Nationality Room #31 dedication set for June 9
- Thread starter CrazyPaco
- Start date
Anyone have a link to a site where I can find all 31 nationality rooms? Curious to see what they all are. Off the top of my head, I can only think of about 20 nationalities I associate with Pittsburgh. Of course, when I was growing up there were no Mexican restaurants in the city. I still remember the first one opening in Etna in 1969.
Never mind, I found it. I am shocked there still is a Czechoslovakian room and a Yugoslavian room. I realize both were dedicated when those countries still existed. While there isn’t much enmity between Czechs and Slovaks, I can’t believe Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Slovenians don’t all want their own rooms. Some of the bloodiest soccer matches I ever watched growing up were between Serbian and Croatian fraternal union teams — and that was when Yugoslavia still existed.
Never mind, I found it. I am shocked there still is a Czechoslovakian room and a Yugoslavian room. I realize both were dedicated when those countries still existed. While there isn’t much enmity between Czechs and Slovaks, I can’t believe Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Slovenians don’t all want their own rooms. Some of the bloodiest soccer matches I ever watched growing up were between Serbian and Croatian fraternal union teams — and that was when Yugoslavia still existed.
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For others:
https://www.nationalityrooms.pitt.edu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality_Rooms
These rooms require pretty long term (10 year or more) planning, organization, and fundraising by their respective committees so those nationalities must have pretty organized social or fraternal groups in the city to even think about undertaking such a project.
Next up, #32, is the Finnish Nationality Room.
BTW, there are actually a couple other special rooms that aren't considered nationality rooms: the Mulert Memorial Room in 204, Croghan-Schenley Ballroom on the first floor, the Frick Auditorium in 324, the Humanities Center in 602, and the Braun Room in 1217 are probably the most notable.
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I took a night class in the Yugoslavian room during my senior year titled "Yugoslavian Literature." Every student in the class (10 total) was either Serbian or Croatian.
The literature was influenced by and reflected the agrarian society of "the old country." We all learned a lot about our heritage.
One of my fraternity brothers who attended the class was actually born in Croatia and came to the USA when he was 9 years old. He was able to share his personal experiences from his youth and that brought to life what we were learning.
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The only room that I feel does not reach the standards of the Cathedral Nationality Rooms is the African room. The rooms are supposed to be reflective of the older times and in the African room all one feels is the plastic of the benches. It's frankly, cheap looking. The committee did a poor job on this one,
Well, to be fair, they're supposed to be earthen benches that are representative of the interior courtyard of an Asante temple courtyard. So really the only way to do that was probably the fiberglass facsimiles. The rest (including the stools) are wood, with thatch around the "roof", plaster, etc. It is an odd room, because so many African cultures and nationalities are smooshed together in one room to represent a whole continent. It's really the African diaspora room. That's ok, the Early American Room is really a nationality room either, it was subsumed when the original history of PA room plan petered out. The African room does probably have the biggest artifact collections of all rooms (only some of which is displayed at any one time).
Personally, I thought the Welsh room was a letdown, especially considering its size. Although purposefully sparse, they significantly scaled down some details of the room to save money and push it through to completion.
