Bellefield Boiler Plant

Built in 1907 to provide steam heat for Carnegie Museum, it was designed in the Romanesque Revival style by the architectural firm Longfellow, Alden & Harlow.

According to reporting by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette[5] the 2007 film The Mysteries of Pittsburgh does not use the actual Bellefield Boiler Plant, but instead uses what remains of the Carrie Furnace, a storied blast furnace that was part of US Steel's Homestead Works, a few miles south in Swissvale, Pennsylvania.

Chabon may have coined the name "Cloud Factory" himself, or heard it first from locals before employing it to great effect in his novel.

It is also possible that he may have borrowed the phrase from Henry David Thoreau's essay Ktaadn and the Maine Woods,[6] which was first published in five serialized installments in Sartain's Union Magazine in 1848.

The piece describes a transcendental, "mountain-top" experience Thoreau had in the summer of 1846 while hiking Mount Katahdin in Maine: Sometimes it seemed as if the summit would be cleared in a few moments, and smile in sunshine; but what was gained on one side was lost on another.