By MARTY LEVINE
The 38th floor of the Cathedral of Learning houses not only the hidden guts of the building — the elevator and water systems that run the show — but another unique feature: It is the only Cathedral floor narrow enough (and undivided by room walls) to allow for viewing out north and south windows simultaneously.
That wasn’t true just six months ago — there was an almost floor-to-ceiling water storage tank inside the crowded space, next to the north-facing window, around which the building’s staff had to walk sideways. It held 3,700 gallons as part of a nearly 100-year-old water system.
But that gravity-driven apparatus — coupled with other large water tanks on lower floors — was replaced over the past two years by a pressurized water system and new pipes. These risers and laterals — vertical and horizontal tubes — now cover spots on the ceilings and walls in mazes of bright white.
“This is the top of the building where all the systems turn around and go back throughout the building,” says Scott Bernotas, vice chancellor for Facilities Management, today’s tour guide. “You can only imagine the challenge of getting all that equipment up here,” he adds — both for the recent water system improvements and for the elevator system that was replaced in 2015.
“It had to come in piecemeal,” says Melanie Lippert, spokesperson for Business and Operations, the other tour guide.
“As you can see we are still cleaning up after construction,” Bernotas says, pointing to a stack of old lights and lumber left over from the improvements.
And, admittedly, there’s not much of a view out that north window: just the mushroom heads of ventilation equipment and other mechanical apparatus. In any case, this is just one of “the many roofs of the building,” notes Bernotas, at many levels.
Much of this floor’s equipment is behind locked chain-link fence, but clearly visible in the mass of metal is the elevators’ motor-generator system, with its cables spooled inside blue casings.
No picture of this floor will ever be featured in brochures advertising the University. It is quite a contrast to the elegant Frederick Honors College floor just below. But, if not quite a hidden gem of Pitt, it is certainly hidden, accessible via a separate, tiny, restricted-access elevator on the 37th floor, and then only behind another locked door.
Step off the elevator and the 38th floor screams industrial, the initial hallway clad in structural tile that’s clearly been mortared without care for appearances and painted a stark white, to which is bolted more water pipes.
And there’s still a hole in the 38th-floor ceiling through which can be seen the underside of the room above it — the Babcock Room, on the Cathedral’s 40th floor. Six months ago that hole —needed for the removal of the old water tank — led to the inside of one of Babcock’s pair of kitchenettes. The floor of this kitchenette has been repaired, but both kitchenette interiors are still being refurbished, and Babcock remains without restrooms.
Up the small elevator, the Babcock room itself is visibly unchanged, but finally livable. Designed for the Board of Trustees to meet, it unfortunately had no ventilation and too often felt “like a greenhouse,” Lippert says, despite the fantastic views. This summer it finally acquired air conditioning, but it is no longer used for board meetings. Nor is it a stop any longer for student orientation, as it was as late as 1981.
But each year, students’ class rings rest on the large board table for a single night’s ceremonial infusion of Cathedral vibes. This past year, students could even have their pictures taken in the room.
The space remains picturesque, with inlaid wood covering its three inside doors (to the two kitchenettes, and to the Cathedral’s two highest floors and roof), and the views are unbeatable up and across all the rivers, over all of Oakland and out to East Liberty, north, south and west … but not east.
A few windows and one door to a small outside balcony facing in that direction are covered in blinds or gauzy material. The building’s famous peregrine falcons nest right outside there, and can be scared away by too much human activity — when they aren’t out feasting on Oakland’s pigeons and what can be hunted in Schenley Park. People haven’t scared any nesting pair from their perch yet, Lippert says, but we need to be cautious. No avians were evident on this day, but two cameras stood poised to record their comings and goings, and their hatchlings.
The best views east, Lippert says, are still from the Honors College on the 36th floor, where ornate windows edge wide sills on which she has often seen students studying, with dreamy overhead views of Phipps Conservatory and Carnegie Mellon University to distract them.
Still, one of the Babcock kitchenettes probably has the only utility sink in the world with a vista of miles of city neighborhoods.
And Babcock’s third inside door has the most surprising space of all — a two-story alcove with a steep staircase to the uppermost roof (plus a winding inner staircase leading down). Outside the door at the top of the 42nd floor are the student radio station’s antenna and other communications equipment — so much that even Bernotas can’t recite the list.
“A lot of people wanted to put stuff up there,” he says, but, so far as he can recall, no one has pitched any advertising banners for that roof.
The Edward V. Babcock Memorial Room opened in 1958 with a grant from this influential Pittsburgh family and remains the highest habitable Cathedral space. Babcock, a former mayor (1918-1922), founded the county’s North and South Parks, and was a former lumber man — hence the room’s lovely inlaid accents of Appalachian white oak, walnut and rosewood.
Back in the tiny elevator to return to the public parts of the Cathedral, Bernotas points out a curiosity — there is no button for the 39th floor. In fact, there is no floor 39 in the building at all.
“If you ask me why,” he says, “nobody knows.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times.Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or412-758-4859.
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