Lothrop Hall is a major student dormitory at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

's main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Lothrop Hall is located adjacent to the

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is a $23billion integrated global nonprofit health enterprise that has 92,000 employees, 40 hospitals with more than 8,000 licensed beds, 800 clinical locations including outpatient sites and d ...

(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 t ...

. 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 ( , )—often 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 north-cen ...

in the 1830s and 1840s. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, 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 or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...

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's (Pitt) main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Standing at , the 42-story Late Gothic Revival Cat ...

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