William Pitt Union/Schenley Hotel

While it now serves University of Pittsburgh students as the William Pitt Union, this Beaux-Arts beauty designed by Rutan and Russell – successors to H.H. Richardson – began its life in 1898 as the Schenley Hotel.

The hotel was part of real estate developer Franklin Nicola’s civic plan for Oakland inspired by the City Beautiful movement at the turn of the 20th century. (See the Pittsburgh Athletic Association entry of June 20.)

Many famous people, including four presidents, signed the hotel’s register. It also was the site of a dinner celebrating the formation of  U.S. Steel in 1901 and a speech by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during his American tour in 1959.

Lillian Russell, a major showbiz star of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, lived in Suite 437 – now the offices of the Pitt student newspaper – and married Pittsburgh newspaper editor Alexander Moore in the hotel.

Left: A roaring panther statue stands outside the William Pitt Union.

Italian actress Eleonora Duse, a contemporary of Russell’s who wowed audiences on two continents, died of pneumonia April 21, 1924, in Suite 524.

With the 1909 opening of Forbes Field, located across Forbes Avenue, the Schenley Hotel became the Pittsburgh base for visiting teams and hosted Hall of Famers like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Stan Musial. Visiting reporters also bunked a short walk from the ballpark. That didn’t stop them from submitting vouchers for taxi rides to their editors, however!

The coming of the automobile age brought the building’s service as a hotel to an end. With competition from downtown hotels and the lack of parking provided in Nicola’s plan for Oakland pressuring the profitability of the Schenley Hotel, it was sold to Pitt in 1956.

The hotel originally served the university as a dormitory before an 1980 renovation prompted by rising enrolment turned it into the Pitt student union.

More recent work created a food court, space for student organizations, a home for the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame, and renovations that restored some of the old hotel’s Gilded Age glamour.

Pitt’s ever-expanding presence in Oakland certainly hasn’t been welcomed by all, but the university should be saluted for repurposing such grand structures as the Schenley Hotel.

Above: A stairway to nowhere now is part of the William Pitt Union’s Tansky Family Lounge, which once was the Schenley Hotel’s lobby. The plaque at the center honors Italian actress Eleonora Duse, who died in the hotel in 1924.