Reading Iron Pioneer: Henry W. Oliver 1840 to 1904 by Henry Oliver Evans (1942, Dutton and Company) affords an account of another world—during the climax of the Industrial Revolution—through the life and times of Pittsburgh’s perfect capitalist. Beginning with a phrase in Latin, ending with a poem by Tennyson and logging main lines, this family narrative about a forgotten titan both concretizes and explains the archetypical American industrialist. This one’s a tall, slender, self-made man of ability named Henry Oliver. You’ve probably not heard of Mr. Oliver unless you’re from Pittsburgh. This is another sign of Western impoverishment. Henry Oliver is a name every American ought to know. Iron Pioneer excavates the reason why.
Very slowly, I read Oliver’s biography while conducting research on the Oliver Building, which is one of Pittsburgh’s first skyscrapers. I’ve recently enjoyed moments of celebration, productiveness and pride, even a dash of romanticism, inside and outside the Oliver Building. I met my friend Denise in the skyscraper, which is where she works. I’ve toured the grand lobby, toasted at a top-floor bar with my friend Amesh and I’ve stayed in the Oliver Building’s hotel to attend a ceremony in which I was awarded with the Golden Quill for Best Sports Journalism for my Roberto Clemente retrospective in 2021. For years, my mother spoke with pride of entering the Oliver Building to walk its halls and work in its offices. The building, named for businessman Henry—who went by Harry—Oliver, is where I had the pleasure to meet and interview one of Mr. Oliver’s descendants, John Oliver, who works in an Oliver Building office. This was for an article about the skyscraper, which went to press this month in the winter edition of Pittsburgh Quarterly and is available in Pittsburgh.
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