Cathedral of Learning

The Cathedral of Learning is a Gothic cathedral stretched into a skyscraper: a 42-storey tower of Indiana limestone over a steel frame, rising 535 feet (163 metres) above the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. Its vertical ribs run unbroken from the street to the crown, so that the whole tower reads as a single upward gesture. It is the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere, second among university buildings worldwide only to the main building of Moscow State University, and the second-tallest Gothic-style building in the world after New York's Woolworth Building.

The idea came from John Gabbert Bowman, who became the university's chancellor in 1921 and found it housed partly in temporary wooden huts left over from the First World War. He wanted one tall building that would give the city a symbol of education and solve the university's lack of space at once. With help from the Mellon family the university acquired the 14-acre Frick Acres site, and the Philadelphia architect Charles Klauder, a leading Gothic designer of the day, spent two years fusing the modern office tower with the language of late Gothic churches. Many in the city thought it too tall. Ground was broken in 1926, the first class met in 1931, the exterior was completed in 1934, and the building was dedicated in 1937. A persistent local story claims Bowman had the stonework started at the top so the project could not be stopped; construction photographs show otherwise, and the real reason upper floors were faced early was a delay in stone deliveries for the lower ones.

Inside, the ground floors open into the Commons Room, a vaulted Gothic hall of about half an acre, four storeys high, used for study and gatherings. Around it on two levels are the 31 Nationality Rooms, classrooms each designed by one of Pittsburgh's immigrant and ethnic communities in the style of its homeland, most still in daily use for teaching. The building is also known for its stained glass and its carved stone, wood and ironwork. Near the top, a pair of peregrine falcons nests on a 40th-floor balcony, and gold lights around the upper floors are switched on after Pitt sporting victories.

Pittsburgh grew where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio, and for a century it was the steel capital of the United States. Oakland, east of downtown, is its main university and museum district.

Getting there

The Cathedral of Learning stands in the Oakland district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about 4 km east of downtown. Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) is about 24 km away in a straight line, on the far western side of the city.