Mellon

Publicly available for the first time, Pittsburgh entrepreneur, judge, and banker Thomas Mellon's autobiography includes maps and rarely seen photographs. The preface by his grandson Paul Mellon and the foreword by David McCullough, along with the introduction, notes, and afterword by University of Pittsburgh professor Mary Briscoe, provide a historical and social context.

A landmark work from one of the preeminent historians of our time: the first published biography of Andrew W. Mellon, the American colossus who bestrode the worlds of industry, government, and philanthropy, leaving his transformative stamp on each. Andrew Mellon, one of America’s greatest financiers, built a legendary personal fortune from banking to oil to aluminum manufacture, tracking America’s course to global economic supremacy. As treasury secretary under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and finally Hoover, Mellon made the federal government run like a business–prefiguring the public official as CEO. He would be hailed as the architect of the Roaring Twenties, but, staying too long, would be blamed for the Great Depression, eventually to find himself a broken idol. Collecting art was his only nonprofessional gratification and his great gift to the American people, The National Gallery of Art, remains his most tangible legacy.

A landmark work from one of the preeminent historians of our time: the first published biography of Andrew W. Mellon, the American colossus who bestrode the worlds of industry, government, and philanthropy, leaving his transformative stamp on each. Andrew Mellon, one of America’s greatest financiers, built a legendary personal fortune from banking to oil to aluminum manufacture, tracking America’s course to global economic supremacy. As treasury secretary under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and finally Hoover, Mellon made the federal government run like a business–prefiguring the public official as CEO. He would be hailed as the architect of the Roaring Twenties, but, staying too long, would be blamed for the Great Depression, eventually to find himself a broken idol. Collecting art was his only nonprofessional gratification and his great gift to the American people, The National Gallery of Art, remains his most tangible legacy.

A biography of Bunny Mellon, the style icon and American aristocrat who designed the White House Rose Garden for her friend JFK and served as a living witness to 20th Century American history, operating in the high-level arenas of politics, diplomacy, art and fashion. Bunny Mellon, who died in 2014 at age 103, was press-shy during her lifetime. With the co-operation of Bunny Mellon's family, author Meryl Gordon received access to thousands of pages of her letters, diaries and appointment calendars and has interviewed more than 175 people to capture the spirit of this talented American original.

The second volume in our Modern Landscapes series examines the evolution of Pittsburgh's first modern garden plaza. Completed in 1955 from a design by the acclaimed landscape design firm Simonds & Simonds and architects Mitchell & Ritchey, Mellon Square functioned as an urban oasis that provided downtown office workers a much-needed respite from the city's infamous smoke pollution. Now, more than six decades later, Mellon Square is undergoing a major restoration by Patricia O'Donnell of Heritage Landscapes that aims to restore this urban garden and help revitalize downtown Pittsburgh. Featuring new photography and archival material, Mellon Square is the only book to showcase the development of this iconic urban landscape.

Paul Mellon (1907--1999) was an unparalleled collector of British art. His collection, now at Yale in the museum and study center he founded to house it, rivals those in Britain’s national museums and is unquestionably the most comprehensive representation of British art held outside of the United Kingdom. This book and the exhibition that it accompanies celebrate the centenary of his birth. Five introductory essays examine Mellon’s extraordinary collecting activity, as well as his role in creating both the Yale Center for British Art and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London as gifts to his alma mater (Yale 1929). A lavishly illustrated catalogue section showcases 148 of the most exquisite and important paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, sculpture, rare books, and manuscript material in the Yale Center’s collection, including major works by Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.