African Heritage Classroom, University of Pittsburgh

This project was featured in the October 2021 issue of ARCHITECT.

The Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh contain one of the world’s most unique collections of cultural treasures. Located on the first and third floors of the institution’s 42-story Collegiate Gothic Revival Cathedral of Learning, the rooms accurately present the culture and architecture of 31 nationalities prior to 1787, the year the university was founded. The Nationality Rooms program began in the late 1920s as an effort to recruit Pittsburgh’s ethnic communities to support the then-new cathedral. Each year, approximately 30,000 visitors explore the rooms, which serve as classrooms—complete with one- to upwards of two-dozen seats—and cultural introductions to students.

Interest in creating the African Heritage Classroom began around the 1930s. However, the project did not gain momentum until the 1972 formation of a committee comprising leaders from the city’s Black community. In order to not favor a single country, the 680-square-foot room had to represent the entire African continent. (Former Nationality Rooms director E. Maxine Bruhns told The Pitt News in 2010, “If it’s a nation on the continent of Africa, it is not likely to get a room. The nationality rooms are running out of space.”) For 15 years, the committee raised funds for the African Heritage Classroom and collected artifacts donated from African countries. The campaign ultimately raised more than $250,000 from donors, including local families with young children.

In the mid-1980s, local architect William Bates, FAIA, NOMA, who would become AIA’s second African American president in 2019, was selected for the daunting task of incorporating multiple African cultures into a single classroom. An advocate for increasing diversity in the architecture profession, he began combing through photographs and documentation. For him, the project was an opportunity to connect a space to the past and not “replicate Eurocentric design.”

Bates also called on the expertise of Laurence Glasco, a Pitt professor of African American history, who chose an 18th-century Asante Temple courtyard as the classroom’s architectural focal point. While the Asante are located in Ghana, the courtyard style was a common archetype among many African tribes.

The completed space acknowledges several ancient African kingdoms; Bates recalls wanting to “draw a thread to the architecture of Africa.” Nigerian sculptor Lamidi Olonade Fakeye crafted Yoruba-style door carvings, depicting cultures of Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, Benin, Kongo/Angola, Kuba, Mali, and Zimbabwe. Nods to African cultures also occur in friezes, an artifact display case, stairs, student benches, stools, and openwork screens.

Despite having to represent the entire pan-African continent in one space, the African Heritage Classroom beautifully reflects the diverse cultures. It allows Black residents, who make up 23% of Pittsburgh’s population, and visitors of African descent to proudly share their heritage with the university. Today, the classroom continues its mission of cultural education and helps fund $5,000 scholarships for undergraduate students interested in studying abroad or working in Africa.