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Perched on the upper campus, overlooking Oakland, Sutherland Hall houses 737 first-year men and women. The complex is composed of Sutherland West and East, adjoined by a common building. The common area includes the Perch at Sutherland made-to-order restaurant facility, a Quick Zone convenience store, a computer center, the Hill O'Beans coffee cart, and a mail center.

The air-conditioned rooms in Sutherland Hall are mostly doubles with semi-private baths. Laundry facilities and fitness rooms are on the ground floors of both Sutherland East and West.

The living learning community for First-Year Honors College students is located in Sutherland Hall.

In 1962, Pitt won a NASA grant to erect this center for students studying the natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, and health areas related to the aerospace field. Today, the building houses classrooms, labs, and main offices of the University’s Department of Geology and Environmental Science.

Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum commemorates the men and women from Allegheny County who have served in every U.S. war since the Civil War. Styled after the ancient mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Soldiers & Sailors is the largest memorial in the United States dedicated to America’s military personnel.

Designed by architect Henry Hornbostel and dedicated in 1910, the building houses a museum featuring rare and one-of-a-kind exhibits as well as a 2,500-seat auditorium, a banquet hall, and meeting rooms. Many Pitt functions are held at Soldiers & Sailors. An expansive front lawn sits on top of an underground parking garage that's operated under a long-term lease by the University.

Schenley Quad contains five of the University's 14 residence halls. Holland, Brackenridge, Bruce, McCormick, and Amos. Holland and Amos (sorority housing) are residence halls for women. Most of Brackenridge, Bruce, McCormick, and Amos Halls offer suite-style living (including a living area kitchen/kitchenette, private/semi bathrooms). The Quad fitness center is located in Brackenridge Hall. Brackenridge houses mostly sophomore and some junior University Honors College students.

The buildings in Schenley Quad used to be the Schenley Apartments, residences for well-to-do Pittsburghers. Built in 1924, these apartments became part of the University in 1956.

Alan Magee Scaife Hall is the home of Pitt’s School of Medicine, a top recipient of National Institutes of Health research funding and ranked as a “top medical school” by U.S. News & World Report in the categories of research and primary care.

The building also contains Falk Library (Pitt’s medical library), classrooms, lecture halls, and laboratories.

Ruskin Hall was renovated to an apartment-style housing facility in 2008. Each of its apartments can accommodate one, two, or three students, all of them upperclassmen. Amenities include central A/C, private bathrooms, full furnishings, basic cable, Ethernet, and kitchens equipped with a microwave, refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher.

Pittsburgh offers Pitt students many opportunities to enjoy and benefit from its lively downtown, growing economy, and distinctive neighborhoods—including Oakland, the Pittsburgh campus's home neighborhood and the city's cultural and educational hub. By presenting a current Pitt ID, students can ride all public transportation in Allegheny County free of charge.

Truly, the city is an extension of campus.

The University’s PITT ARTS program enables students to attend cultural events at venues like downtown's Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts for free or at greatly reduced rates. At Heinz Field on Pittsburgh's burgeoning North Shore, students can cheer themselves hoarse during Pitt Panthers home football games (the Pittsburgh Steelers play there, too). The city's South Side and Lawrenceville neighborhoods, with their many cafés, clubs, galleries, eateries, and shops, also are popular with students from Pitt and the city's six other universities.

Panther Hall, located on the upper campus, houses 511 upper-class men and women. The air-conditioned rooms are a combination of three-person and five-person suites and doubles with private baths. Every floor includes an open lounge, study area, and laundry facilities. The fitness center is located on the ground floor.

The 29 Nationality Rooms in Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning represent the cultures of various ethnic peoples that settled in Allegheny County and are supported by those cultural groups and governments. Designated collectively as a Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation historical landmark, the rooms are located on the first and third floors of the Cathedral, itself a national historic landmark.

