Lothrop Hall is a major student dormitory at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

's main campus in the

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Lothrop Hall is located adjacent to the

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center UPMC is an American integrated delivery system, integrated global nonprofit health enterprise that has 100,000 employees, 40 hospitals with more than 8,000 licensed beds, 800 clinical locations including outpatient sites and doctors' offices, a ...

(UPMC) on Lothrop Street near Fifth Avenue, this hill is often referred to as "cardiac hill" due to its steep grade and its accessibility to medical care. The Hall is made up of 14 floors, some of which are segregated by sex in each wing (north and south). Most rooms in the hall are single occupancy (with sinks), with some double occupancy as well, and even some tripled on floors 2–10. The dorm houses 723 people, in addition to a resident director and 15 resident assistants.

History

Previously known as the Nurses' Residence, Lothrop Hall originally served as a 650-room residence hall for University of Pittsburgh nursing students. Construction was begun in 1950 and completed in May 1953 at a cost of $4.5 million ($ million today). The residence was officially dedicated on May 11, 1953, which intentionally corresponded to the 133rd anniversary of the birth of

Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during th ...

. During the dedication, a brick from the Florence Nightingale Home was presented. During financial hardships of the university in the early 1960s, it was one of five buildings mortgaged as security in 1963. By 1976 its name had been changed to the Lothrop Street Residence. By 1979, it was known by its current moniker, Lothrop Hall. Lothrop Street itself is named for Sylvanus Lothrop, a prominent engineer and businessman who constructed the first locks and several major bridges on the

Monongahela River The Monongahela River ( , ), sometimes referred to locally as the Mon (), is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in nor ...

in the 1830s and 1840s. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, Lothrop Hall was opened to house UPMC doctors and nurses who were working long hours.

Facilities

There is a fitness center, laundry room, student mail center, and e-mail kiosks in the lobby, as well as a lounge on every floor. Soon there will also be a communal kitchen built. The Hall also contains the Gender and Sexuality Living Learning Community and the Nursing Living Learning Community of the

. Lothrop Hall is directly connected, via a skywalk, to the School of Nursing in the Victoria Building and adjoining University of Pittsburgh Medical Center facilities. The Hall is appreciated for its mostly single rooms and the sinks in most rooms. The Hall is criticized, however, by its residents for a lack of

air conditioning Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C (US) or air con (UK), is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior temperature, and in some cases, also controlling the humidity of internal air. Air c ...

and for its distance from most main Pitt facilities (such as the

Cathedral of Learning The Cathedral of Learning is a 42-story skyscraper that serves as the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh's (Pitt) main campus in the Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Stan ...

and the Dining Facilities). In addition, for many years Lothrop Hall contained medical offices on its lower floors. In 2010, Pitt announced that it had allocated $1.56 million ($ million today) to convert existing office space into 47 additional beds for undergraduate housing in Lothrop. Because of a student housing overflow in 2010, the lounges were converted into 4-person rooms for a total of 52 new beds. In recent years, however, the lounges have been restored to pre-2010 conditions.

References

External links

Lothrop Hall on Pitt's virtual Campus Tour

{{University of Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh residence halls Residential skyscrapers in Pittsburgh Residential buildings completed in 1953