Father Pitt

Tag: University of Pittsburgh

  • Log Cabin on the Pitt Campus

    This is an old log house—probably about 200 years old—brought in from the rural exurbs of Armstrong County to represent the log cabin that has long played a prominent part in Pitt’s origin story. From 1787 until its first building was ready, the Pittsburgh Academy used a log building. That building is long gone, of course; this one was donated by a rich alumnus. It looks a bit silly among the sophisticated Gothic extravagances of the Stephen Foster Memorial, the Cathedral of Learning, and Heinz Chapel.

    These pictures were taken back in February; for some reason old Pa Pitt never got around to publishing them until now. They are rendered in two-color old-postcard style for no very good reason other than that they looked better that way.

  • Heinz Chapel

    More pictures of Heinz Chapel, the last major work of Charles Z. Klauder, who designed the whole Gothic city of buildings at the heart of the Pitt campus.

  • Heinz Chapel

    The cluster of buildings by Charles Z. Klauder at the heart of the University of Pittsburgh is one of America’s great architectural treasures. This chapel comes from the very end of the era in which architecture could be thought of in terms of the ages rather than this decade. Klauder—who died just before the chapel opened—seems as comfortable with his French Gothic idiom as if he had grown up in France in the late Middle Ages.

  • Heinz Chapel

    KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

    The Heinz Memorial Chapel at the University of Pittsburgh, designed in fantasy-Gothic style by Charles Z. Klauder, who designed a whole complex of fantasy-Gothic buildings for Pitt with the Cathedral of Learning at its center.

  • Heinz Chapel, Inside and Out

    Somehow Charles Z. Klauder managed to create perfectly Gothic buildings with an Art Deco sensibility in every detail. His Cathedral of Learning is the most perfect Gothic skyscraper in the world; it’s organically Gothic, not just a skyscraper with Gothic trimmings.

    On the same ideally landscaped square in Oakland sits Heinz Chapel, Klauder’s last work, a building with more modest dimensions but more flamboyant ornament. Its lacy spire is a remarkable work of Gothic fantasy. Its transept windows, designed (like all the other stained glass in the building) by Charles J. Connick, are supposedly the tallest stained-glass windows in the world, or among the tallest, or rather tallish, depending on which source you consult. It’s one of Pittsburgh’s favorite wedding sites, and on a Saturday afternoon weddings follow one after another as though the brides were on a conveyor belt.

    The cornerstone identifies the date in figures that perfectly match the Deco Gothic spirit of the building.

    These photographs were taken with a Zorki-4 bearing a Jupiter-8 f/2 lens, which is a fine camera for a day out in the city. It’s versatile, it’s built like a Soviet tank, and the lens is sharp and fast (and interchangeable with any screwmount Leica lens). And there were literally millions made, so if it does break you can just get another one.

  • Gothic Fantasy

     

    The spire of Heinz Chapel on the University of Pittsburgh campus reaches toward heaven.

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