It is no surprise that the burgeoning University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has chosen a Downtown corporate location to host its growing administrative staff. To be honest, there is nothing wrong with the region's largest employer occupying five of the top floors of a premier address like the U.S. Steel Tower.

They're not just running a hospital anymore.

Nevertheless, we hope that UPMC's civic-minded leaders, who employ 43,000 workers in southwestern Pennsylvania at 19 hospitals and a network of other facilities, will change their minds and refrain from compromising the 64-story landmark with its lighted acronym writ large in the clouds.

The U.S. Steel Tower, when completed in 1970, was the tallest building between New York and Chicago. Today it is eclipsed by skyscrapers in Philadelphia and Cleveland. Even so, the rust-toned monolith still projects strength and durability in the financial core of one of America's major cities.

It is true that some of the building's tall neighbors have lately come to bear illuminated corporate labels -- PNC, Mellon, Highmark, Federated, etc. So much so that Pittsburgh's office heights resemble some of the modern business centers of Europe, which have displayed towering signs of corporate headquarters for decades.

That's not a bad thing. It displays commerce and, in a way, commitment. Under the city's rules regulating the size and appearance of such prominent signs, Pittsburgh has also brought order and aesthetics to a situation that had threatened visual chaos to one of the nation's most dramatic skylines. It is the spirit of that law which now must be observed.

Taking the ultimate step of slapping a logo on the tallest building in the city, as if that symbol, above all others, should project at night for 20 miles or more -- crosses a certain line of environmental and community decorum.

UPMC has 2,250 employees that it wants to move to the Golden Triangle over four years. That's good for Oakland, good for Downtown and a boost for Pittsburgh's office occupancy. We think the institution should affix its mark, appropriately and tastefully, on the lower floors of the building's exterior -- where street traffic can see and appreciate its presence.

To hoist its good name atop such a landmark would not be a sign of achievement, but a towering conceit.