Pitt’s Nationality Rooms Celebrate World Cultures

The Korean room, pictured above, is one of 30 different themed rooms found within the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning.

words: McCall Behringer

photos: Seth Culp-Ressler

Pittsburgh is a city of just over 300,000 people. It’s also a city of immigrants, built by men and women with roots all over the globe. The University of Pittsburgh sought to honor that important facet of Pittsburgh’s history in Oakland’s most visible landmark.

The Nationality Rooms can be found in the Cathedral of Learning. When Dr. John Bowman, the 10th Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, began his campaign for the construction of the Cathedral of Learning in 1921, he envisioned providing students with special classrooms. To achieve that goal, he appointed Dr. Ruth Mitchell to lead a project that would serve the students of the university, as well as honor the rich history of the nations that contributed to the thriving culture of the city.

E. Maxine Bruhns, current director of the Nationality Rooms, says the rooms are the most popular tourist attraction in Pittsburgh. Tours can be scheduled to view specific rooms, but there are also open house events where people can come to learn about specific heritages.

Each room was designed to showcase a time of prosperity in the respective cultures. Committees were assembled, and careful planning to showcase a particular aspect of the nation’s history went into each room. The content of the rooms is restricted to only cultural content in a time period prior to the American Constitution and the founding of the University of Pittsburgh in 1787. Political references are prohibited inside the rooms.

“We preserve and promote heritages,” Bruhns says about the role the rooms play in the community. There are currently three more rooms in fundraising and planning stages: a Finnish room, a Philippine room and an Iranian Room. The struggle of raising the funds to build the room is apparent; Bruhns says the Finnish room is still in need of $200,000.

Since Bowman’s original initiative, the Nationality Rooms have grown to 30 different showcases of culture and heritage. The ability to walk into one of these rooms allows the visitor to travel to a culture far outside of Oakland. Understanding heritage is an important part of understanding this community and the people that live here.

As previous director Ruth Mitchell says, “Nobody grew on trees. Everyone came from somewhere.”