When University of Pittsburgh officials crafted the idea of Oakland\u2019s tallest edifice more than a century ago, the plans were extraordinary.<\/p>\n
Then-Chancellor John G. Bowman believed expanding his university was obvious, and that a \u201chigh building\u201d would put Pittsburgh on the map, said Drew Armstrong, director of architectural studies at Pitt.<\/p>\n
Bowman tapped architect Charles Zeller Klauder, a specialist in university architecture, to carry out what was then a 52-story building.<\/p>\n
And the ambitious plan debuted with optimism before a crowd of people at the University Club in 1924.<\/p>\n
Not so grand is how the towering structure got its name.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn his memoirs, Chancellor John G. Bowman says that the name was spontaneously uttered by one of the partners in Klauder\u2019s firm who declared: \u2018It\u2019s a Cathedral of Learning,\u2019\u201d Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
Regardless, the name stuck.<\/p>\n
Pitt officials will celebrate the centennial of the September 1926 groundbreaking of the Cathedral of Learning this weekend. A cinematic light show is scheduled from 9 to 9:15 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the Cathedral lawn, near Heinz Chapel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the great, symbolic center of the region,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cIt was a remarkable idea, and it would be hard to imagine Oakland without it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, the Cathedral houses academic departments, classrooms, offices and the university\u2019s Honors College. Its 31 Nationality Rooms are designed to represent cultural heritages and architectural traditions in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Bowman) had an insight we have come to embrace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cathedral\u2019s history<\/p>\n
In the 1920s, there was no model for building a skyscraper on a college campus, which made Bowman\u2019s plan even more incredible, Armstrong said. But before arriving as Pitt\u2019s 10th chancellor in 1921, Bowman lived in Chicago and New York City, cities where skyscrapers were more commonplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis background is coming from two major metropolises,\u201d Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
Bowman eyed a 14-acre plot known as Frick Acres to build the structure. The Mellon family assisted in Pitt acquiring the $2.5 million plot in November 1921.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mellon brothers don\u2019t just do things. They need to be convinced,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201c(Bowman) makes it clear in his memoir that he did a lot of convincing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klauder, of Philadelphia, was hired to design the tower, despite having never designed a skyscraper before.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a specialist in university architecture,\u201d Armstrong said of Klauder. \u201cThey wanted a building of traditional university style, which was gothic \u2026 Certainly, it was understood to have been a work of art.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plans for the Cathedral were publicly announced in November 1924 at a banquet at the University Club in Oakland. Overall, the reaction was positive, Armstrong said. The plan garnered international attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cBowman clearly wanted to send a message through the height, ambition and audacity of the building that Pittsburgh is a center of such significance,\u201d Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
To fund construction, Bowman led a community campaign to raise $10 million \u2014 roughly $200 million today \u2014 and included an initiative that nearly 97,000 schoolchildren each contributed a dime to fund the costs. In exchange, the child earned a certificate for a brick inside the Cathedral.<\/p>\n
The structure was then scaled back to 42 stories to avoid debt. Surprisingly, there were no major roadblocks in the Cathedral\u2019s construction, Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
At 535 feet, it was Pittsburgh\u2019s tallest building from 1929 to 1932, until completion of the Gulf Tower downtown. It is the world\u2019s second-tallest university building, the first being the main building at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia.<\/p>\n
In the following years, other colleges proposed their own skyscraper buildings, but none took the approach like Pitt, Armstrong said. He noted the Litchfield Towers, completed in 1963, range from 16 to 22 stories tall.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey wanted students to have an urban living experience,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cThe university is embracing that this is a city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legacy lives on<\/p>\n
In addition to the Cathedral, Klauder designed the Heinz Chapel and also buildings at Penn State, the University of Pennsylvania and other universities nationwide.<\/p>\n
At Pitt, his legacy has a family connection: He is the great-great-great uncle of Ryan, Stephen and Catherine Klauder, triplets who graduated from the university in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing into it, we didn\u2019t know he was an architect of the Cathedral,\u201d said Ryan, 26, who works as a certified public accountant in Phoenixville, Pa.<\/p>\n
Following a campus visit, Ryan said he researched Pitt online and found his ancestor\u2019s name. Then he made the connection.<\/p>\n
While the siblings never bragged about their family\u2019s history, it was a fun fact they\u2019d point out on campus to friends, Ryan said. Most memorable, he said, is returning to Oakland after Pitt football games in the North Shore and seeing the victory lights shine on the Cathedral.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel a sense of pride going to Pitt, even without the connection,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really something that\u2019s the focal point of campus, and there\u2019s so much that it offers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When University of Pittsburgh officials crafted the idea of Oakland\u2019s tallest edifice more than a century ago, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-294265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}