sector.” The commissioners and the Port Authority were game. So, for a couple of years, I put in a lot of time on this, while doing my parks job. I commissioned a mural by Romare Bearden, an African American artist who had lived in Pittsburgh for a bit, for the Gateway Center Station. Artist Albert Paley signed on to do something for the Wood Street Station. And Kathleen Mulcahy, Ron Desmett, and Jane Haskell did glass and lighting projects for the Steel Plaza Station.

While launching these projects, I sent proposals to the various local foundations in an attempt to raise matching funds to pay for the artwork in the Port Authority’s light-rail stations. Soon, I got a call from The Heinz Endowments, having asked for $250,000 to commission a Sol LeWitt mural for the Wood Street Station. They said, “Mrs. Brown, that’s a lot of money. You’ll have to come and meet the ‘old man’” — namely, Jack Heinz, CEO of the H.J. Heinz Company. “But do not take too much of his time. He’s a busy man.” I said, “I’ll bring my slide projector.” (In those days, we didn’t have PowerPoint for presentations.)

So, I took myself and my slides to the U.S. Steel Building, where the H.J. Heinz Company occupied the top floors (and had a great corporate art collection, by the way), and was escorted to a huge conference room. A lady in a black-and-white uniform came and offered me a seat, while someone else set up my slideshow. “Would you like coffee?” asked the lady. “That would be lovely,” I said. So, there I was, sipping coffee, when Jack Heinz came in. And two hours later, we were still talking.

Back then, you entered the “power center” in Pittsburgh if you got to Jack Heinz. And there is no question that I owe my career with what would become the “Pittsburgh Cultural Trust” to him. When I met Mr. Heinz, around 1982, he was already formulating ideas for the creation of a “Cultural District” in Downtown Pittsburgh. And, for two years thereafter, we stayed in touch, off and on, and he would often call to ask for my opinions about various arts projects. And, of course, we got the money for the Sol LeWitt mural, and a couple of times Mr. Heinz actually came down to see it under construction.

Jack Heinz and I were of like minds about the planning for the “Pittsburgh Cultural District” and, in 1984, the Board of Directors for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust was established, which set the project officially in motion. Mr. Heinz put me on that board and, before long, I was asked to consider being the Trust’s first president and CEO. At first, I said, “No.” Then I thought about it, as the search for a leader marched on. One day, I went in to see the chairman of the board and said, “Here’s my resume. If you want me to put my name in the hat, I’ll do it,” to which he said, “Thanks, Carol. I guess now we’re done.” So, I took the job and had a magnificent time working for the Cultural Trust, from 1986 to 2001, when I decided to step down.

When I started at the Trust, we were just beginning to transform the old Stanley Theatre into the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts and, from the outset, Jack Heinz assigned a project manager to keep track of how much money was needed, and what the construction costs would be. Now, I’m pretty good with numbers, and when I looked at the budgets, I realized that we had a shortfall — of about $5 million! So, I thought, “I’ll write a case statement, and raise the $5 million.” But again, one of the men who worked for Jack Heinz said, “Before you do anything, you better tell the old man.” So, I went to see him, and said, “Mr. Heinz, we have a shortfall on the Benedum. I’ve done the numbers, and it’s clear that we need to raise $5 million. I’ve written a case statement, and I’m going to hire a fundraising consultant.” He said, “But Carol, that’s so much work for you. Why don’t you just let me give you the money?” I said, “Mr. Heinz, I appreciate that. But I think it’s important that we raise the money independently because, if we get buy-in now for this theater from some other leaders in our community, it will make a difference in the theater’s and the Trust’s capacity to raise money going forward.” I didn’t think we’d have trouble raising the money, and we didn’t.

Sadly, Jack Heinz died just before we opened the Benedum, at which point I started working with Senator John Heinz and his wife, Teresa, on a major development plan for the Cultural District, and that’s the one that is still being followed today. We did the Harris Theater for movies, and bought the Byham, an old Vaudeville house, because we thought it would be important to have a facility that some of our mid-sized and smaller arts groups could use. And we did the O’Reilly Theater, with architect Michael Graves, and other theaters in the District with Al Filoni. We did “streetscaping” and facade restoration for historic buildings. We did Katz Plaza with artist Louise Bourgeois and landscape architect Dan Kiley, and Allegheny Riverfront Park with landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and visual artist Ann Hamilton. We also created the Theater Square complex, replete with a parking garage, a cabaret theater, and a Cultural District box office. These are some of the things that I most enjoy, and I’m proud of them. They “made” the Pittsburgh Cultural District.

When I came here in 1959, Pittsburgh was not like it is today. Now, we actually have a cultural center. And it was great fun to help the city revitalize itself and to help our arts community grow. You know, there is a point you reach in your 80s when you realize that you’re lucky just to be alive. And even though my marriage was ever so short (but sweet), and my career an unusual one — a winding road of sorts — fortunately, I can look back on what has been an interesting life, one that was blessed in so many respects.