by Doug and I took a tour of the Nationality Rooms at the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. We arrived early, though, so wandered the halls on the second floor, trying doors, and thus were able to see a number of rooms on our own; lots of the rooms had a button that would play an audio clip describing the room. The tour itself was nearly two hours, but our guide talked as fast as me, and she conveyed about three hours of information during our two hour tour!
The Cathedral of Learning is a Late Gothic Revival skyscraper rising 42 stories. At 535 feet tall, it’s the second-tallest educational building in the world. It was commissioned in 1921 and contains a magnificent four-story Commons Room straight out of Hogwarts. The building contains 2,000 classrooms and other rooms related to academia, but is known for its 31 “Nationality Rooms”, which is what we were there to see.
The Nationality Rooms are donated rooms that represent a specific cultural heritage. The first of the 19 rooms, all on the first floor, were completed between 1938 and 1957, and some really showed their age – like very small desks that wouldn’t fit a laptop, or with no seating for left-handed people. The “Early American Room” (you consider that a Nationality, right?) was so dark (they had no electricity in early America, you know) that I asked if it could possibly be used for classes (the answer was no).
The remaining rooms, mostly on the third floor, were built since 1987, and many of those incorporate technology into their theme in clever but disguised ways, as one of the rules for room design is that it must represent a period pre-dating the signing of the American Constitution and the founding of the University of Pittsburgh in 1787. Other rules governing the design of rooms include no politics, no religion, and no honoring people who are still alive (there’s no knowing what they might do later!).
Some of the rooms were fairly mediocre, but many were very detailed and seemed inspiring to those who would be learning in such a lovely settings. If you click this link you can see a list of the rooms and related pictures/information for each. The Indian Room is our featured photo above.
We also walked through the Cathedral of Learning’s companion building, the Heinz Memorial Chapel, which you can read about here – it was gorgeous!
