Oakland
William Pitt Union
Former Schenley Hotel, Oakland
The William Pitt Union was the Schenley Hotel, put up at the end of the nineteenth century on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Bigelow, facing Schenley Plaza. The University of Pittsburgh bought the building and made it the student union. A ballroom from the Schenley was moved into the Cathedral of Learning. That room is a different interior, and a different story.
Two rumors are told in the union. One is a Russian ballerina who died in the hotel. The other is a woman who died by suicide in Bruce Hall in the 1920s. The Pitt News wrote both down in 2025, in the same piece as the Early American Room, and treated them as campus talk. The ballerina is given no name there, and no death record is cited.
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