Organizers of Pittsburgh's "sesquicentennial" celebration Oct. 2, 1908, took on projects big enough to match the polysyllabic name of the city's 150th birthday.

Keynote events included the laying of cornerstones for the long-planned Soldiers Memorial Hall and for the School of Mines at the newly renamed University of Pittsburgh. Founded in 1787 as the Pittsburgh Academy, the institution had been known for many years as the Western University of Pennsylvania.

The dual ceremonies in the city's Oakland neighborhood drew "the vice president of the United States, the governor of Pennsylvania and many men who rank high in national state and local affairs," according to the Oct. 3 edition of The Pittsburgh Gazette Times. Founded in 1786, the newspaper described itself as "the Oldest Work of Man in Pittsburgh, the Blockhouse Alone Excluded."

Soldiers Memorial Hall, now known as Soldiers & Sailors Military Museum and Memorial, still faces Fifth Avenue. The School of Mines, the first structure built on Pitt's Oakland campus, was demolished years ago.

"HOPES OF VETERANS REALIZED," one Gazette Times headline proclaimed. "PROUD DAY FOR UNIVERSITY," said a second. "The two buildings will rise almost side by side and both will stand as monuments to the causes to which they are to be devoted," the newspaper said.

"On the hillside above Memorial Hall, where Pittsburghers threw up fortifications when they feared the Confederates would invade the city, a battery was yesterday planted," the newspaper said. "It roared a salute ..."

One of the main speakers was Gen. Horace Porter, a Medal of Honor winner. "If any county deserves to have a [Civil War] memorial, it is Allegheny," he told the crowd. "No soldier was ever allowed to pass your border without a word of cheer and a good meal."

Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks spoke at both ceremonies.

In his remarks at the School of Mines event, he called Pittsburgh a perfect location for an institution dedicated to industrial training and research.

"The vast industrial development which you witness upon every hand hereabout, the tremendous furnaces and factories which have given to Pittsburgh primacy among the industrial centers of American and the world ... render it quite appropriate that you should lead in the important work of developing the science of mines and mining," he said. "Indeed, this is essential if you would retain the position of leadership which you have long held in the mechanical area."

In addition to his official duties, Fairbanks had a personal reason for being in Pittsburgh. He attended the christening of his first grandson and namesake, Charles Warren Fairbanks III.

"Yesterday was the first time the two met," the Gazette Times reported. The 8-week-old baby "had no appreciation of the honor done him and refused to smile, even when it was said he was as perfect an image of his grandfather as a baby could be of a bearded man."

"The vice president, however, smiled and declared he had never seen so fine a boy," the newspaper concluded.

While serious ceremonies were taking place in Oakland, residents of the city's South Side were holding a birthday carnival.

"They turned loose quite early and kept it up till late," the paper said. "From Tenth to Twentieth Street, along Carson, was a scene of merriment. Along here old and young promenaded, throwing confetti to the winds together, shoving feather ticklers into the faces of passers-by -- rioting pleasantly, in a neighborly way ... ."

The anonymous reporter was struck by the variety of outfits worn by South Siders. One young woman wore "an immense green Merry Widow hat. This really looked to be larger than an umbrella. ...

"[O]ff the main thoroughfare there were side shows galore ... [including a] Ferris wheel that wafted you in the air fully as high as the third story ... ."

One show, admission 10 cents, featured a female performer named "Aimee." The newspaper raised the question of who she was and what she did, but ultimately declined to provide an answer. "Why that would be giving away the information that it takes a dime to get," the story said. "And also it wouldn't be kind to the man at the door."