Children's Museum of Pittsburgh has been housed within the Old Post Office building since 1983 and is recognized as a regional asset for its adaptive use of historic property. The 20,000 square foot building of Italian Renaissance design is listed with the National Register of Historic Places and was designed by William Aiken, architect for the U.S. Treasury Department. It is graced with a four-story, copper domed rotunda adjoined by an enclosed courtyard. The building opened in 1897 as the main post office for the city of Allegheny and was saved from destruction by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. It was deeded to the Children's Museum in 1991.

The land now occupied by the Children's Museum and its surrounding buildings has a long history of public use and civic pride. When the city of Allegheny (annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907 and now known as Pittsburgh's North Side) was first surveyed and planned as a county seat in 1784 and 1788 under orders from Benjamin Franklin, this area served as part of a Reserve Tract of 3,000 acres to be used as payment for Revolutionary War veterans. The 36-block square grid plan with common land at the center and the periphery is familiar to many New England towns, but the practice also dates to ancient Rome and the Old Testament.

The city of Allegheny flourished independently as a home to thriving industries such as iron, glass, rope, flour, oil, cotton, wool, brass, pottery and leather. The cotton industry attracted the family of young Andrew Carnegie in 1848. The department store Buhl and Boggs played an integral role in Allegheny's social and economic vitality. After Henry Buhl's death, his estate provided significant support to the civic and cultural development of Allegheny—and his eponymous foundation continues to support the region's assets, including the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh.

One of the early beneficiaries of Buhl's generosity was the Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science, which opened in 1939 across the street from the Old Post Office. Designed by the prominent architecture firm of Ingham and Boyd, the building's Art Deco design mixes classical architectural form with allegorical sculpture in a forward-looking streamlined aesthetic. This style was especially appropriate for the German-built Zeiss Mark II planetarium projector under the domed roof, which could recreate the appearance of the heavens thousands of years into the future or the past.

The Buhl building is an example of the 1930's "Stripped Classicism" style of architecture that went to an extreme in having no publicly visible windows. It was constructed of the highest quality materials, befitting a scientific institution in the early twentieth century, and combined limestone, terrazzo, copper and aluminum with some of the more progressive technologies of the era.

For decades, the Buhl Planetarium was a source of dreams and curiosity for generations of children who sat in wonder beneath its dome. Carnegie Science Center, which operated the Planetarium since 1986, moved its programs to a new facility with a state-of-the-art planetarium, leaving the Buhl building unoccupied in 1991. Carnegie Science Center has acquired the Zeiss II from the City and hopes to place it on permanent public exhibit. The projector is believed to be one of the last of its kind.

The Post Office, Buhl Planetarium, as well as the Allegheny branch of Carnegie Public Library are located within an area known as the Allegheny Square. Amidst these historic buildings is Allegheny Center shopping mall, an example of 1960s urban renewal designed to bring consumers to the area. Over the years the mall has experienced a steady decline in traffic. Additionally the Buhl building closed (1991), the Pittsburgh Public Theater relocated to downtown Pittsburgh (1999) and the Library struggled with the costs of maintenance, access and visibility for its century-old building (eventually closing after a lightening strike in 2006.)

But even as retail traffic into Allegheny Square diminished, the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh experienced a dramatic rise in visitors. Attendance achieved a dramatic increase in visitors in 1998 with the opening of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, A Hands-on Exhibit and on average, welcomed more than 95,000 visitors each year for the next five years, with another 130,000 participating in our Outreach programming. This increase in attendance gave rise to the Museum's expansion project.

Encouraged by this growth and by the needs expressed by other child-based organizations, the Museum initiated the idea to create an expanded Children's Museum by connecting the existing facility to the 40,000 square feet Buhl building. By creating a unique "town square" for the North Side community, the Children's Museum had an opportunity to bring an agent for change to an historic neighborhood in need of revitalization.

According to noted local historian Walter Kidney, "Preservation, properly understood, understands that there will be a future and seeks to integrate with this future those things from the past that have been especially good and familiar and beautiful. The preservationist must not drag his protected structures into the future, there to drive as indigestible lumps in a world to which they have no relevance, for some vaguely-conceived 'ever after.' Rather, he must know that what he will fight to protect has a place and a meaning in the future."

It is in this spirit of respect for the past and hope for the future that the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh completed its expansion in November 2004, incorporating and preserving two important historic buildings on Pittsburgh's North Side. The redesigned Museum provides a much-needed focus on preservation efforts in the neighborhood, and serves as a destination point for Pittsburghers and visitors from the region and beyond.

Click here to learn about the awards received by the Museum's building, programs and staff since the 2004 expansion.

Click here to learn more details about our expansion, completed in November 2004.