A series of pictures and factoids for Create's NaJoPoMo Challenge.

The vagaries of history can give you a chuckle. One generation's dream of Progress with a capital 'P' can turn into another's dream of, well, peace, love, and the pursuit of an altered state. What does that have to do with this building, sitting in solitary splendour athwart an unknown landscape? You shall hear.

Back in 1898, there wasn't a lot in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. But those captains of industry in the Gilded Age had big plans. Andrew Carnegie (yes, him), Andrew W Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, George Westinghouse (Edison's nemesis), HJ Heinz (the Pickle King), and Mary Croghan Schenley, all formed the Bellefield Company. It' purpose: to develop Oakland into a super-classy place.

They succeeded, sort of. They built Carnegie Library and Museum, and Carnegie Music Hall. They built Frick Fine Arts – and then Helen Clay Frick bought all those clever fakes. They built Phipps Conservatory, and landscaped Panther Hollow into a park. They built Schenley Park, from land belonging to the romantic Mrs Schenley, or her family trust, or whatever.

As a young thing, Mary Croghan was swept off her feet by an AWOL British Army captain. The ensuing scandal aroused newspaper readers on two continents. Her respectable father fainted when he heard the news, and Queen Victoria was not amused at all. The awful Captain Schenley got a lot of Oakland named after him, though: the Park, a school or three, and the eyesore magnificent structure you see before you: the Schenley Hotel.

Or, as we called it less than a century later, the Student Union building.

Yes, children. By my college days, that imposing edifice played host to, not rich ladies in bustles and men in top hats, but chicks in miniskirts and guys with long hair. Okay, the amount of facial hair displayed was probably about the same. But the presentation staircase looked a bit out of place when the guy standing on it was quoting Marx.

Isaac Asimov spoke in that ballroom. We put the Pitt News to bed in Lillian Russell's old suite. No, it's not haunted – although they claim that if you fall asleep in the Red Room, you'll always wake up in time for your exam. A Bolshoi ballerina haunts the place. She overslept and missed a career-making engagement in Pittsburgh. Since then, she saves students from the same fate.

The Student Union was a bit run-down in the 70s. I think they've tarted it up a bit since then. I read something about expensive renovations. That's fine, I suppose. But I'll always remember the old place fondly. Arguing the fate of the world in its shabby splendour was part of the charm of a Pitt education.