The Playhouse will die; long live the Playhouse.

That's the promise made by Point Park University, which recently unveiled a dramatic plan to expand its Downtown campus into an Academic Village, what president Paul Hennigan calls "a vibrant living, learning and community hub."

Joining the extensive renovations to existing buildings and the new dance complex, which just opened, will be two major new complexes. First, there will be a new student center, including a gymnasium, student housing and a park, with a major face-lift for both Wood Street and the Boulevard of the Allies between Wood and Smithfield streets (still to raise, $42 million). That's already under way. Second, what they call a "new" Pittsburgh Playhouse will include three theaters (similar in size to the current Playhouse's), production and teaching areas, a residence hall and parking (still to raise, $61 million, plus $34 million of private investment).

I'll leave it to others to assess how this fits into Pittsburgh's Downtown as it continues to deal with the gradual loss of retail to the suburbs and evolves into a center of entertainment, education and what's left of what was once America's third largest concentration of corporate headquarters.

We might call it the New Oakland. That seems to be the future for Downtown and the adjacent North Shore, which have already absorbed the sports teams (Pirates, Steelers, Pitt football) and arts and entertainment (Pittsburgh Symphony, Broadway series) that once called Oakland home. That's how downtowns reinvent themselves for the 21st century, with students (Point Park projects growth to 4,300) taking the place of blue-collar workers and shoppers.

It certainly promises new vitality in the area southeast of Market Square. And audiences already have shown willingness to go Downtown for entertainment they used to find in Oakland, so that shouldn't be a worry, as long as there's adequate, affordable parking.

But don't call it the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

"Having outgrown its home in Oakland, the Pittsburgh Playhouse will move Downtown," the Point Park plan announces. But the fact is, the Pittsburgh Playhouse died in 1973. That is, what died was the community/professional theater that was born in 1934, reached a peak of national prominence in the 1940s and '50s, tried unsuccessfully to sustain a fully professional company in the mid-'60s and limped along for a few years after Point Park took over the building complex in 1968.

That's the Pittsburgh Playhouse that under Richard S. Rauh in 1950 envisioned a new, state-of-the-art physical plant, its theaters to be designed by the great Jo Mielziner, just eastward on the Boulevard of the Allies. Instead, the board rejected Rauh's plan and bought the adjacent synagogue, which became the complex's largest, most problematic theater, now named the Rockwell.

Point Park saved that jerry-built Playhouse -- the building. And it is the building that will be left behind when Point Park moves its theater program Downtown. How then can it be the Playhouse?

In all the years Point Park has saved that old building, patching roofs and painting lobbies (but never really investing the kind of money that assumes permanence), it often suppressed the Playhouse legacy. That's partly because the then-college had its own financial struggles and issues of identity, partly because of the arts-unfriendly attitude of some earlier leadership and largely because of a natural focus on its own students, not the history that clung to the building.

Of course, we've all gone on calling it the Playhouse. Perhaps that has implied the legacy of the company. That's certainly what Ronald Allan-Lindbloom, dean of the Conservatory of Performing Arts, thought when he came to Point Park, attracted in part by that history.

But where, for example, are the mementos of a galaxy of Pittsburgh stars -- and some national -- that lit up the Playhouse? There are only the plaques outside the medium-sized Rauh Theater, named after the founding Richard S. Rauh; his wife, longtime Playhouse leading lady, Helen Wayne Rauh; and their son, Richard E. Rauh, who has had various professional connections to the building for 40 years as teacher, actor, film curator and philanthropist.

Even the youngest Rauh, in his unpublished brief Playhouse memoir, calls it a failure in the end.

What Point Park bought was a performing arts center for its growing programs in theater and dance. Granted, the old Playhouse school is echoed in Point Park's own programs; Playhouse Jr. survives; and Playhouse Rep, the current professional company, at least performs in the same spaces as its predecessors. But I would identify the true legacy of the pre-Point Park Pittsburgh Playhouse as fading memory and, for the older among us, a certain nostalgia and spiritual presence which seems to linger, in spite of neglect.

To his credit, Point Park president Paul Hennigan acknowledges this. As the university studied these issues, he says "there was a groundswell, the more people we talked to, that 'we need to save the Playhouse,' what it represented and stood for. 'You cannot kill the Playhouse.' "

So, he says, having saved the Playhouse -- the building -- once, Point Park imagines itself as saving it again. He says the architect's instructions will direct that there be something in tribute to the history of old Playhouse, of which he calls himself a fan. "There will be a tribute, a space, some appropriate celebration of the original."

We'll see.

There's no question that the physical Playhouse's days have been numbered ever since the institution died in 1973. Its importance theatrically was taken over by the Pittsburgh Public Theater and the other professional companies that have sprung up, where once the Playhouse stood alone. Now the building will be succeeded by something else, as well.

Obviously, with so much money to raise, this won't happen overnight. But when it does, isn't it time to put the Playhouse name to rest?