Category Archive: Preservation News
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Plan C draws some interest as developers line up for Downtown redo
Saturday, July 28, 2001
By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Eight developers — three local and five from out of town — have expressed interest in doing some or all of the retail-residential-entertainment makeover of the rundown Fifth and Forbes area of Downtown.
The names of the development firms were released yesterday by Mayor Tom Murphy’s Plan C Task Force, which he named last December after dropping his previous, controversial plan for a $521 million redevelopment of Fifth and Forbes by Urban Retail Properties of Chicago.
The Fifth and Forbes task force is close to recommending a revitalization plan to be implemented in the important retail corridor. The 13-member group has held several months of public hearings and has received resumes and qualifications from interested developers.
“We are delighted by the strong interest we have received both locally and nationally” in the Fifth and Forbes redevelopment, said city Planning Director Susan Golomb.
Such interest, she said, shows that the task force is preparing “a solid, exciting plan that private firms believe will be profitable for them and successful for the city.”
Local firms that want to take part are:
Lincoln Property Co., whose office is in Bethel Park, is willing to develop housing as part of the renewal plan. Lincoln has done several housing developments in the Pittsburgh area, including upscale apartments on the North Shore just over the Ninth Street Bridge.
No Wall Productions, headed by Eve Picker of Friendship, who has converted several older Downtown buildings into condominiums or loft-style housing.
Serket, a design studio based in Carnegie, which is interested in retail and entertainment development in the Fifth-Forbes corridor.
The five out-of-town developers who want to take part in the work include:
Continental Real Estate, with its partner, Nationwide Realty Investors, both of Columbus, Ohio, which is doing the massive Waterfront retail/housing project in Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall and the housing portion of the South Side Works redevelopment.
Downtown Works, a division of the Kravco Co., based in King of Prussia, near Philadelphia. Kravco has done the $250 million redevelopment of the sprawling King of Prussia Mall, which includes sought-after retailers such as Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. Getting a Nordstrom store was a key part of Murphy’s plan that died late last year.
Kramont Realty Trust of Plymouth Meeting, Pa., is interested only in the retail leasing portion of the overall plan. It has done retail redevelopment projects in Chester, Pa., as well as north Philadelphia and Atlantic City, N.J.
Hunter Interests, an urban economics, finance and real estate development firm from Annapolis, Md.
The Palladium Co., a company based in New York City that does mixed-use, retail/office/residential projects.
Arthur Ziegler, president of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and a member of the Plan C task force, said the group will review the previous work of each firm and then visit sites in cities where renewal projects have been completed.
“We want to see if what they’ve done previously fits into our new vision of what the Fifth and Forbes area needs to be,” he said.
The on-site research is scheduled to be finished by mid-September. Golomb said a short list of development-manager firms would then be interviewed, with a firm or firms chosen by the end of September.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Old St. Luke’s Church, built in 1852, receives historical marker
Wednesday, July 18, 2001
By Bob Podurgiel
Pittsburgh Post GazetteChartiers Valley 10th-graders Heather Drudy and Nicole Striner joined amid smoke and thunder echoing from successive volleys of musket and rifle fire Sunday to honor a very old historic landmark.
The pair unveiled a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker commemorating Old St. Luke’s Church in Scott.
More than 100 people attended the dedication featuring remarks by the Rev. Leroy Patrick of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission; the Rev. Robert B. Banse, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon; state Sen. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair; state Rep. Tom Stevenson, R-Mt. Lebanon; and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
A Revolutionary War re-enactor from the 8th Pennsylvania Regiment of the Continental Line and Civil War re-enactors from Company A, 9th Pennsylvania Reserves, fired volleys from their muskets and smooth bore rifles.
The Rev. Richard W. Davies of Mt. Lebanon, the vicar at Old St. Luke’s Church, said he was surprised and delighted when Murphy’s office told him last year the church had been approved for a historical marker.
For 13 years since retiring as an administrator with the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, he has helped preserve Old St. Luke’s and its history and to maintain the church as an active worship site.
He said that last year the church hosted two dozen religious worship services and 40 Christian weddings.
“I’m a priest, so I’m dedicated to theology, but in the past 13 years, I have come to love American history as well,” Davies said.
Striner and Drudy credited him with helping them learn more about American history last year when they were in ninth grade and visited Old St. Luke’s as part of their school course work.
