At left, A. Guido Hita first visits the Cathedral of Learning in 1986. At right, nearly 25 years later, he stood in the same spot next to his son, Anthony.
The following first appeared in the Fall 2026 issue of Pitt Magazine, as part of celebrating the centennial of the Cathedral’s 1926 groundbreaking.
In 1986, a young man stood near the base of a Cathedral of Learning darkened by industrial residue. Nearly 25 years later, he stood there with his son in the shining future: the Cathedral restored, what were once saplings in front of the structure now fully grown and dreams fulfilled.
Today, that son, Anthony Hita (A&S ’10), runs an architectural conservation lab for LimeWorks.us in Telford, Pennsylvania.
As Pitt looks back on the September 1926 groundbreaking of the Cathedral of Learning, check out additional stories, photos, a timeline and more from the now century-old history of the University’s campus in the sky.
“I see old buildings as artifacts of embodied memory,” Hita says. “Their value lies partly in beauty but more deeply in the way they retain traces of human craft, adaptation, compromise, weathering and survival.”
In that sense, he marvels at how the generations of his family echo through the Cathedral.
His maternal grandfather, Richard M. Henderson Sr. (A&S ’59), majored in history and became a Methodist minister in Western Pennsylvania.
His uncle, Richard M. Henderson Jr. (A&S ’87, BUS ’91G, SCI ’96G) earned three degrees from Pitt and today is Pitt’s associate vice chancellor for finance management, health sciences.
A few decades back, in Philadelphia, Hita’s father, A. Guido Hita, connected to the family when he met Henderson Jr.’s sister. The couple later married, but an early trip to Pittsburgh to visit family included a stop by the Cathedral where the first photograph was taken. At the time, Anthony says, his father, who attended medical school in Mexico, had only recently arrived in Pennsylvania.
“My father built a life that would have been unimaginable when that first photograph was taken,” Anthony says. He worked “his way from a roadside newsstand job to becoming a physician, ultimately paying my full tuition so I could attend Pitt.”
More than 24 years after that first photo, A. Guido was visiting during his son’s senior year at Pitt. They spent time in the Cathedral, and decided to recreate the image of his father in front of the Cathedral — this time together.
“We returned to the same spot near Heinz Chapel. In the newer image, the Cathedral had recently undergone restoration. The building was cleaner, sharper and freshly renewed.
“That day,” Hita says, “my father “sat in on my classes, met my professors and friends, and saw firsthand the world he had made possible for me.”