Of the 29 rooms, 27 are functional classrooms and two (the Early American and Syria-Lebanon rooms) are display rooms that can be visited only during guided tours. Nearly 30,000 visitors a year tour the Nationality Rooms, which are available daily for public tours when not being used for classes or other University functions. (Taped and written materials for self-guided tours are available at the Nationality Rooms Information Desk on the first floor, near the Fifth Avenue entrance.)

The first four rooms to be dedicated were the Scottish, Russian, German, and Swedish Rooms, in 1938. The newest are the Swiss and Turkish rooms, both dedicated in 2012.

Design of the classrooms often involves native artists and imported artifacts and materials. For example, the Tudor-Gothic-style English Classroom, the largest of the Nationality Classrooms, contains relics from the British House of Commons that was destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing in 1941.

Mervis Hall houses the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business. The Katz School's MBA program has been rated one of the 10 most affordable, high-quality programs in the United States. It also has been selected as one of the best business schools in the nation by the Princeton Review, and is ranked 11th in the world among public business schools by The Wall Street Journal. Katz is rated in the top four in terms of its percentage of African American students and faculty members.

Dedicated in 1983, Mervis Hall was built on the former site of Forbes Field, home of baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates from 1909 to 1970. The field’s flagpole and a portion of the left and center field walls still stand, just outside Mervis Hall and adjacent to the building’s left plaza.

This residence hall is close to UMPC medical buildings, Falk Clinic, and the School of Nursing. Lothrop is a coed-by-floor residence hall that is available to both freshmen and upperclassmen. It has mostly single rooms with a few doubles. Most rooms are equipped with a sink, and each wing has a communal bathroom and shower on each floor.

Because of its proximity to the medical center, Lothrop Hall contains the Nursing Living Learning Community. It also houses a student fitness center.

The largest housing complex on campus, Litchfield Towers is home to many of Pitt’s freshmen students. Towers A, B, and C are coed and house approximately 1,800 students.

The Towers Lobby, a social crossroads, connects all three buildings and also houses Panther Central—the University's concierge service provider, a one-stop center where students can take care of ID card issues as well as Housing and Dining Service needs. The lobby is also home to the Common Grounds coffee cart, the student mailroom, e-mail kiosks, a vending area, and laundry facilities. On the lower level of the towers is one of the main dining services areas, Market Central, which offers superior eat-in menu options for those who desire the total dining experience. For students on the go, there's a separate section that includes Market-To-Go for tasty take-out meals, and a Quick Zone for convenient snacks and beverages.

The Towers Fitness Center, open only to Towers residents, is open 24 hours a day.

A classic example of brutalist architecture, the Barco Law Building houses Pitt’s School of Law. Among the building’s special features is the oak-paneled Teplitz Memorial Moot Courtroom, which includes a seven-seat judges’ bench, jury and press boxes, counselors’ tables, judges’ chambers, jury room, and a striking 24x36-foot mosaic created by Pitt’s Virgil Cantini (1919-2009).

Pitt has offered law classes since 1843. Its law school was officially founded in 1895, making Pitt’s one of the oldest law schools in the nation. In 1900, the law school joined with 31 other schools to form the Association of American Law Schools.

Among Pitt’s law graduates are the late Derrick Bell Jr., the first tenured African American professor at Harvard Law School and one of the originators of critical race theory; U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch; the late K. Leroy Irvis, longtime Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the first African American to serve as a speaker of the house in any state legislature in the United States since Reconstruction; and former U.S. Attorney General and Governor of Pennsylvania Richard Thornburgh.

With significant programs focusing on international law, as well as community-based public service expertise, the school provides a diverse, sophisticated, and hands-on legal education.

The Humanities Center, housed in the refurbished Darlington Library in the Cathedral of Learning, fosters advanced research in the humanities by Pitt faculty members as well as leading scholars from around the world, who visit as long- and short-term fellows. The center offers a regular colloquium series, conference and seminars, and supports collaborative research projects.

Open to campus religious groups of all denominations, as well as the public, Heinz Memorial Chapel is a popular site for religious and memorial services, concerts, guided tours, and weddings.