The students said they studied the lives of Russell Stuart and Jane Williams, two people buried in the church’s cemetery.
“It gave us an appreciation of how people lived back then. It really opened our eyes to the history of the area,” Drudy said.
The burial ground at Old St. Luke’s contains the remains of several Revolutionary War veterans and many of the first Chartiers Valley settlers.
Davies said worship began at the site when it was an outpost of the British Army prior to the Revolutionary War, and chaplains to regiments stationed there conducted the services.
One of them, Maj. William Lea, who settled in the Chartiers Valley, donated the land for the church.
In 1790, a frame church was built on the site, and in 1852, the present stone church was constructed.
During Sunday’s ceremony, McCollom called the church a shining example of how people can pull together to restore and preserve significant old buildings.
While Davies is happy the church finally has received a historical marker, he also credits modern technology as an unlikely ally in helping with that effort.
After he was notified about the marker, he said the toughest job was back-and-forth communication between the history commission and himself over wording that would appear on the marker.
“If it wasn’t for e-mail and the Internet, we might still be working on it. The computer helped speed things along,” he said.
Bob Podurgiel is a free-lance writer.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Foundation grant to help restore Homestead firehouse
Wednesday, July 18, 2001
By Jim Hosek, Tri-State Sports & News Service
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has announced that Hillman Foundation Inc. has agreed to contribute $75,000 toward restoring Homestead’s firehouse and former municipal building.
But borough council President Dorothy Kelly refused comment beyond saying the History & Landmarks news release about the decaying building at the corner of Amity Street and East Ninth Avenue was premature.
Mayor Betty Esper, who said she is never invited to any firehouse committee meetings but should be, added, “I don’t know anything about the grant. If that’s true, that $75,000 is a start. But we’re looking at at least $600,000 in renovations for that building.”
She said renovations are badly needed. The building, infamous for its many electrical and plumbing problems, is occupied only by the volunteer fire company. The police department is in an Allegheny County-owned building across from the firehouse. Municipal offices are a number of blocks away at a building owned by the Steel Valley Council of Governments.
Once renovated, the municipal offices and firehouse would all be in the same building again.
The History & Landmarks news release said that besides the Hillman Foundation grant, other commitments for the renovation project have come from state Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills; the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission; Pennsylvania Heritage Parks Program; the RSMIS Foundation; Homestead Borough; and the Homestead Volunteer Fire Department.
The release said Continental Real Estate Companies, the developer of The Waterfront, has donated engineering services toward the project.
“The restoration of this building is a central part of our continuing program to assist in the restoration of the significant buildings in this historic town,” Landmarks President Arthur Ziegler said in the release. He could not be reached for additional comment.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Bright-hued bridges? Reaction to idea spans full spectrum of views
Friday, June 15, 2001
By Diana Nelson Jones, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Arthur Ziegler and his staff have been discussing colorful bridges for a couple of years. Now, may the public debate begin.
The president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has suggested that bridges be painted a variety of vibrant colors when they come due for a new paint job. These include most bridges that line the Allegheny River, a few along the Monongahela and, most immediately the Fort Pitt — due for a new coat of paint in 2003.
The new colors bring to mind the hues of overpriced polo shirts in catalogs — candied yam, purple ice, grassy meadow and perfect peach among them — and at least one aesthetically-minded cultural leader is horrified.
Tom Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum, said, “Why doesn’t he go and work for IKEA?” Bridges, he said, “are not bath towels.”
Architect Syl Damianos, who sits on the advisory committee for redesign of the Carnegie Science Center, says he likes the idea “a lot. There’s no reason they need to be dull, drab structures.”
While no one is defending the current “Aztec gold” of some Downtown bridges, Allegheny County public works Director Tom Donatelli has said he believes the color should be consistent. Faded to the color that Maxwell King of the Heinz Endowments calls “old dead bananas,” the original color has been called the city’s “signature color,” in citations of sports teams’ uniforms and an old redevelopment moniker, the Golden Triangle.
The Federal Highway Administration paid the bulk of $7 million spent for local bridge painting in 1994. A paint job lasts about 15 years. The state Department of Transportation and the county own the bridges and would have to approve any color changes.
