Tag: Oakland

The Cathedral of Learning

Standing tall, 535 feet above the city of Oakland, the Cathedral of Learning is a conspicuous landmark of the city. Located at 4200 Fifth Ave, the Cathedral, houses classrooms, theaters, computer labs, and several departments of the University of Pittsburgh.

Ratzon: Center for Healing and Resistance

The name Ratzon comes from Hebrew word for “yearning and possibility.” It is appropriate then that the center serves as a space to hold events related to the LGBTQ+ Jewish experience, a mutual aid organization, and a host for the national Queer Jewish Youth Group Shulayim L’Shalom (“From margins to peace”).

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum

In the center of Oakland stands Soldiers and Sailors Museum and Memorial, a building much like a classical temple. But instead of a place of worship, it is a place to honor American veterans and those who lost their lives fighting for their nation.

Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain

Mary Schenley wasn’t a pagan, but she found plenty of other ways to shock the upper-class society into which she was born in the nineteenth century. Born Mary Elizabeth Croghan in 1826, she eloped with a British army captain three times her age when she was fifteen years old and divided the rest of her life between Pittsburgh and London. The Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain, also called “A Song to Nature,” was built near Schenley Plaza in her memory in 1918.

Hocus Pocus

The Hocus Pocus Occult Emporium, located on Meyran Avenue in Oakland, calls itself the oldest Occult shop in Pittsburgh. The store itself is tiny, dimly lit, and very welcoming. Once you step through the threshold at Hocus Pocus, as stated on their website, they aim to make “you feel as though you’ve stepped into a magical realm between worlds.” Inside you will find anything you might need to take part in the magical arts, from Tarot decks and crystals to sage for Native American smudging rituals. The store is for “mystics, poets, witches, shamans, dreamers, healers, seekers, & visionaries of all paths,” from novices to experts.

Ukrainian Nationality Room

Like the rest of the University of Pittsburgh’s 31 Nationality Rooms, the Ukrainian room on the third floor of the university’s Cathedral of Learning is part active classroom and part museum. The room, one of the smaller nationality rooms, is largely modeled after a 17th-century svitlytsia, a living room where a Ukrainian nobleman would receive his guests. The svitlytsia emphasizes hospitality and faith, key concepts in Ukrainian culture; signage inside the room cites an Eastern European proverb: “When a guest enters the home, God enters the home.”

Syria Mosque

The Syria Mosque and its members played a powerful role in shaping Oakland as a neighborhood and Pittsburgh as a city. Though fraught with cultural exploitation, its presence had a lasting impact.

Hillel Jewish University Torah

In February 2018, a 300-year-old Torah scroll that is said to have survived the Holocaust began its new chapter at the Hillel Jewish University Center in Oakland, Pittsburgh. This Torah scroll could date back to the early 1700s and served generations in the town of Suwalki, Poland.