Each year, the chapel hosts between 170 and 190 weddings. Among the musicians who perform regularly at the chapel are the Heinz Chapel Choir, an a cappella choir consisting of Pitt students. The chapel itself was a gift of company founder, Henry John Heinz, and his three children in honor of H.J.’s mother. The architect was Charles Klauder, who also designed the nearby Cathedral of Learning.

The chapel’s 23 exquisitely detailed stained glass windows, designed by Charles J. Connick, depict 391 sacred and secular figures representing religion, history, medicine, science, and the arts. The 73-foot transept windows are among the tallest in the world and depict an equal number of women and men. All of the visible wood in the chapel, including its two 800-pound entrance doors, is oak. All of the wrought iron work, including lanterns, door fittings, stair railings, candlesticks, and alter cross, were created by Samuel Yellin, who also designed the metal work in the Cathedral of Learning (including the massive Commons Room gates) and most of the metal work in Pitt’s Nationality Classrooms.

Pitt’s Greek system includes 22 fraternities and 13 sororities. Institutions that predate the Revolutionary War, college fraternities and sororities help students meet new friends, participate in social and community activities, and network with alumni.

The University's fraternities and sororities are located in both on- and off-campus housing. On-campus sororities are located in Amos Hall and the third floor of Bruce Hall. The sorority suites each feature a kitchen, private bathrooms, a living room, and a chapter room.

On-campus fraternities can be found on the upper campus near Sutherland Hall.

Forbes Hall houses 232 first-year men and women in air-conditioned double rooms. Some rooms are connected to semi-private powder rooms, but showers are communal. Each floor also has a study room and laundry area. There is a fitness center on the second floor. Freshman engineering students are housed in Forbes Hall.

Forbes Avenue runs through the heart of campus and is arguably Pittsburgh’s busiest street. With numerous retail shops, museums, restaurants, and hotels, Forbes Avenue offers students a cosmopolitan and diverse environment­—all within walking distance of dorms as well as off-campus housing. (Pitt facilities along Forbes can be recognized by their navy-blue awnings.)

Not-to-be-missed stops along Forbes Avenue include Primanti Brothers, famous for its fries-on-the-inside sandwiches, and The Original Hot Dog Shop, a.k.a. the “O.” The "O" sells more than 15 tons of French fries a week. Don’t go with the large order of fries unless you’re planning to feed a half-dozen people. Seriously.

Lawrence Hall houses classrooms and lecture halls for courses in disciplines across the arts and sciences. The building's 998-seat auditorium is the largest lecture hall on campus. A 24-hour computer lab, one of the University's most popular, also is in Lawrence Hall.

Completed in 1968, the building was named for David L. Lawrence, a Pitt trustee from 1945 to 1966 who was also Governor of Pennsylvania (from 1959 to 1963) and Pittsburgh’s mayor from 1946 to 1959 during the city’s Renaissance I urban-renewal program. In front of the hall stands the sculpture Ode to Space by Pitt's Virgil Cantini (1919-2009), a memorial to Pitt Chancellor Edward Litchfield, who died in a 1965 plane crash.

Located within the South Craig Street shopping area of Oakland, Craig Hall houses several University offices, including those providing employment, payroll, and benefits services and the Office of University Communications.

The Clapp/Langley/Crawford complex comprises three interconnected buildings and the Life Science Annex. Together, they house Pitt’s Departments of Biological Sciences and Neuroscience. 

Clapp Hall, named for aluminum executive George Hubbard Clapp, is a six-story structure that is the primary home of the biological sciences department.

Langley Hall also houses biological sciences facilities, as well as the 77,000-volume Langley Library, which is the biology, neuroscience, psychology, and life sciences unit of Pitt’s University Library System. The building was named after Samuel P. Langley, a 19th-century Pitt astronomy professor who pioneered heavier-than-air flight and later served as a Smithsonian Institution Secretary. His Aerodrome No. 6, one of only two surviving Langley aircraft, hangs from the ceiling of Wesley W. Posvar Hall.

