The Philadelphia architect Charles Zeller Klauder (1872-1938) demonstrated how the Gothic architectural tradition could express the dignity and function of academic architecture in his Cathedral of Learning, completed in 1937 as part of the campus of the University of Pittsburgh.
Alongside the Cathedral in the same years he applied the same blend of historicism and modernity to design two other neo-Gothic structures for the University.
The Stephen Collins Foster Memorial (1937) provided two theatre spaces for the Department of Theatre Arts and accommodation for the Stephen Foster Memorial Museum and the Stephen Foster Collection and archive, which is regarded as particularly important because Foster’s brother Morrison Foster destroyed or dispersed many of his papers after his death. It houses the twelve-sided Stephen Foster Shrine, which displays the composer’s sheet music and memorabilia.
Stephen Foster (1826-1864) is regarded as “the father of American music” as the composer of such minstrel songs as ‘Camptown Races’, ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’ and ‘Old Folks at Home’ (‘Swanee River’) – a mixed legacy, in which well-loved melodies are tied to lyrics that are now regarded as racially-inflected and widely disliked.
The Heinz Memorial Chapel (1938) was initially conceived by Henry John Heinz (1844-1919), the Pittsburgh-born founder of the food-processing company, as a memorial to his mother, but was extended after his death by additional bequests from his three surviving children.
It was gifted to the University and “dedicated to culture, understanding response to beauty, and religious worship” as an interdenominational place of worship which is open to all members of the University community, employees of the H J Heinz Company and the general public.
Unlike the Cathedral of Learning, a tower which reaches 535ft into the heavens, the Heinz Memorial Chapel is a traditional cruciform church with tall, narrow proportions, many Gothic arches and pinnacles, surmounted by a fleche 256 feet above ground level.
The interior is a series of lofty French Gothic vaults, decorated with elaborate sequences of sculpture by Joseph Gattoni, and drenched in daytime by the light of predominantly blue stained glass by the prominent stained-glass artist Charles Jay Connick (1875-1945), who was responsible for the entire sequence of the chapel’s many huge windows.
The proximity of three ambitious neo-Gothic buildings in the middle of the University of Pittsburgh campus is remarkable, memorable and leaves an indelible impression, particularly on those fortunate enough to come to the city of steel and heavy industry to study.