42-Story Gothic Tower at the Heart of University of Pittsburgh
4200 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Free to enter the Commons Room. Nationality Rooms tours have a modest fee — check the Nationality Rooms program website for current pricing.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus, elevators available within building
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1931 · Gothic Revival Architecture · University of Pittsburgh · Pittsburgh Immigrant Heritage · Western Hemisphere's Tallest Educational Building
Charles Klauder, the foremost Gothic Revival architect of his generation, spent two years developing the design for what would become the most prominent building in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. The University of Pittsburgh commissioned the tower in 1921; Stone & Webster broke ground in 1926. Klauder's solution was an attempt at fusing traditional Gothic architecture with the functional requirements of a modern skyscraper — the result is a steel-frame structure overlaid with Indiana limestone that reads, from any approach, as a medieval tower dropped into an American university campus.
The Commons Room on the ground floor, a gift from Andrew Mellon, rises four stories under vaulted stone arches strong enough to support their own weight. Students have used it as a study and gathering space since the first classes met in the building in 1931. The exterior was not finished until October 1934, and the formal dedication followed in June 1937.
During World War II, approximately 1,000 Army Air Corps personnel and Army engineers were housed in the Cathedral between 1943 and 1945. On July 26, 1940, as war was approaching, a bomb threat was made against the structure.
The building's 31 Nationality Rooms were conceived in 1926 to document the many ethnic communities that contributed to Pittsburgh's growth. Each room represents a nationality's pre-1787 heritage, funded and designed by members of that community. Twenty-nine function as working classrooms; two are maintained for display only. Among them is the Early American Nationality Room, which contains a handmade wedding quilt on a four-poster bed in a loft accessed through a hidden door — a personal donation from E. Maxine Bruhns, longtime director of the Nationality Rooms program.
The Croghan-Schenley Room on the first floor has its own provenance. The ballroom and parlor originated in an 1830s mansion built by William Croghan Jr. for his daughter Mary, who eloped at 15 with 43-year-old British Army Captain Edward Schenley. The room was disassembled and rebuilt inside the Cathedral in the 1940s. A false fireplace in the space can be manipulated to reveal a hidden chamber.
Sources
The Cathedral of Learning's paranormal reputation is distributed across several specific rooms rather than the building as a whole — which makes the accounts somewhat easier to evaluate, since each has its own distinct character.
In the Croghan-Schenley Room, which houses furniture and architectural elements from a nineteenth-century mansion, staff and visitors have reported hearing piano music in a space that contains no piano. The chandelier has been observed swaying when there is no perceptible cause for movement. Furniture has been found rearranged. The room's connection to Mary Schenley — who eloped at 15 and became an enduring historical figure in Pittsburgh — makes it one of the more contextually interesting sites in the building. Local accounts attribute the activity to her.
E. Maxine Bruhns, who served for decades as director of the Nationality Rooms program, has publicly stated her belief that her grandmother — Martha Jane Poe McDaniel, whose handmade wedding quilt hangs in the Early American Nationality Room — is responsible for disturbances in that space. The accounts include the bed's covers being turned down, the pillow disturbed, and the corner cradle set rocking. These claims come with attribution: a named program director, a named relative, a specific room.
A more diffuse legend involves a construction worker said to have fallen from scaffolding during the building's 1930s construction, with some versions adding that the body was never recovered from the structure. Whether this event occurred is unverified. Students have repeated the story for generations, and some reports describe a figure on the upper floors consistent with it.
Staff throughout the building have noted odd sounds, moved objects, and shadows in peripheral vision — the commonplace inventory of a very large, very old building that sees heavy foot traffic.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
The Cathedral of Learning's 4-story vaulted Commons Room is open to the public — a working study hall of Indiana limestone arches and Gothic tracery where students have congregated since 1931. The building's 42 floors and 2,000 rooms are open during university hours.
Thirty-one Nationality Rooms on the second and third floors recreate pre-1787 classroom designs contributed by Pittsburgh's immigrant communities. The Early American Nationality Room contains a handmade wedding quilt and a four-poster bed accessible through a hidden door — the room's director has publicly attributed unexplained disturbances in the space to her late grandmother.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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