Coinciding with talk of color are plans for bridge lighting. The Riverlife Task Force has targeted three of the bridges — the Roberto Clemente, 7th and 9th Street bridges, three uniform spans side by side on the Allegheny — for a demo-lighting project.
Davitt Woodwell, executive director of the Riverlife Task Force, calls Ziegler’s suggestion “an interesting idea. There are a lot of interesting ideas. Look at places like Cleveland,” where bridges are being painted and lit, he said. Whatever is done, he said, will indicate “how the city wants to present itself to the world. The more discussion the better.”
King, executive director of the Heinz Endowments and co-chair of the Riverlife Task Force, weighs in against color variety. “With all due respect for Arthur, I think he’s dead wrong. The right thing to do is paint them all one color. That becomes a signature look.”
King says he “wouldn’t touch” the Smithfield Street Bridge, but chooses for all the others a vibrant yellow, and lighting.
“Every visitor would come away with the impression we want them to — that rivers and bridges are defining of our life here. All different colors would achieve the opposite.”
Director of operations and marketing for History & Landmarks, admitted the colors the foundation has discussed can look “a little bouncy” on the computer-generated images. “But I don’t think any [purple] bridge would be a Barney purple.”
Sokolowski says the attitude that the Aztec gold is Pittsburgh’s signature color because it matches sports-team uniforms is “provincially simple-minded and second rate. These bridges are exemplars of the 19th -century industrial society. You could do a more creative thing with those bridges than colors, like recognizing the artistic integrity of the period they were made in, then maybe commission an artist to do something that would distinguish it, like with lighting.”
He said the colors that come to mind with the names such as “purple ice” sound like “tawdry nail polish.”
We don’t want our bridges to look like whores.”
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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2 Lawrence buildings start falling
Convention center, paint factory demolition begin
Tuesday, June 12, 2001
By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
It was a bad day for Pittsburgh buildings named Lawrence.
Demolition began yesterday on the original David L. Lawrence Convention Center — a youngster only 20 years old — as it was slammed by a machine called a Komatsu Excavator nicknamed “Bad Boy.”
Most of that building at Penn Avenue and 10th Street will be demolished by conventional methods, although a small implosion will be used this summer to take down a section of the roof.
The building, which opened in 1981, had only 131,000 square feet of exhibit space, which is considered tiny by today’s convention center standards. Demolition is to be completed by mid-August so that phase two of construction of the new convention center can proceed. The first phase of the new building is well under way on the western side of 10th Street.
Tom Kennedy, project manager for the Sports & Exhibition Authority, said the old convention center had to be razed “because the design wasn’t compatible” with the new $328 million center, which was designed by architect Rafael Vinoly of New York City.
Six events planned for the latter half of 2001 had to be moved to other venues in the area or rescheduled because the old convention center is being demolished. The first phase of the new, larger building will open in January in time for public events such as the annual boat and auto shows.
While the convention center was being razed Downtown, demolition cranes were also whacking into a brick wall at the 99-year-old Lawrence Paint Co. building on the south side of the Ohio River. It’s just west of Station Square and faces the Point fountain across the river.
That industrial structure was built in 1902 and has been closed for more than 30 years. Much of the roof has withered away over the years, allowing rain and bird droppings to get inside and damage the interior. Demolition is expected to take 60 to 90 days.
Some historic preservationists had looked at the building in recent years as a possible site for high-end apartments or condominiums, but the extensive interior damage and the narrow site — squeezed in between railroad tracks and Carson Street, a state road — made reuse of the structure prohibitively expensive.
A master plan for the entire 50-acre Station Square site, which had been done in 1992 by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation when it owned the property, called for the preservation and renovation of Lawrence Paint.
But after the prime riverfront property was sold in 1994 to Forest City Enterprises of Cleveland and Tennessee-based Promus hotels and casinos, approval was obtained from the city to demolish the old paint building.
Forest City later bought out Promus, but Promus still holds an option on the land until 2007 in case Pennsylvania should legalize floating or land-based casinos.
At least until the option held by Promus expires, the Lawrence Paint building will be replaced by a small park with industrial artifacts.
“We regret that the master plan, which PHLF submitted to the city in 1992 and which required preservation of Lawrence Paint, is not being followed,” said History & Landmarks spokeswoman .
Even after the property was sold by Landmarks in 1994, “we assumed the approved master plan would be followed,” she said.
