Salk Hall Salk Hall Jonas Salk Hall at the University of Pittsburgh is a Pennsylvania state and Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmark. The Art Deco building is named after Jonas Salk, who conducted his research on the first polio vaccine in a basement laboratory while on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. The main structure of Salk Hall is the former city owned Pittsburgh Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases constructed in 1941 on land the university had given to the city. It was designed by Richard Irving and Theodore Eicholz. The hospital was built as a project by President
Cold War tensions and the polio vaccine flew to Leningrad in June, 1956. As a result of a cooperation of Sabin and Chumakov in Leningrad, Sabin was able to test his attenuated vaccine when funding in America was declined. While Sabin was working behind the Iron Curtain, the Sabin-Chumakov vaccine was determined to be safe and effective. Cold War tensions caused Western scientists to refuse the reports from the Russians about the effectiveness of the Sabin vaccine. However, mass vaccinations of Sabin's vaccine spread throughout Eastern Europe from 1960–1963. Just as some Soviet virologists did not trust the Western Salk vaccine, Americans had similar reservations about the