Pitt bought a luxury apartment comples - THE luxury apartment complex! - back in the 1950's, and the sororities (except for Kappa Alpha Theta & Kappa Kappa Gamma, who shared a specially made duplex at the time) were all forced to live in the nicest. That was Amos Hall (conveniently Building "A"), and there were two apartments on each floor. Each side had a kitchen, a living room, and en suite bathrooms. The larger sororities had the full floor (there were four when I was in school) and the smaller had one of the apartments. The Pitt website shows the floor plan prior to the second to the last reconstruction; there have been at least three that I know of.
The floorplan is
here. The service elevator (to the right) was still there when I was in school, but only used by the university. There are also subtle differences from floor to flooe - we have the Penthouse Suite (the button was marked PH), and the formal living room has a 22' tall ceiling! Rooms 1, 3, 5, 18, 20, 21, and the living room consisted of one apartment - usually the better of the two, with a fireplace. Rooms 18 & 20 were former maids' rooms - my understanding is that the call bells had to be taken out. The service hallway in front of the maids' rooms was where linens and extra china was stored in the apartment days - in my time, we used that for commuters, to store sleeping bags and suitcases.
On the other side (rooms 6, 8, 12, 13, 15) are now bedrooms, but room 12 was formerly the dining room. In both that room and the Chapter Room on the other side, you can see where the toe bell was, for the lady of the house to call the servants. When there were housemothers, they lived in rooms 13 & 15 - one was her bedrom, the other, her receiving area. The amenities of walk-in closets and such have been kept. Now, there is only one kitchen - but it's a wonderful size! - with a laundry nook off of it.
I have the original floorplan somewhere (I'm between houses right now), and the large hallway on the apartment on the left (apartment A) was called "the library". I'm fairly certain that all of the sororities refer to the A side as the Formal Side, and the other as the Informal Side. We changed rooms often - I had rooms 5, 6, 8, and 18 at one time or another.
And I'm
very excited to find somebody else who loves blueprints! If there's a Theta Phi Alpha from Pitt on GC, I'd love to hear about your suite (hint!). If I get time at work, I'll do my best to show the latest changes.
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