She acknowledged that Forest City, in the late 1990s, went to the city planning commission to obtain approval to demolish the building, saying it had become too damaged to be renovated.
McCollom said History & Landmarks “will work with Forest City on a commemorative industrial display” to go where the building has long stood. The display will include some artifacts from the building, she said.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Obituary: Charles Covert Arensberg / Spurred preservation, renewal in city
Tuesday, July 10, 2001
By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Charles Covert Arensberg championed the development of Station Square and the revitalization of the Mexican War Streets and fought for the preservation of the Duquesne Incline and the Allegheny County Jail and Courthouse.
His interest in local history and architecture led him to help found the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in 1964, years before the public thought Pittsburgh’s historic buildings were worth preserving.
Mr. Arensberg, 88, died yesterday of a stroke in Louisville, Ky., where he had moved about two years ago to be near one of his children.
For 30 years, he was chairman of the History & Landmarks Foundation, the key organization that worked to give new life to old buildings and to strengthen historic neighborhoods in the city.
“It was a lifelong dedication, not a fanciful thing,” said his son, Conrad C.M. Arensberg of Harrisburg.
“He was probably a frustrated architect,” said William J. Staley, of counsel with Tucker Arensberg, P.C., the Downtown law firm where Mr. Arensberg practiced law for 53 years. “He always maintained a deep interest in art, architecture and history.”
Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of History & Landmarks and one of its founders, said Mr. Arensberg’s “love of historic buildings and towns was coupled with very firm principles, and his genial disposition set the pattern for our organization.”
“Everyone liked Charlie, but he never compromised on preservation,” said Ziegler.
Mr. Arensberg frequently dashed off letters to the editor, such as the 1991 missive in which he questioned the decision to rename Herrs Island “Washington’s Landing.”
“We can only infer from such a name that the new owners of Herrs Island want us to believe that George [Washington] somehow ‘landed’ on the island. … But there is no other evidence anywhere that George was near Herrs Island, or even knew of its existence,” wrote Mr. Arensberg, always a stickler for historical accuracy.
Mr. Arensberg was born and reared in Oakmont. He graduated from Shady Side Academy in 1930 and received his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University.
In 1938, he joined Patterson, Crawford, Arensberg & Dunn, the predecessor to Tucker Arensberg P.C., where his father, Charles F.C. Arensberg, was a partner.
Years later, Mr. Arensberg liked to recall that he went to work at “the princely salary of $100 per month.”
In 1940, he married Gertrude “Gay” Herron Hays. They had four children. She died in 1995.
Mr. Arensberg’s legal career was interrupted twice by World War II.
In 1942-43, he worked in the office of the coordinator of inter-American affairs in Washington, D.C., which was headed by Nelson A. Rockefeller. Its mission was to expand commercial and cultural relations between the American republics.
Mr. Arensberg once said his job as a senior attorney at the agency involved “writing countless contracts and sending 26 copies to various other government officers, some of whom I later found out were either dead or had left government service.”
In 1945, he was attached to the Air Force in Orlando, Fla., where he trained to be a civilian bombing surveyor. On the day he was scheduled to be shipped out to the South Pacific, Gen. Douglas McArthur aborted the mission.
In 1950, the Arensbergs bought a house in Evergreen Hamlet, a historic hamlet in Ross that was designed in 1851 to be the romantic ideal of a suburban English village. Fascinated with its history, Mr. Arensberg wrote an article about it for the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. In later years, the Arensbergs moved to Shadyside.
Although his own background was privileged, Mr. Arensberg had an affinity for the less fortunate.
In 1964, at the height of the civil rights movement, he went to Mississippi as a volunteer for the Lawyer’s Constitutional Defense Committee.
Writing about it later, Mr. Arensberg said he “spent two weeks in that hostile atmosphere, living in black quarters, eating buffalo fish with Charlie Evers on South Farish Street, defending black activists and generally being exalted, depressed, fearful and mindful of racial differences to the core.”
Conrad Arensberg said the experience helped shape his father’s views about the need to revitalize neighborhoods like Manchester and the Mexican War Streets.
Mr. Arensberg was active in the local Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club and the Pittsburgh Golf Club and was a leader in fox hunting circles in Western Pennsylvania. In later years, he owned and kept horses on a 50-acre farm in northern Allegheny County
In addition to his son Conrad, he is survived by two other sons, Charles Shaw Arensberg of Louisville, Ky., and Jonathan M. Arensberg of Bakerstown; a daughter, Susan A. Diacou of New York City; and five grandchildren.
