Victoria Hall (also known as Ursuline Academy, as well as the Lynch House) at 201 South Winebiddle Street in the
Bloomfield neighborhood of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
, was built for Henry J. Lynch in the late 1860s. It was acquired by the
Ursuline Sisters in 1894 and used as a
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
girls' school, the Ursuline Academy for Young Women from 1895 to 1981. The school building was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 2012.
Architecture
The original architect of this
Second Empire Second Empire may refer to:
* Second British Empire, used by some historians to describe the British Empire after 1783
* Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396)
* Second French Empire (1852–1870)
** Second Empire architecture, an architectural styl ...
style house was possibly
Isaac Hobbs, the architect of the
Dollar Savings Bank on Fourth Avenue in Pittsburgh. Hobbs and Henry J. Lynch worked closely together when Lynch sat on the bank's board of directors from 1864 to 1906. The house was added to the
List of City of Pittsburgh historic designations
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
on August 20, 1982,
and the
in 1984.
The mansion has 21 rooms, stained-glass windows, 14-foot-high tin ceilings and carved corbels.
[
]
History
The Ursuline Sisters raised the money to buy the building for a school in the 1890s, and then defended the school's independence against the Diocese of Pittsburgh and it Bishop Phelan.[ They made a number of additions to the original structure, including an auditorium/dormitory, chapel, and a dining hall. They sold the building in the early 1990s.
From 1993 until 2002, it was known as "Victoria Hall", and was a venue for weddings and parties. Currently, the building is the Waldorf School of Pittsburgh, a part of the larger ]Waldorf education
Waldorf education, also known as Steiner education, is based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. Its educational style is Holistic education, holistic, intended to develop pupils' intellectual, artistic ...
movement.
Students in the architectural studies program 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 ...
, led by their teacher Jeff Slack, researched and wrote the first draft of the National Register of Historic Places nomination form in 2008 and 2010.[
]
References
{{Pittsburgh
Houses in Pittsburgh
Second Empire architecture in Pennsylvania
Houses completed in 1870