University Times

Unobtrusively nestled between — and connected to — the Space Research Coordinating Center (SRCC) and Old Engineering Hall on O’Hara Street sits Pitt’s oldest Oakland campus building, Thaw Hall, which this year marks the 100th anniversary of its dedication.

Named for industrialist, Pitt trustee and benefactor Benjamin Thaw Sr., the building is the last remnant of the ambitious — some might say grandiose — “Acropolis Plan,” the initial proposed development of the new Pitt campus, which began moving from the North Side and its scattered Downtown locations in 1908 to start afresh in the growing cultural center of Oakland. The area already was home to the

Carnegie Museums, Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon) and Phipps Conservatory.

According to Robert C. Alberts’s institutional history, “Pitt: The Story of

the University of Pittsburgh 1787-1987,” under the leadership of Samuel Black McCormick, who served as Pitt’s chancellor 1905-21, the University in 1905 purchased 45 acres of Oakland hillside land north of O’Hara and Terrace streets for $537,000 from developer Franklin Nicola. He had built the Schenley Hotel (now the William Pitt Union) in 1898 and would build Forbes Field in 1909, as well as much of the area’s infrastructure such as streets and utility lines.

In 1907 Pitt held a national architectural competition for the design of a 30-building campus. The winner was the so-called “Acropolis Plan” of New York-based architect Henry Hornbostel (1867-1961), already well-known at the time in Pittsburgh for his design of most of the original Carnegie Mellon campus buildings and his founding of CMU’s architecture department. Hornbostel also designed Rodef Shalom Temple at Fifth and Morewood avenues (1907), Soldiers and Sailors Museum and Memorial Hall (1910), the University Club (1923) and the five Schenley Quadrangle dormitories (originally the Schenley Apartments, completed in 1924 and purchased by Pitt in 1956), among other Pittsburgh landmarks.

Work on Hornbostel’s Acropolis Plan began in 1908 with the construction of State Hall.

The following year ground was broken and the cornerstone laid for Thaw Hall; the five-story stone, brick and terra cotta building was dedicated June 15, 1910.

As part of Hornbostel’s 30-building Acropolis Plan, Pitt also constructed the original Pennsylvania Hall (1911), and the Mineral Industries Building (1912).

State Hall and Thaw Hall were designed to start the baseline of the Acropolis Plan along O’Hara Street. Thaw Hall originally housed the University’s engineering programs, hence “School of Engineering” remains sculpted in the building’s O’Hara Street side.

When McCormick was succeeded as chancellor by John G. Bowman in 1921, the University charted a new development course that culminated with the completion of the Cathedral of Learning in 1937. The Acropolis Plan, chronically short of funding, was abandoned with only four of the intended structures ever completed.

State Hall was razed to make room for the Chevron Science Center, which was completed in 1974. Thaw Hall, by then connected to Old Engineering and SRCC, escaped a similar fate when it was named a historical landmark by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in 1976. It achieved U.S. National Register of Historic Places status in 1983.

After a protracted battle over the merits of preserving the original Pennsylvania Hall and the Minerals Industries Building as historical structures — a proposal that ran counter to Pitt’s mid-range facilities plan for expanding on-campus student housing — those two edifices were razed in the late 1990s, leaving Thaw Hall as the only building remaining from Hornbostel’s original Acropolis Plan. (See University Times, Jan. 23, 1997.)

Today, Thaw Hall houses a mishmash of offices, labs and student centers, including the Office of Experiential Learning, Freshman Programs and the Writing Center. Several departments and programs, including physics and astronomy, Asian languages, chemistry and archaeology, have offices, classrooms and labs scattered throughout the building.

Interestingly, Hornbostel’s Thaw Hall also is the home of the architectural studies program’s architecture lab. The lab serves as a dedicated design studio space that facilitates instruction from practicing architects in the fundamentals of spatial thinking, graphic representation techniques and model-building.

Henry Hornbostel’s original design for Pitt was dubbed the Acropolis Plan after the Pittsburgh Leader newspaper compared the competition-winning architectural renderings to the Athenian Acropolis.

But to refer to the architecture as Greek Revival would be wrong, according to Christopher Drew Armstrong, assistant professor and director of architectural studies in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.

A Hornbostel devotee, Armstrong praised Thaw Hall as a fine example of a great architect’s work, albeit on a smaller scale than the “monuments” he designed, such as Soldiers and Sailors and Carnegie Mellon’s College of Fine Arts building, both of which Armstrong considers architectural masterpieces.

Thaw, rather, is a gatepost or supporting building designed to work in tandem with other proposed buildings in the Acropolis Plan, Armstrong said, which makes a big difference in the scope and elaboration of the design.

“Thaw is a classical building and it does have elements that are very specifically derived from Greek models, but you couldn’t call it a Greek Revival building. Hornbostel is inspired by those, but he’s not copying anything. He’s deriving from them. He knows how to work with a set of rules but not be constrained by them,” Armstrong said.

