University of Pittsburgh

• 1. Introduction

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  The University of Pittsburgh was founded in 1787 by Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a lawyer and writer who believed the western frontier needed a place of learning. Pittsburgh at the time sat on the edge of the American frontier. Yet within a decade of the school's first charter, the city was already outgrowing that modest log cabin academy. What emerged over the next two centuries was something few early frontier settlements could have predicted: a sprawling urban research university with a 42-story Gothic tower at its center, a vaccine lab that changed the course of a global pandemic, and a medical center so dominant it became the largest non-government employer in the entire state of Pennsylvania. How does a two-room schoolhouse on a frontier street become one of the most research-intensive universities in the world? That question leads through fires, financial crises, a chancellor's dream of a tower, and a scientist working in a basement who would halt one of the 20th century's most feared diseases.

• 2. Fire, Survival, and Relocation

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  Brackenridge obtained the original charter from the Pennsylvania legislature on the 28th of February 1787, just ten weeks before the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia. The first proper building went up in 1790 on the south side of Third Street and Cherry Alley. It was a small two-story brick structure containing three rooms. By 1819, the Commonwealth amended the school's charter to grant it university status, renaming it the Western University of Pennsylvania, intended as the western counterpart to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

  By 1830, the university had moved into a grander three-story building with Ionic columns and a cupola near the original site in downtown Pittsburgh. Trouble came from two directions at once. The state legislature pushed for the university to abandon liberal education in favor of vocational training. The university refused, nearly destroying itself in the process. Then, in 1845, the Great Fire swept through Pittsburgh, wiping out 20 square blocks and taking with it the university's buildings and most of its records. Classes temporarily shifted to Trinity Church.

  Four years later, in 1849, the replacement building also burned down. Operations were suspended for several years while the university rebuilt. By 1854, a new building rose at the corner of Ross and Diamond streets, and classes resumed the following year. Samuel Pierpont Langley, astronomer and future Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was chosen as director of the Allegheny Observatory in 1867 after it was donated to the university two years earlier. Langley would remain on faculty until 1891, when he was succeeded by astronomer James Keeler.

• 3. The Cathedral of Learning

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  In the 1920s, chancellor John Gabbert Bowman declared a vision for a "tall building" that would serve as the centerpiece of the university. The 14-acre Frick Acres property in Oakland was purchased, and attention shifted from the hillside Greek Acropolis plan of the 1900s toward a neo-Gothic Revival design. By 1925, Bowman had settled on a design by Charles Klauder: a tower reaching 535 feet whose height, with open space all around, would suggest the "character that ought to be in an educated man."

  Bowman described the building's parallel lines going upward as expressing courage and fearlessness, and said it would "unify Pittsburgh into a community conscious of its character." The building was deliberately cut off flat at the top, suggesting that its lines, like education, have no ending. Funding came from donors and from a campaign asking local schoolchildren to donate dimes. Construction began in 1926, and despite the arrival of the Great Depression, the Cathedral began hosting classes in 1931 and was formally dedicated in 1937.

  Today the Cathedral of Learning is the second tallest university building in the world. Its interior centers on a 22,000 square foot Gothic hall Commons Room with 52-foot arches. On the first and third floors sit 31 Nationality Rooms, each decorated in the cultural tradition of a different country, which reflect the university's emphasis on international studies. The building falls within the Oakland Civic Center/Schenley Farms National Historic District. On football victory nights, golden flood lights illuminate the tower's top.

• 4. Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine

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  Jonas Salk set up the University of Pittsburgh's Virus Research Lab in the basement of what is now Salk Hall. In the early decades of the 20th century, polio epidemics had begun spreading through the United States and other industrialized countries. Hospitals filled with patients in iron lungs. Tens of thousands were left disabled, and fear of the disease led to the closing of public facilities across the country.

  By 1951, Salk and his team had begun immunization experiments in monkeys using dead polio virus. Within two years, human trials were underway among paralyzed polio patients, and by 1953 broader trials among the general population had begun. The spring of the following year saw the largest controlled field trials in medical history get underway. In 1955, the vaccine developed by Salk and his researchers was declared effective. By 1962, Salk's vaccine had reduced the incidence of polio in the United States by 95 percent.

