The Oakland we know today is primarily the work of three visionaries: Edward Manning Bigelow, Andrew Carnegie and Franklin F. Nicola. Bigelow, as Pittsburgh’s director of public works, saw the need for urban parks in the industrial city and secured the land for Schenley Park. Andrew Carnegie’s gifts of the Carnegie Museums, Library, and Music Hall and the buildings of the Carnegie Technical Schools, now Carnegie Mellon University, made Oakland the city’s cultural and educational center. Nicola tied the institutions and recreational amenities together with residential and commercial development.

The "City Beautiful" movement was in full force in Oakland early in this century. The movement’s leaders were motivated by the belief that large-scale planning and eclectic architecture could bring order and clarity to the otherwise chaotic city. Surely Oakland has benefited from these ambitious beginnings, but its character is defined by what happened when the big plans were eroded by irregular commercial expansion, institutional growth and the infiltration of larger numbers of students into residential neighborhoods.

Today Oakland’s success as a multiuse urban center has bred traffic and parking congestion. Fifth and Forbes are east/west rivers which slice Oakland into ribbons of single uses -- discouraging the casual mixture of institutional, residential and commercial. Noise and visual interference from traffic join with exhaust to pollute the environment.

Parked cars line the streets and stack up in garages. Once cars are carefully stored for the day, pedestrians emerge from them. But what is the quality of the pedestrian environment in Oakland, after automobiles’ needs are met?

My vision for Oakland would be to restore the pedestrian character of all of its various neighborhoods -- residential, institutional and commercial. Looking at aerial photographs from early in the century one sees more trees, more single-family homes, narrower streets and less parking. Returning to this more pedestrian model of the City Beautiful, which never really existed, means mitigating the effects of the automobile.

Traffic and parking can be reduced by substituting public transportation for private cars. Light rail routes have been proposed for Junction Hollow and the Forbes/Fifth corridor, which would connect Oakland to Downtown. Maglev options and greatly increased bus service deserve further consideration.

Increasing parking supply relieves parking stresses but does nothing to alleviate traffic congestion, and may actually encourage more traffic. But parking structures should replace surface parking lots, which should become parks and recreation spaces. Structured parking has been proposed for the slopes below the Phipps Conservatory, which would expand its greenhouses on the roofs of the structures. The large Schenley Plaza parking lot between the Carnegie Library and the Hillman Library could be returned to park land if the ravine that used to exist on this site were re-excavated, then filled with structured parking and capped with park land on its roof.

The closing of one block of Bigelow between Fifth and Forbes to cars was controversial when if was proposed. But if this area between the Pitt Union and the Cathedral of Learning became a green quadrangle of the University of Pittsburgh, it could be part of a pedestrian parkway connecting the Pitt campus, Schenley Plaza, the Phipps Conservatory and Schenley Park. All Oakland residents and workers would benefit.

The Oakland we know today is the result of major interventions over a relatively short period of time, unlike the city which evolved in a more natural way over hundreds of years. The next interventions require consensus and political will. It’s up to us.

Paul Tellers, university architect, Carnegie Mellon University

I have lived on Ophelia Street for more than 20 years. My daughter attended Pittsburgh public schools, walking to middle school at Frick and high school at Schenley. She is currently finishing an engineering degree at Pitt -- also within walking distance.

Our family finds Oakland to be a terribly convenient location and a great place to live and play. We call our neighborhood Oakcliffe, because we are in Oakland and sit on the cliff above the parkway. Our exercise routines include swimming, rowing, walking, etc.

Here is what I would like to see:

1. Promenade along Lawn Street overlooking the Monongahela River. It would run from the Downtown end of Lawn Street up to the current community garden. Our Oakcliffe Housing Club has been working with the city on this already. We have plans drawn up. The area has been designated as a Greenway. We just don’t have money to do it.

2. The houses along Lawn Street and Ophelia would be transformed into up-scale townhouses like those on Washington’s Landing. All would have a river view from either the front or back deck.