Instead, the architecture is derived from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Hornbostel trained. “That is where the foundation of his architecture is from,” Armstrong noted.

“The Acropolis Plan was a very grand idea. As a paper design, it’s quite magnificent. It won the competition because it is a sophisticated-looking project, and it deals in a credible way with the sloping. You can see how the streets were laid out to wind up the hillside, so it’s clear he did think about the challenges. This is a very thoughtful man, very subtle, and one who could adapt.”

Hornbostel’s design also corresponds with a period when institutions were defined by their architecture, Armstrong maintained.

“The Hornbostel plan did represent one moment in the University’s history of huge significance, when architectural patronage evidently really mattered,” he said. “We’ve come to the end of a period of vast spending on cultural institutions in the United States and in other places in the world as well, where the architecture had been considered the absolute flagship component of institutions. The Acropolis Plan came at a moment when the University decided to stake out an image for itself by using architecture and that’s pretty important. The next such moment in the University’s history is with the Cathedral of Learning, which was constructed in the 1920s and ’30s. Things [in Oakland] had changed pretty dramatically by that time.”

Armstrong said the Pitt Acropolis design contrasted with Hornbostel’s layout of Carnegie Mellon’s campus, with its central forum and buildings arrayed around it. “That draws on a very old traditional American idea like the University of Virginia, which is a great model for that basic plan. In the Acropolis Plan, however, instead of being around a space, it’s on top of a space. [Had the plan been executed] I think it would have been quite inconvenient, all of the walking around vertically,” Armstrong said, although he acknowledged the same concern holds true for today’s upper campus.

“Remember, Thaw sits on the lower edge, and from here it’s nothing but going up and that would have been formidable,” he said. “The plan was to extend along the [west] end of the building. It’s very clear this was not a finished end, but a supporting building. It just stopped and they walled it up, and later built Old Engineering on one side and the SRCC on the other.”

Hornbostel chose the balcony-like element to set back the upper part of Thaw Hall because the lower levels were to act as a kind of podium, Armstrong said. “The point is that as you extend the buildings in [the west] direction, the podium would become increasingly smaller. It’s something that would give a horizontal continuity to a chain of buildings that were planned. He’s establishing a horizontal line, so there’s a base and then there’s a higher piece dividing the building essentially in half,” Armstrong said.

He noted that by connecting SRCC — completed in 1965 — to Thaw Hall, the original Thaw entrance, with two large Doric columns, ornamentation and wrought-iron gates, largely has been obscured from view. “Those columns from a distance would have been quite apparent and would have signaled that [the east] end of the building is where you enter,” Armstrong said.

“The building is in reasonably good condition. Why it looks terrible is that many of the windows are all blocked up. That isn’t the way this building should be. It needs a little bit of cleaning. There are some issues with how the building settled that caused cracking, probably during the first couple of decades, but the cracking is minor.”

While the design of SRCC in many ways mimics its older neighbor, such as the color of the brick and the motif of recessed bricks in the middle of larger brick columns, there are innumerable differences, Armstrong said.

“It terms of the details, if you look at the first cornice (the horizontal molded projection that completes a wall) that defines the lower level, and then look at the SRCC, you see the difference in richness and complexity. In Thaw, you can see right away there’s an intention to have ornamental elements that are part of a whole system of classical design. Things like all the horizontal elements — the roof, the cornice — are very powerful shapes that are derived from classical architecture,” he said. “If you look just above the highest level of windows, you see the wave motif typical in classical architecture. The pediment is cornered, which is absolutely textbook classicism derived from the École des Beaux-Arts.”

(The pediment is the decorated triangular gable over a facade that helps support the roof.)

Hornbostel also used a variety of materials in different ways from its adjoining neighbor’s builders. “Most of Thaw is brick, but he does use stone in certain moments to indicate a horizontal vision — even things like how the brick is laid. If you look up between the second windows down from the top and the third windows down, you can see a pattern of brick, that they’re pushed out slightly more. It’s not extraordinary in any way. But it does indicate care and attention to every level of detail with respect to the design of the outside of the building.”

There also are a series of unfinished round stone elements in the brick across the O’Hara Street side, which probably were intended to be carved into portraits or faces, Armstrong speculated.

The main difference between the Space Research Coordination Center and Thaw Hall is in the building technology prevalent in their respective eras, he said.

“Yes, these are both brick exteriors. But in the SRCC the exterior walls actually are supporting weight. In the case of Thaw, that’s not true.

“The exterior of the building tells you about its construction: Instead of using stone and brick, the SRCC uses concrete and brick. You can see clearly above each of the Thaw windows, there is a thickened element, thickened at the corners. That’s deliberate,” Armstrong maintained.

