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Not Much Housing. While such strides were being made, culture was getting its attention, too. R. K. Mellon was having Carnegie Museum scrubbed and painted and rearranged. Mellon and his friends had contributed a total of some $28 million for artistic and educational projects.
Only in housing were the planners not moving as fast as some people thought they should. The federal housing bill would help, but estimates were that 60,000 Pittsburghers needed low-rent housing. The best Pittsburgh could hope for was adequate housing by 1970. R. K. Mellon, Davy Lawrence and the others maintained that first things came first. Industrial Pittsburgh had to be rescued first; that was the foundation of the whole town's economy.
But probably the most significant project under way was the hole outside of R. K. Mellon's office. On the first eight floors of the 39-story skyscraper the Mellon National Bank will have its quarters. On the next 30 floors will be offices for U.S. Steel. On the 39th floor will be the offices of Big Steel's President Ben Fairless —and R. K. Mellon. Probably no single office floor in the U.S. would support such a weight of industrial power and influence.
From the open eye in the wall of the Union Trust, R. K. Mellon could look out on this reassuring vision. Here in $38 million of new buildings, Pittsburgh was asserting its iron-jawed belief in itself, and its iron-jawed confidence that it could set things right. The Allegheny Conference was an experiment in a new and wiser capitalism—working to repair the damage done by the purposeful haste and thoughtlessness of the old empire builders. If capitalism couldn't do it, the men of Pittsburgh were convinced, no one else could.
* The other members: his sister Mrs. Alan Scaife; cousin Paul and Paul's sister, Mrs. Ailsa Bruce; and their elderly cousin, William Larimer Mellon.