Crawford, dedicated in 1969 and the last of the three buildings to be constructed, is home to the neuroscience department. It was named after Stanton C. Crawford, Pitt’s 13th chancellor.

The Life Science Annex, an expansion of the complex that includes labs and neuroscience research programs among other facilities, opened in October 2007. 

Fifty-two feet (four stories) high and almost a half-acre, the Cathedral of Learning's Commons Room is a Gothic-style hall that offers a unique setting for study, contemplation, and celebration. This room is a piece of true Gothic architecture; no steel supports were used in the construction of its arches.

Joseph Gattoni designed the stonework. The walls are made of Indiana limestone and the floor is green Vermont slate. The wrought iron in the room, including railings, lanterns, and an imposing gate, were designed by master ironworker Samuel Yellin; inscribed on the gate is a verse from Robert Bridges' "Ode to Eaton College": "Here is eternal spring; for you the very stars of heaven are new."

Students looking for help with calculus, chemistry, psychology, and other subjects get assistance from faculty members and grad students who volunteer at desks scattered around the Commons Room. Wireless Internet is available, but despite such technological upgrades the room retains the timeless quality described by Margaret Storm Jamerson, an English novelist who served as a visiting professor at Pitt in the late 1940s:

"To look down into the great hall called the Commons Room when it is filled with students sitting about reading, arguing, drinking coffee, is to be reminded—distantly, but without any sense of incongruity—of a medieval refectory or chapter-house."

The Commons Room occasionally hosts dinners, receptions, and other special events. Among the guests who have addressed Commons Room gatherings in recent years is Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev (in 2009). Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Pitt alumnus Wangari Maathai (2006) attended a reception in the room after speaking in Alumni Hall.

In 1957, innoculation teams set up in the Commons Room gave free injections of the new polio vaccine created by a team led by Pitt's Jonas Salk. (Pittsburgh was the first major city in the United States to rid itself of polio.) During 1943, the room—like much of the rest of the Cathedral—served as an installation for U.S. military personnel.

A time capsule in the Commons Room's cornerstone was a gift from the 1937 graduating class (Pitt’s 150th year) and contains documents meant to last 500 years. Included are signatures of the graduating class and faculty, a copy of the 1937 yearbook (The Owl), an edition of the Pitt News, the names of the building’s major donors and craftsmen, and a plate commemorating the original 17 nationality rooms. This statement is also included: “The Cathedral of Learning expresses for Pittsburgh a desire to live honestly in a world where kindness and the happiness of creating are life.”

Bouquet Gardens consists of nine garden-style apartment buildings. Located a few blocks from the heart of campus, Bouquet Gardens accommodates 651 students in 172 units. Each air-conditioned unit is furnished and includes a kitchen, living room, and dining area. Bouquet Gardens buildings A-H have four single bedrooms and two bathrooms. Building J consists of three-person apartments with one bathroom and four-person units with two bathrooms. Building J also contains a small mail center, fitness center, and indoor bike parking.

Alumni Hall is home to the Pitt Alumni Association, the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid, a 270-seat auditorium/lecture hall, and the 500-seat Connolly Ballroom, among other offices and facilities. The building’s first floor hosts the Legacy Gallery, a permanent exhibit featuring two unique touch-screen interactive kiosks. Visitors use the kiosks to explore the achievements of alumni, faculty, and students through video, audio, archival photos, and text.

Mellon Financial Corporation Hall, located on the fifth floor, includes classrooms, team rooms, and meeting space for the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business’s Center for Executive Education and Executive MBA Program. This refurbished space was made possible by a $1 million gift from Mellon Financial Corporation.

The seventh-floor auditorium lobby houses a collection of oil paintings, 365 Views of the Cathedral of Learning, completed in 1997-1999 by Spanish artist Felix de la Concha. Each painting features the Cathedral of Learning from a different vantage point for each of 365 days.

Originally a Masonic Temple and designed by renowned architect Benno Janssen, the limestone-clad building was constructed in 1914-15 and acquired by Pitt in 1993. It is a Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmark and part of the Oakland Civic Center Historic District.