  The work at Pitt's lab is considered one of the most significant scientific and medical achievements in history. Thomas Starzl later built on the university's medical research legacy in the 1980s, conducting significant work in organ transplantation that established Pitt as what became recognized as the world leader in that field.

• 5. From Private to State-Related

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  Pitt operated as a fully private institution until 1966, when Pennsylvania designated it a state-related university. Under that arrangement, the university receives public funding, which in fiscal year 2016 amounted to $154.3 million, covering about 7 percent of its operating budget. In exchange, the university offers reduced tuition to Pennsylvania residents. Legally, Pitt remains a private entity governed by its own Board of Trustees.

  The subsidized tuition triggered a massive influx of students and rapid expansion of the university's size and scope. Chancellor Wesley Posvar, who retired in 1991 after 24 years in office, oversaw the elimination of the university's debt from its 1960s financial crisis. Under Posvar, the operating budget grew sevenfold to $630 million and the endowment tripled to $257 million.

  Mark Nordenberg served as chancellor from 1995 to 2014, leading a $2-billion capital-raising campaign and a $1-billion 12-year facilities plan. Patrick D. Gallagher became the 18th chancellor of the university on the 1st of August 2014. In 2020, Pitt committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2037, its 250th anniversary, with a climate action plan following in 2022. The National Science Foundation ranked Pitt 18th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2021, with $1.13 billion spent.

• 6. Athletics and the Panther Identity

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  In the fall of 1909, the University of Pittsburgh became the first college in the country to adopt the panther, specifically Puma concolor, as its mascot. The first collegiate football team at Pitt was formed in 1889, and by 1904 the team had its first undefeated season, playing at Exposition Park. Over more than a century of play, Pitt's football program has claimed nine national championships and produced 88 first-team All-Americans.

  Among the notable figures who played or coached at Pitt are Pop Warner, Jock Sutherland, Mike Ditka, Tony Dorsett, Dan Marino, Larry Fitzgerald, and Aaron Donald. The program also holds a notable civil rights milestone: Pitt desegregated the Sugar Bowl with Bobby Grier. The 1976 team, led by Hall of Fame running back Tony Dorsett, won a national championship. Marino and Dorsett have both been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

  Men's basketball first appeared at Pitt in 1905. The 1927-28 and 1929-30 teams, coached by Naismith Hall of Fame inductee "Doc" Carlson and led by National Player of the Year and Hall of Famer Charlie Hyatt, won Helms Foundation National Championships. In track and field, Pitt produced 800-meter Olympic gold medalist John Woodruff and two-time 110-meter hurdle Olympic gold medalist Roger Kingdom. The wrestling program has produced 16 individual national champions. The Pitt Cheerleading squad won three straight national championships from 1992 to 1994.

• 7. Alumni and Faculty Legacy

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  Three Pitt alumni have been awarded the Nobel Prize. Paul Lauterbur, class of 1962, won for his work in magnetic resonance imaging. Philip Hench, class of 1920, was recognized for his discovery of the hormone cortisone. Wangari Maathai, class of 1966, won the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Green Belt Movement. Vladimir Zworykin, class of 1926, has been regarded as the "father of television," and Herbert Boyer, class of 1963, founded Genentech and is recognized as a pioneer in biotechnology.

  On the faculty side, the university has been home to figures credited as founders of entire disciplines. Reginald Fessenden, who worked at the university as an engineering professor, conducted pioneering work in radio broadcasting. Peter Safar is remembered as the "father of CPR." Thomas Starzl earned recognition as the "father of organ transplantation." David I. Cleland is credited as the "father of project management." Benjamin Spock taught psychology there.

  The university is also the namesake of the Pittsburgh School in philosophy, founded by Wilfrid Sellars, a significant figure in analytic philosophy. The Pitt Alumni Association, founded in 1866, supports over 330,000 living alumni through more than 50 regionally based clubs. Pitt ranked sixth in the nation in competitive peer-reviewed NIH funding in fiscal year 2013, and its research program imports more than $822 million into the Pittsburgh region each year, generating more than $3.60 for every $1 of state appropriations.