Cathedral rooms leaking on 13 floors

With thousands of gallons of water soaking the outside of the Cathedral of Learning during… With thousands of gallons of water soaking the outside of the Cathedral of Learning during its summer cleaning, a drop or two was bound to seep inside.

When Elizabeth Monasterios, chair of the Hispanic languages and literatures office, left her office three Fridays ago, she wasn’t worried about a small leak.

But she returned after the weekend and found more than a drop seeping through the ceiling. The water had soaked 200 volumes from a collection of books shelved on an interior wall and saturated paint peeled off from around the windows.

“This is unbelievable, it destroyed my whole collection,” she said. “This is an accident, we all understand.”

But Monasterios hopes to be reimbursed for her damaged books.

Another office in her department had to be sealed off because of a “toxic” smell coming from its leaking windows, Monasterios said.

The leaking isn’t confined to floor 13, either.

The Pitt News obtained from Facilities Management workers in the Cathedral a list of rooms on 13 floors needing maintenance because of the leaks. As of last Friday, the basement, ground, first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, 11th, 13th, 19th, 20th and 23rd floors had suffered water damage and flooding.

Workers have not yet washed the upper floors of the Cathedral because of the nest of endangered peregrine falcons on the 40th floor.

Two nationality rooms, the Czechoslovak and English rooms, saw flooding that required repairs, Nationality Rooms Director E. Maxine Bruhns said.

Water trickled from the ceiling behind one of the murals in the Czech room, and custodians removed the area from its framing and allowed it to dry out.

Leaks also buckled the flooring in the English room, and, as of yet, no repairs have been made.

Last Thursday, stairwell C, located on the Bigelow Boulevard side of the Cathedral, collected puddles of water that had streamed down the walls, from the ceilings, out of three light sconces and onto the floor.

The third floor landing was impassible because of the standing water.

Two and three floors up in the English department, water already had disrupted multiple offices.

The ceiling of the advising office on the sixth floor lost a few tiles after they became saturated with water coming in through the window frame.

According to English adviser Fiore Pugliano, ceiling tiles and the insulation behind them fell because of the water seeping through mortar cracks.

When he called for maintenance assistance to fix the problem, they responded immediately, he said.

“We were notified in advance that this would happen,” he said.

Pugliano said the biggest leak in the English department was in the office of David Bartholomae, the department chair. He added that Bartholomae temporarily moved out of his fifth floor office to escape the damage. Department administration would not comment.

The University contracted the Cost Co. to complete the $4.8 million project of removing 80 years of Pittsburgh steel industry soot and city acid rain from the exterior limestone masonry.

Before chemically cleaning the outside walls of the building, water cascades down the walls to soak the limestone and loosen the grime for 12 hours at a time, University architect Park Rankin said.

About 20 workers spray water infused with glass powder through high-pressure hoses against the sides of the building to remove the dirt chemically.

Once the cleaning is finished, 10 masons will point, or re-apply, the mortar in sections of the exterior walls, and the windows will be re-caulked.

Tony Dechilles, the Cost Co.’s project manager for the Cathedral project, said the process causes “no harm inside the building,” but the original windows and mortar between the stones could never seal off the water completely.

Sock-like tubes meant to soak up water wait at the base of windows for leaks and extra Facilities Management staff takes care of complaints of floods.

Rankin acknowledged the possibility of dislodged mortar and openings around the windows.

“With old roofs and windows, this is to be expected,” he said of the interior flooding. “There really hasn’t been major permanent damage, but there were inconveniences.”

“I wouldn’t be concerned because it’s such a well-constructed building,” he added, noting that the damage only spans a possible 1,000 to 2,000 feet inside the 600,000 square-foot building.

The cleaning of the 42-story tall Cathedral began in the spring and is scheduled to end in September.

As for official word from the University on the floods, spokesman John Fedele said only, “There has been minimal damage on the inside.”

Project manager Dechilles said that the University is underwriting the costs of the damage.

Fedele did not comment on how much more this damage will cost the University in addition to the original budget.