nah pop, no style

So, as promised, this weekend, took the mother to the Bayernhof Museum for Mother’s Day. Actually went Saturday, but that’s inconsequential.

What’s up with this place, you ask?

It’s perched above the Allegheny, above Sharpsburg, above Highland Park and all that, in O’Hara. It was built in the ’70s by an eccentric rich guy named Charles B. Brown III (seriously). He died in 1999 and left his collection of stuff to be turned into a museum. It’s full of:

• Player pianos
• Other roll-played automatic instruments like a Violano Virtuoso automatic player violin
• Weird gambling stuff
• A fake cave
• A board room that was never used
• A canning kitchen that was never used
• An observatory that was never used
• Etc etc.

The tour clocked in at almost two and a half hours, which is a little long, though there’s so much stuff in the house, it would be hard to tighten it up a lot more. Most of the other people on the tour were old and complainy because it was so long and they had to go up and down tight spiral staircases. But young, vital types like you and me can handle that, right?

Pretty cool joint, I would’ve taken pictures for you but as noted before, I don’t have a camera. So you’ll just have to imagine. Or go for yourself. Call ahead for reservations; they can theoretically accommodate you any day, though I bet on a weekday a smaller tour would be a little easier to take (we had 14 people and some of the rooms are pretty small, so things were tight now and then).

225 St. Charles Place, O’Hara.
412-782-4231