CHARLES HILLINGER’S AMERICA : Pittsburgh Still Adores Cathedral of Learning

When John Bowman first arrived in this city in 1921, the 10th University of Pittsburgh chancellor had trouble finding someone who knew the location of the school.

So a few years later, Bowman built the tallest school building in America to make sure everyone in Pittsburgh would know exactly where the university was.

It took 12 years--from 1926 to 1938 and $10 million--to construct the university’s 42-story Cathedral of Learning, the largest Gothic structure and only college skyscraper in the United States. But Chancellor Bowman cleverly anchored the towering Cathedral with classrooms honoring and preserving the ethnic identities of the people of Pittsburgh. His concept for the Nationality Rooms was to enrich the Cathedral of Learning with treasures of Old World heritages.

Ethnic groups in the city form committees to design classrooms reflecting their heritage. They raise funds to construct and fill them with objects of art.

When the Cathedral of Learning was dedicated 51 years ago, there were five Nationality Rooms-- Scottish, Swedish, German, Russian and Early American. Today there are 21 with two more under construction and nearing completion.

Each room has students’ chairs and a professor’s podium of the era depicted. Even the chalk boards are artistically compatible with the room. Regular university classes are conducted in the Nationality Rooms throughout the day and evening. Visitors from throughout the United States and many parts of the world are led on guided tours of the Nationality Rooms by members of Quo Vadis, a student volunteer group. Lectures and special events of the different ethnic groups are also held in the Nationality Rooms.

Architecturally, the rooms range from classical 5th century B.C. Greece to Byzantine, Romanesque, Renaissance, Tudor, French Empire and folk. All styles predate 1787, the year the University of Pittsburgh was founded.

Entering a Nationality Room is like stepping into a time machine.

The Greek Room is Athens at the time of Pericles, the Polish Room a 16th-Century castle, the Irish Room a 6th-Century oratory.

The Chinese Room is the Palace Hall in the Forbidden City; the Italian Room recreates the serenity of a 15th-Century Tuscan monastery, and the German Room is 16th-Century Renaissance with details inspired by the auditorium of the University of Heidelberg, founded in 1386.

Rooms are decorated with tapestries, paintings, frescoes, sculptures, stained-glass windows, hand-carved beams, and parquet floors typical of the nationalities they represent.

The largest is the English Nationality Room filled with original material salvaged from the 16th-Century Tudor-Gothic House of Commons destroyed by bombs in World War II. The Syria-Lebanon Room was a 1782 library in a Damascus home that was dismantled, shipped here and reassembled.

There are also French, Yugoslav, Norwegian, Chinese, Czechoslovak, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Lithuania and Romanian Nationality Rooms, each architecturally distinct and representing highly created periods of the various cultures.

The Nationality Rooms are cultural and aesthetic, not political. No political symbol is permitted, nor is any likeness of a living person.

The two Nationality Rooms currently under construction are the African Heritage Room and the Ukrainian Room. The African Room will depict a courtyard typical in an Ashanti village of Ghana in the late 1700s. The Ukrainian Room will feature “Ukrainian Baroque” architecture that flourished during the 17th and 18th centuries. The rooms cost $300,000 each, contributed by the two ethnic groups as a gift to the university.

Last year saw the opening of the Armenian Room, a replica of the 10th-Century Armenian library at Sanahin Monastery. Engraved on a stone heritage wall in the room, that was designed by Los Angeles architect Torkom Khrimian, are names of historically important Armenians, including composer Aram Khatchaturyan of “Saber Dance” fame and Fresno, Calif., author William Saroyan.

The Israel Heritage Room was dedicated two years ago. It is a replica of a 1st-Century dwelling. Reproductions of three 3rd-Century paintings cover chalk board doors. The paintings are of Ezra the Scribe, Moses striking a rock for water and the consecration of a temple by Aaron and his sons.

There are three other nationality groups in Pittsburgh planning and raising money for Nationality Rooms in the Cathedral of Learning--Finns, Danes and Austrians.

“It was Chancellor Bowman’s idea to erect an educational skyscraper visible from every hillside in Pittsburgh to inspire all the immigrant groups to go for higher education,” explained Maxine Bruhns, director of the Cathedral of Learning’s Nationality Rooms.

“Some 17,000 men and women and 97,000 school children made individual contributions to a fund drive for the tower in the 1920s. Today, many older residents of the city cherish certificates they received as a child for donating 10 cents, which they earned themselves, to buy a brick for the Cathedral of Learning,” Bruhns added.

“If Bowman just had the millionaires behind him, he never would have pulled it off,” she said. “There will probably will never be another university building like this again. It would not be economically feasible. It was the time of the Great Depression, yet somehow Bowman did it.”