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Monday, December 16, 2002

By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

It's big.

And it's historic.

	Installing air conditioning throughout Pitt's Cathedral of Learning could take years. (Post-Gazette file photo, 2000)

But people who work or take classes there will tell you something else about the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, something painfully obvious when climbing some of its 42 stories in August or sitting in a two-hour class with the windows shut.

The word stuffy doesn't fully describe it.

"It's hot as New Delhi," said E. Maxine Bruhns, who works there.

The sauna may not last too much longer.

Pitt officials want to gradually install air conditioning throughout the stone skyscraper, described as the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere.

This promises to be no small feat. Anyone who's faced the job of installing central air conditioning in an old house would probably grow faint at the prospect of cooling a Depression-era skyscraper that has more than 2,000 rooms and constant pedestrian traffic heading into and out of the building.

That may be why Pitt spokesman Robert Hill, when asked how long the job would take, wasn't making any predictions.

He even hesitated to use the word "plan," saying much of the air conditioning work will be done as part of individual renovation jobs within the cathedral that are still to be developed.

"I wouldn't call it a plan as much as an anticipation because plan has formal meaning such as plans, designs and so forth," he said.

But whatever you choose to call it, the effort is advancing. Faculty in the building have been notified about it.

The work is being done as part of a broader renovation that includes sprinklers and other improvements, Hill said.

A Pitt facilities management administrator was quoted by a campus newspaper, the University Times, as saying the cathedral should be fully air conditioned by decade's end. The official said that as renovation work progresses, areas of the building will be tied into chilled water pipes running up through a shaft that also could carry water for sprinklers.

"We anticipate that at some point in the future the entire building will be equipped with central air conditioning," Hill added.

He declined to provide even a rough estimate of the project's total cost, but he said work now in the design phase on just three floors -- the first, ground and basement levels -- could start as early as spring and is expected to cost $5 million to $6 million, all of which would come from the state.

Air conditioning also is being installed as part of a $1.4 million renovation of the cathedral's 35th and 36th floors that is intended to provide a larger and more inspiring headquarters for Pitt's Honors College, Hill said.

The gothic cathedral, with its Indiana limestone exterior, is a Pittsburgh landmark and one of its most visible skyscrapers. At 535 feet in height, it is visible from across town. Construction on the building began in 1926 and took about 11 years to complete.

The cathedral is often ranked behind a structure at Moscow State University that rises nearly 800 feet. But Bruhns, director of the Nationality Room program at Pitt, contends that Pitt's building actually should rank ahead of it, since the Moscow structure owes much of its height to an uninhabitable section leading to its peak.

The Cathedral of Learning houses Pitt's famed Nationality Rooms as well as academic offices, classrooms and some of the university's top administrators, including Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and Provost James Maher, plus offices for the board of trustees.

Its appearance is grand, but the design has a down side, depending on the weather.

"The walls are so thick that it takes the heat a while to get in, but then when it gets in during the summer, it takes a while to cool down," said Bruhns.

Bruhns said she's fortunate to work in an office that has air conditioning, a window unit, but the project should be a godsend for those whose offices are not cooled and for others who spend time in the cathedral's common spaces.

"It will definitely solve a lot of problems," she said.