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The William Pitt Union, the Student Union at the University of Pittsburgh main campus, is located in the historic Hotel Schenley Building. The Schenley Hotel, which opened in 1898 as part of Franklin Nicola’s City Beautiful movement, catered to the upper class for years prior to its acquisition by the University of Pittsburgh in 1956. The building was designed in the Beaux Arts style by architects Rutan & Russell, making it Pittsburgh’s first large, steel-framed "skyscraper hotel."
Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the register at the Schenley, which came to be known as the "Waldorf of Pittsburgh." The hotel was to many of power broker meals that led to the birth of the U.S. Steel Corporation, and later in 1914 the organization of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). After 1909, when Forbes Field opened down the street and the University of Pittsburgh moved to Oakland, Hotel Schenley became the home for both visiting National League baseball teams and academia.
After the hotel was sold to the University, it was renovated to serve as a residence hall and student union. During the height of the Cold War, in 1959, its ballroom was the site of a luncheon for Nikita Khrushchev, chairman of the Soviet Union, and various Soviet and U.S. officials, including Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. that was hosted by the University of Pittsburgh and Pitt Chancellor Edward Litchfield. Starting in 1980, the building underwent an 18-month, .9 million renovation and was renamed the William Pitt Union.
The University of Pittsburgh, a state-related research university, commonly referred to as Pitt, was originally founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier. Pitt evolved into the Western University of Pennsylvania with an alteration to its charter in 1819, and upon relocating to its current campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1908, the school received its current moniker, the University of Pittsburgh. For most of its history Pitt was a private institution, until it became part of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education in 1966.
The Schenley Farms Historic District, part of the Schenley Farms-Oakland Civic District, is noted for its late 19th And 20th Century Revivals architecture, and home to a large portion of the campus of the University of Pittsburgh.
Schenley Farms Historic District National Register #83002213 (1983)
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