Virgil Cantini’s Mosaic: A Mid-Century Masterpiece

Saturday, July 11
10:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.

$25 per person

This tour is limited to 20 participants.
Purchase a ticket below. Tickets will not be available after 11:30 p.m. on July 10.

Hidden in plain sight in the Steel Plaza T Station in Downtown is a colorful, 120-foot mosaic mural that embodies two major moments in Pittsburgh history and an inspiring story of advocacy and preservation. In early 1964, the City of Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority commissioned Italian-born, Pittsburgh-based artist Virgil Cantini to create a work of art to enhance a new pedestrian tunnel beneath Bigelow Boulevard, in Downtown.

This was part of the Urban Renewal project in the Lower Hill that resulted in demolition of hundreds of buildings and displacement of thousands of people. The arts district that had been planned for the site was unrealized, but a highway passing through the district was completed, severing the Hill from Downtown. At the time Cantini was designing the mural, he said that “it should last for 200 years or more.”

Flash forward to 2015, when several City, County, State, and Federal agencies announced plans to create a community park over the hole that had been blasted in the Lower Hill to accommodate the highway. This project, a much-lauded act of recompense for devastation of the Hill in the 1950s, would literally bury Cantini’s mosaic mural—an almost heartbreaking irony. However, through the passionate advocacy of a group of experts in art and architectural history, planning, and the history of Pittsburgh, Cantini’s mural was removed from the tunnel, cleaned and repaired, and re-installed in its original formation in the Steel Plaza T Station.

The story of the rescue of one of Pittsburgh’s most unique treasures of public art will be told by the people who made it happen, including the artist’s daughter.

Tour meeting point:  Frankie Pace Park, 901 Centre Avenue, at Washington Place, Pittsburgh 15219. (Specific meeting point within the park will be provided to registrants the day before the tour.)

Tour ending point:  Steel Plaza T Station, Ross Street and Sixth Avenue, Pittsburgh 15219

Please arrive 15 minutes before start time in order to ensure that the tour gets underway on time.

Parking: Street parking in this area is very limited; there might be spots on Chatham Street, near the tour’s starting point. The closest building with a public garage is U.S. Steel Tower. Or park at a T station within the fare-free zone and take the T.

Accessibility: There is a slight slope up to Frankie Pace Park; the park is accessible to people with handicaps. Wheelchair access to the murals is via the Grant Street entrance to Steel Plaza T Station. Please advise us by July 9 if you need information on how to reach the mural from here.