When the Carnegie Library of Homestead Music Hall was selling their old, wooden floor seats in a fire sale amid ongoing renovations, Chuck Zapf spotted P1, his brother’s favorite chair.
Zapf, who now lives in Whitaker, Pa., remembers going to the library with his brother, Gary, when they were just kids. They would catch the bus from West Mifflin, check out books, and take swimming lessons in the library’s athletic club.
“The Carnegie of Homestead is a huge part of our family,” Zapf, now 63, said over email. “My wife and I swim and use the library. Gary attends all the shows.”
Founded by local steel magnate Andrew Carnegie in 1898, the library sits atop a hill between East 10th and East 11th avenues in what is technically Munhall. It services a number of communities in the Monongahela River Valley.
Inside the Carnegie Library of Homestead’s east wing sits the music hall, which was undergoing final renovations in July in anticipation of its reopening on Aug. 10, when the Eagles tribute band Out of Eden is set to perform.
Even amid construction, with all of its floor seats torn out, the Music Hall retains an elegant simplicity: red velvet curtains flank the stage, a balcony hugs the room’s round walls, and a bright chandelier hangs from the center of the dome-shaped roof.
Despite the similar names, the Carnegie Library of Homestead Music Hall is not to be mistaken for the Carnegie Music Hall, which is located in the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh in Oakland. People sometimes confuse it with the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in the borough of Carnegie, said Carol Shrieve, the Carnegie Library of Homestead’s executive director. “Andrew Carnegie was very vain. He named everything after himself,” she joked. “So, it causes a bit of confusion.”
Emily Kubincanek, who became the library’s program coordinator in 2021, has taken a look in the building’s archive. She said the Music Hall, part of the library’s original design, started as a sort of community center, hosting high school graduations, church services, employee training seminars for U.S. Steel, and plays for children.
"It wasn’t looked at, in the beginning, as a revenue source,” said Kubincanek. “It was just something for the community to use.”
The major change came around 2008 when Drusky Entertainment, a regional concert promoter, approached the library about booking touring acts there. Now, Shrieve said, ticket sales for the Music Hall, which seats 1,045 guests, account for 47% of the library’s budget.
“We’re taking our proceeds, our net gains, and we are putting it into our programming,” Shrieve said.
The shows themselves are largely staffed by dozens of volunteers, who work as ushers, bartenders, and ticket takers. For this fall, the venue has a slate of concerts including the Psychedelic Furs with Frankie Rose and several tribute bands covering Pink Floyd, Styx and other acts. Upcoming comedy shows include former Saturday Night Live cast member Leslie Jones and clean comic Brian Regan.
Kubincanek said some of the recent performers at the Music Hall she enjoyed include the trio of Steve Schrippa, Vincent Pastore, and Michael Imperioli, the former cast members of “The Sopranos,” who hosted a conversation in 2022 about the iconic HBO show.
“Michael Imperioli loves libraries, and he gave me a ticket to the show and asked me to come meet him,” Kubincanek said. “A lot of the performers come in and they love the building, and the fact that the library is part of it is fascinating to them.”
Shrieve remembers a musical appearance by the actor Jeff Goldblum, a West Homestead native, in 2019. “He had a hard time performing, because he knew everybody in the audience, and he kept coming offstage and hugging people,” she said.
In addition to buying his brother’s favorite seat, Chuck Zapf made a donation so that a memorial would be added to seat P1 in his parents’ memory. He wondered “if Mr. Carnegie realized the amount of people his gift would touch so many years later.”