Friends may call at 10:30 a.m. Friday at Calvary Episcopal Church Parish House in Shadyside. Funeral services will follow at 11:30 a.m.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Morning Glory’s owners work to bring Victorian look to inn’s garden
Saturday, June 09, 2001
By Virginia Peden
Pittsburgh Post GazetteFive years ago, when Dave and Nancy Eshelman bought their South Side bed & breakfast, the Morning Glory Inn, they wanted it to be as authentically Victorian as possible. So it seemed perfectly proper that the garden be Victorian, too.
About two years ago, they turned to Barry Hannegan, director for historic design programs for the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
“For a total historical image, the garden is as important as the house,” he said. “I suggested plant materials for a garden compatible with that house and courtyard. In early days, the yard would have been used for hanging laundry, chicken coops and to store coal and wood.”
Today, the inn’s yard is more likely to be the scene of weddings, parties and alfresco breakfasts. Two years of work have created the beginnings of a true Victorian garden, and Nancy, who is learning as she goes along, is determined to keep it that way.
For example, her trailing geranium has plain leaves because the variegated types were developed too late for Victorian use.
“I pulled out the evergreens,” she said. “The working class on the South Side at that time would not have been able to afford them. The man who built this house in 1862, John G. Fisher, was a brick maker.”
On Thursday, Hannegan will lead a free informal garden seminar beginning at 2 p.m. in the courtyard of the inn on Sarah Street. He will discuss techniques and plants compatible with a Victorian garden, using Nancy’s “work in progress” as an example.
Nancy, 58, teaches a family and consumer science class at Sto-Rox High School and tends the garden on Saturdays. On Thursday, she will talk a little about her handiwork; she calls gardening her therapy.
“It’s almost a woodland Victorian garden because of the shade,” she said.
A pussy willow and a silver maple tree that reach nearly out of sight catch the sun in their tops, forcing Nancy to use almost entirely shade plants. There’s solid green boxwood, honeysuckle, sweet pea, white bleeding heart, goat’s beard, hosta, jack-in-the pulpit, liriope, ferns and oak leaf hydrangea. A pale green bamboo bush bends into an arc.
Hannegan’s advice didn’t require the removal of many plants in the existing garden. Most had been popular for more than a century.
“This ground cover, pachysandra, was called ‘poor man’s ivy,’ and that’s Boston ivy climbing up the wall next door. It dies in the winter and then comes back,” Nancy said.
“The bay magnolias have interesting branches with different shapes and don’t lose their leaves until spring. And this Carolina silver bell gets little white bell-shaped blossoms.
“I’m learning a lot,” she said.
Greg Yochum, a horticulturist with History & Landmarks, also offered the Eshelmans some advice. Hannegan said creating a garden that is compatible with a Victorian home is often a question of what not to do.
“Avoid impatiens at all costs. They have been around for only 30 years. And Bradford pear trees are very much of the late 20th century,” he said.
Other flowering ornamentals, such as crabapples or hawthorns, or a lilac pruned as a tree, are much more appropriate, Hannegan said. He said the inn’s garden is not an attempt at an exact re-creation of a Victorian garden. It fits the house and Nancy’s own requirements, which included a variety of strong fragrances and something blooming from February through late November. She also wanted all new flowers to be white, for a moonlight effect.
“When the white flowering redbud blossomed in spring, it looked like Christmas lights at night,” she said.
The Eshelmans made few structural changes in the garden. Dave, 58, relaid the courtyard’s red bricks in a herringbone pattern, in a more formal shape. Spotlights are tucked around the edges of the courtyard, and candles are used for evening functions.
Like earlier residents, Nancy cooks with herbs from her garden — lemon verbena, mint, flat-leaved parsley, lemon balm, rosemary and basil. She lines cake pans with scented geranium leaves and uses herbs in egg and mushroom dishes for guests.
The garden is a bit between blooms right now. A French silk lilac bush near the front entrance has finished blooming, as have the violets, daffodils and lilies of the valley nestling in a niche. Only one pale peach “wonderfully fragrant” rosebush is in full bloom.