“If you were to strip out all of the brick in the SRCC, the concrete would just stay. The concrete is all self-supporting; that’s the structure. The brick is all in-filled to create the division between inside and outside, but it isn’t actually supporting the concrete.”

In contrast, the brick in Thaw Hall is integral to the construction of the building, “as is absolutely clear from the cracking: It’s supporting weight. So there’s a technological change — not an advancement, a change,” Armstrong said.

Another example of the difference in construction technology: Thaw Hall’s stone roof is shaped in a triangular pediment not only for richer ornamentation, but for practical drainage, while the SRCC’s concrete roof is flat and unaffected by rain or heavy snow, he pointed out.

These days, Thaw Hall and SRCC share a common entrance on O’Hara Street, something that doesn’t meet Armstrong’s approval.

“The SRCC is not a dumb building. It’s a modest building, but it’s not a bad building. It’s just not appropriate where it’s sited, in my estimation,” Armstrong said. “My problem with the SRCC is that the juxtaposition is insensitive. There’s no other word for it. Here you’re given what is now manifestly the main entrance to these two buildings and it’s a blank. It doesn’t really communicate very much. It’s not inviting. You can see the tops of the two columns left from the original [Thaw Hall] entrance. They were trying not to mangle the old entrance, I guess. It’s a kind of buffer.”

What makes Thaw Hall worthy of historic building status is Hornbostel’s use of light and shade, Armstrong said.

“If you look at the top cornice, you see that that swag creates a kind of half circle shapes of dark, and that dark is repeated. That’s what you were meant to see from a distance,” he said. “Similarly, under the diagonal of the pediment, that repeated motif flips back and forth. Most important it’s creating alternate dark, light, dark, light, dark, light, so that when you’re very far away you can still get the pattern.”

That effect abates as the viewer looks at the lower parts of the building, he noted. “That’s why this kind of building matters. It matters because it shows you that even for a gatepost or a supporting building, Hornbostel has thought this through in terms of how much relief to give different parts of the ornamentation. I’m sure it’s deliberate, because with Hornbostel there is always an explanation,” Armstrong said.

“He’s thinking about architecture in a way we don’t tend to think about architecture anymore, and that is: It’s a visual thing. It’s something you are perceiving from different distances and in different ways.”

Armstrong added that most of Hornbostel’s ornamentation for Thaw Hall appears to be mass-produced as opposed to sculpted. “If you look at the Greek ‘key’ patterns up at the top, I think that is granite that has been sculpted. But under it, that leafy pattern is clearly a terra cotta block that is repeated all along. It’s terra cotta, which means it’s a block that has been produced in the same mold all the way across. It’s not hand-sculpted and this is a sign of his modernity, that he is taking up methods of current production,” he said.

“He shows modernity also by the way he uses the brick: The brick right above the windows: How is that brick holding itself up? You’ve got a whole layer of bricks that appears to be hanging in a void. The metal behind it, which you can’t see, is what’s really holding it up.”

Armstrong is much less positive about the inside of Thaw Hall.

“The interior organization has been pretty seriously transformed. I don’t know anything about the history behind the changes, but it strikes me as having been both piecemeal and expedient,” he said of the building’s current uses. “By that I mean it was not a comprehensive plan and certainly not one that was sympathetic to the building.”

He pointed to the plain-looking swinging doors that connect the third floor of SRCC with the second floor of Thaw Hall, which was Thaw Hall’s original entrance. He noted that the corridor at the entrance had been narrowed and denuded of all architectural interest. “When I said non-sympathetic, this is what I mean. In this corridor we have no idea where we are. This is hardly exploiting what is specific to the building,” Armstrong opined.

“Even though the interior space in no way resembles what was originally intended, that’s not the point. More to the point is how will it be used in the future? That’s a complicated problem. But recognizing the specific qualities of Thaw informs, or should inform, what you do inside the building. It’s an important building, designed by a major American architect, one of the top ones in the period, someone who won competition after competition against the top firms,” he said.

“What do you do in a building that has that profile? That’s my big question mark for Thaw Hall. Should this just be a classroom building? Should it just be an office building? Should it be a lab building? In that respect, I do feel personally a lab building should be a modern building that has adapted to all the mechanical and technical requirements of said lab, like the Chevron building is. I don’t think this building can do that, or should do that.”

According to the “University of Pittsburgh Facilities Plan: 2007-2018,” unspecified phased renovations and upgrades for Thaw Hall are planned in 2011-2014 and in 2015-2018.

Armstrong acknowledged his interest in future uses of Thaw Hall is somewhat selfish.

“What should it be used for? In my own bailiwick, I feel very strongly a building designed by a noted, great, American École des Beaux-Arts-trained architect should have a design studio in it and we’re grateful as a department to have the architectural studies lab. Is there a possibility for expanding that idea? I don’t know. I don’t make those decisions.”

—Peter Hart