University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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 Cathedral of Learning 7

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ITT THROUGH THE EYES OF THE OWL Pitt this year celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its yearbook, the Oicl. The years have been eventful with constant change. It is a fitting time for us to look back toward the first decades of this century, seeing what has given stature to our University, but never forgetting that the Class of 1956 will live with today and plan for tomorrow. How docs one chart the history of a great university? Its story, its drama, is elusive and the only truths of the past that exist are the records that have measured our progress. To honor that progress we have chosen to portray its source: the administrators, the faculty, the students who make a school live—no matter what its size—and the buildings, new and old, in which that life of learning is carried on. Throughout its entire history, Pitt has been concerned with growth and expansion. Since the early nineteen-hundreds when the Western University of Pennsylvania chose as its permanent name the University of Pittsburgh, new developments have come into existence quickly. An early plan for the University’s location was the building of a new educational Heinz Chapel 6 ■ ■■«,

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Acropolis in the Greek style on what is now Pitt’s upper campus. The feeling was that such a plan would take full advantage of the sloping hill and at the same time give an impression of the Classic Age in the clustering together of the various schools. The first building erected on the campus was State Hall, early seat of the Administration, followed within months in 1909 by Thaw Hall, containing the School of Engineering, near the Soldiers’ Memorial. The Dental School became an integral part of the University in 1905, moving into its present building on O’Hara Street in October, 1912, the year of Pitt’s 125th anniversary; later the Dental Clinic, the Dental Annex, and the upper Dental School were erected. United with the University since 1890, the School of Pharmacy located its building farther downtown in 1902. The school remained somewhat independent from the University proper but finally merged with Pitt in January of 1918 on the seventieth anniversary of the founding of a school of pharmacy in Pittsburgh, the practice of which actually began in the days when Pittsburgh was the last outjjost to the West. Home for the profession of medicine has been located in Pennsylvania Hall ever since its dedication in January of 1911. In this building also are the related medical library, classrooms, and laboratories. Then in 1912 the Allegheny Observatory was completed in Riverview Park, replacing an earlier observatory which was pioneered under the direction of Dr. Samuel P. Langley, early inventor in aviation. The new and soon important observatory grew out of the efforts of Dr. John A. Brashear, acting chancellor from 1901 to 1904— a man who “loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”