07/08/2026
Shared from Jackson-Township historical preservation:
Buhl Planetarium on the North Side of Pittsburgh in 1939. The first publicly-funded Carnegie Library sits to the right and in the distance is the 20-floor, $8 million tower of Allegheny General Hospital. Pittsburgh architects Ingham & Boyd designed the Buhl Planetarium in the stripped Classical style at a cost of $1.07 million. The Planetarium was dedicated on October 24, 1939. The octagonal dome is composed of copper and formerly hosted the most popular feature of the Planetarium, the sky show projected on the dome’s interior. The sky show and science exhibits were moved to the new Carnegie Science Center in 1994. The building boasts sculpted reliefs and Indiana limestone walls on its exterior. The unique building is named in honor of Henry Buhl, Jr. (1869-1927), a City of Allegheny (now Pittsburgh’s North Side neighborhood) merchant who owned a department store that catered to the wealthy. The Buhl Planetarium has the oldest operating, major planetarium projector in the world. The Zeiss Optical Works in Jena, Germany, manufactured the projector at a cost of $135,000. It has 106 lenses capable of producing 9000 images of stars. It was the first building of its type to have an operating theatre with a special sound system for the hearing-impaired.
(Photo from http://buhlplanetarium4.tripod.com/)