English ivy greens the ground and a neighboring wall, where snow peas are sowed. Two window boxes, made of wrought iron to match the fence, are lavish with pansies, English ivy and clematis. History & Landmarks publishes a brochure on Victorian flower boxes, in which plants can be changed with the seasons.
In July, the inn’s namesake, morning glories, will wind through the front fence, and red rambler roses will one day twine around a graceful iron trellis. Nancy is planting moonflowers, evening primroses and nicotiana for fragrance. She’s also tending planters holding hydrangeas from the garden of her mother, Thelma Harris, in Sheraden.
Soon, she hopes to add a water feature, but not an elaborate Victorian fountain. She and Hannegan have discussed a stone water trough with a gentle burble.
“The sound is important to me,” she said. “I want it to be soft, subtle, sort of ‘I wonder where that’s coming from?'”
Virginia Peden is a free-lance writer
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Future plan for Point discussed at workshop
Sunday, June 03, 2001
By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Jim Schmitt got right to the point.
“The Point looks like an overgrazed cow pasture,” said Schmitt, who represented recreational power boaters at yesterday’s Point State Park Planning Charrette.
The daylong, invitation-only design workshop was an opportunity for Pittsburgh landscape architects, architects, historians, park constituents and interested others to weigh in on how the heavily used, 37-acre park should evolve over the next 30 years. It’s the first step in a community-wide process to develop an overall vision and long-range plan for the park.
At the end of the day, while most of the 60-some people attending wanted to see some changes, they agreed the overgrazed pasture holds a few sacred cows.
The Fort Pitt Museum, Blockhouse, fountain and axial view through the park to the Ohio River are seen as untouchables, places and spaces that should be protected and preserved. In fact, the group largely endorsed the park’s original design, character and mission.
But what was conceived as a quiet oasis in the city has evolved into a highly trafficked and trampled venue for concerts, festivals, marathons and other events that help attract the park’s 1.75 million visitors a year.
“The park was not designed to accommodate that activity,” said John Sharrar, regional park manager for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “The Point cannot be all things to all people.”
The state, which owns the park, will pay the city $376,000 to maintain it this year. About half of that money comes from revenue generated by the parking lot at its southern edge, along Commonwealth Place.
“We’re very interested in keeping that lot and maybe adding another level or two on top of that,” Sharrar said.
Mike Gable, the city’s assistant director of Public Works, said the park is reseeded and resodded six to 10 times a year.
“We need to give rest periods in the park,” Gable said.
While there was talk of finding ways to move some large events out of the park—- perhaps by relocating them to a suitably designed new space on the North Shore– the group isn’t endorsing the removal of all park events that attract large crowds. For now, it wants to determine how many people the park can accommodate without adverse impact.
There also was a desire to increase amenities for and enhance the experience of individual park users, whether they’re Downtown office workers walking off their lunches or families looking for weekend recreation.
And the group wants to find a way to accommodate not only walkers and runners, but also those who prefer currently verboten activities like biking and rollerblading.
Sharrar and Gable were among 17 speakers who addressed the group earlier in the day, presenting information about the park’s history, design history and maintenance, as well as existing plans for the park, which was 30 years in the making.
“I think there can be some changes,” said landscape architect Bill Mullin of GWSM, who worked on the $18-million park’s creation from 1958 to 1974, the year it was completed.
One opportunity for change is along the park’s edge, which could be softened and made more interesting–and more attractive to small aquatic species like crayfish–with nooks and crannies.
Although former Allegheny County Commissioner Bob Cranmer spoke about the recreation of Fort Duquesne — an idea he said was hatched on a canoe trip he and Mayor Tom Murphy took down French Creek — there was consensus that rebuilding the fort would interrupt the long view through the park and focus too much on one period of history. The group favored interpreting all of the layers of park history, from its geological formation through the present day.
There was also talk of introducing food vendors, boat tie-ups and maps for walkers and runners; of sculpture integrated with land forms and better connections to the north and south shores; and of removing or replacing the existing, eyesore band shelter.
The charrette, held Downtown at the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel, was sponsored by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Pittsburgh Riverlife Task Force, Pittsburgh chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Over the next few weeks, a summary of the charrette’s dialogue will be created and distributed to those who attended. It will be used to shape a request for proposals from design firms, who likely will partner with historians and others to forge a new plan for the park.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette