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All the inbound pr is pointed at the root.
I have a noncommercial resource (directory) that once won an Internet magazine (printed variety) award as one of the top 25 sites in the world. That was in 1996. It started as a Compuserve member page and then it has lived below my two commercial sites in turn, but has not been linked from the root. I have other similar resources hiding below the root (e.g. personal genealogy pages) simply because they are not worth their own domain and because they are a resource.
Over 200 sites link to my 2nd-level computing resource, which has a higher PR than the base page. Perhaps this is rare, but it is my experience.