GOING UP!

The plan of cloistering the Harvard Yard with a fringe of low buildings must pale into insignificance beside the gigantic vision of the new building for the University of Pittsburgh, 680 feet of towering steel and stone will make that university the highest seat of learning in the country. It will be one story higher than the Woolworth building, two higher than the Metropolitan Tower, and sixteen powerful elevators will whisk students from class to class.

"This will be the greatest structure ever erected by any community to tell its own living will", says Chancellor Bowman of the new edifice. The determination to rise to dizzy heights instead of staying close to the ground is masked under the cloak of convenience, saving in land investment, better light, etc., but it is perfectly obvious that an exuberant community is merely indulging in a little self-advertising. No starting academic progress may be expected from such an innovation, and on the grounds of sentiment the thing becomes preposterous. Buildings pleasantly mantled with ivy, the play of sunlight among structures dedicated each to a special function of academic life, above all, the absence of trees, which do more to make an attractive campus than anything else, can find no place about a skyscraper. At the very start, Pittsburgh cuts away all the subconscious beauty which plays such a great part in the memories of graduates. Education is made into a grim and businesslike affair, the very opposite of scholastic peace and meditation.

The thought of a college in a skyscraper is a distinctly American idea, but that is not enough to recommend it. Learning is not so much a matter of silent elevator doors and good ventilation as it is of reflection and cloistered seclusion. But this is not a question of learning, it is a question of advertising.