At the turn of the twentieth century, what would become the Oakland section of Pittsburgh was mostly open fields until Andrew Carnegie built his library and museum there. Carnegie’s construction inspired a grand vision in a real estate developer named Franklin Nicola.
With the City Beautiful movement as an additional inspiration, Nicola wanted a civic center that would house cultural institutions and progressive housing in a much more pleasant atmosphere than that offered by the smoky city a few miles to the west.
Nicola sold his idea to such shrewd businessmen as Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, H.J. Heinz and Andrew Mellon, who backed his venture. After buying land from Mary Schenley, who inherited vast tracts of property in the Pittsburgh area, he began to make his vision a reality.
Over time, the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) and a fine housing development — Schenley Farms — were created and grew in the area.
With the City Beautiful movement as an additional inspiration, Nicola wanted a civic center that would house cultural institutions and progressive housing in a much more pleasant atmosphere than that offered by the smoky city a few miles to the west.
Nicola sold his idea to such shrewd businessmen as Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, H.J. Heinz and Andrew Mellon, who backed his venture. After buying land from Mary Schenley, who inherited vast tracts of property in the Pittsburgh area, he began to make his vision a reality.
Over time, the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) and a fine housing development — Schenley Farms — were created and grew in the area.
A grand hotel that would cater to upscale clients also was part of his scheme.
While it now serves the university as the William Pitt Union, the above-pictured Beaux Arts beauty designed by Rutan and Russell — successors to H.H. Richardson — began its life in 1898 as the Schenley Hotel.
Many famous people, including four presidents, signed the hotel’s register. It also was the site of a dinner celebrating the formation of U.S. Steel in 1901 and a speech by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during his American tour in 1959.
Lillian Russell, a major showbiz star of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, lived in Suite 437 — now the offices of the Pitt student newspaper — and married Pittsburgh newspaper editor Alexander Moore in the hotel.
Italian actress Eleonora Duse, a contemporary of Russell’s who wowed audiences on two continents, died of pneumonia April 21, 1924, in Suite 524.
With the 1909 opening of Forbes Field across Forbes Avenue, the Schenley Hotel became the Pittsburgh base for visiting major league baseball teams and hosted Hall of Famers such as Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Stan Musial. Visiting reporters also bunked there, a short walk from the ballpark, but that didn’t stop some of them from submitting vouchers for taxi rides to their editors.
The coming of the automobile age brought the building’s service as a hotel to an end. With competition from downtown hotels and the lack of parking pressuring the profitability of the Schenley Hotel, it was sold to Pitt in 1956.
The hotel originally served the university as a dormitory before rising enrollment led to an 1980 renovation that transformed it into the student union.
More recent work created a food court, space for student organizations, a home for the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame and a makeover that restored some of the old hotel’s Gilded Age glamor.
Pitt’s ever-expanding presence in Oakland certainly hasn’t been welcomed by all, but the university should be saluted for repurposing such grand structures as the Schenley Hotel.
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A stairway to nowhere is now part of the William Pitt Union's Tansky Family
Lounge, which once was the lobby of the Schenley Hotel. The plaque at
the center honors Italian actress Elenora Duse, who died in the hotel in 1924.
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