Charles Schwab was Andrew Carnegie's most flamboyant associate. Beginning work as a common laborer, he became superintendent at Carnegie's Braddock works, then at his Homestead works, and, finally, president of Bethlehem Steel. Schwab's mansion, built when he was only twenty-seven years old, sits high on a hill above the dreary streets of Braddock, the mill, and the Monongahela. The house, like Schwab's own persona, suggests a prince among the people. It preceded Frick's rebuilding of Clayton (
AL107) by three years, but Frick's aristocratic lifestyle was Schwab's probable model. A handsome house with compact massing, varied stonework, steep gables, and towers and spires, it seems to speak to the millworkers of the glorious possibilities of labor and hard work. The house has been meticulously restored: the mahogany beams glow again, the stained glass windows sparkle, and a century of soot from the Edgar Thomson blast furnaces has been dislodged.