3. There would be a walkway from the Promenade, down the cliff and across the parkway, ending up at the Pittsburgh Technology Center. A neighbor on Ophelia Street recently reminded me that there is already a tunnel and pathway under the new Eliza Furnace bike trail that leads right up to our neighborhood. Right now the tunnel is fenced off, but if reopened with the connecting pathway up the hill, it would lead right onto the 300 block of Lawn Street.

4. Between the University of Pittsburgh building and the Aristech buildings at the Technology Center, there would be a 50-meter (Olympic size) indoor pool.

5. Outside of the new pool there would be a dock for rowing, sculling and kayaking (people powered boats).

6. Our neighborhood would be closed to through traffic by shutting off the entrance from Forbes Avenue to Lawn/Ophelia streets. This is important to keep the promenade area removed from rush hour traffic.

7. I would also throw in some resident amenities such as a community parking lot or two, an "urban" grocery store, and even a tea shop.

8. Oh, yes, the Boulevard of the Allies would get a face lift and get back to being a true boulevard. There would be a nice green median area with trees and flowers.

Traffic calming techniques would be used to slow the traffic from the Hampton Inn to the Holiday Inn.

Millie S. Sass, Oakland

It’s serendipitous that your Oakland Benchmarks follows the Education Benchmarks because I represent a group of Oakland residents who have been taking aim at both of those birds. Specifically, we are concerned that there are no public elementary schools here, and that our middle school, Frick, does not serve the neighborhood.

Frick is a citywide magnet school with no preference to the neighborhood.

We feel that Oakland desperately needs more school options to remain a viable residential community. But it’s a Catch-22 situation. We can’t attract families to a neighborhood without a single elementary school to its name. (Oakland once boasted three.) Yet without a galvanizing school, an organized parent campaign is difficult to wage.

Few people even realize that there are children, of all ages, in Oakland.

Oakland is a large, racially, culturally and economically diverse neighborhood. According to the school board’s own statistics, Oakland is home to more than the minimum 300 students required to fill an elementary school. But the absence of schools here is not only a hardship for the families of Oakland. We feel it is a missed opportunity for the school district as a whole. An elementary school in Oakland could potentially be a model school, drawing strength from the diversity that already exists in our neighborhood. In Oakland, "neighborhood schools" and "integrated schools" are not mutually exclusive.

The following is a draft proposal for a public laboratory school to the Board of Education, put together by the Education Committee of the Oakland Community Council. Other work that this committee has done includes site analyses of potential school buildings (a major problem in institution-choked Oakland). The site rated most viable -- and desirable -- was the former Isaly’s building at the Boulevard of the Allies and Halket Street.

Here is our "Working Proposal for a Public Elementary School in Oakland."

A public elementary school in Oakland will, by its site alone, have these advantages. It will be, without busing, a multiracial, multicultural school, serving students from the diverse Oakland neighborhood. It will be positioned to take advantage of the academic and cultural resources of Oakland. Most importantly, a school in Oakland will serve the educational needs of a large, greatly underserved community in Pittsburgh, strengthening its appeal as an attractive urban neighborhood for families.

Recent meetings by the education committee of the Oakland Community Council and other interested parties have proposed the following programs for Oakland’s school.

1. Public laboratory school. In partnership with the University of Pittsburgh, and perhaps the other academic institutions of the area, an elementary school in Oakland will be a central professional development site for teachers. In close proximity to the major educational research institutions of this region, an Oakland school will, in the tradition of laboratory schools, put into action the latest in educational research, teaching techniques, curriculum development and classroom management.

2. International Studies focus. An elementary school in Oakland will have an international student body, due to the existing multicultural makeup of the Oakland population. Curriculum at the school will reflect this diversity and attempt, at every level, to broaden a child’s view of the world. Special emphasis will be given to language study, world cultures and international literature in a non-magnet program.

3. English as a Second Language. Due to the concentration of nonnative English speakers in Oakland, an Oakland school will have an ESL program on site.

4. Special Education. As in other public elementary schools, Oakland’s school will accommodate special education classrooms and teachers.

5. Preschool. Perhaps managed in partnership with one of the institutions of Oakland, a preschool at the elementary school will be promoted.

6. After-school programs. To accommodate working parents, a comprehensive after-school program will be offered at the school.

Education Committee Oakland Community Council
Richard Sass, chairman, Kristin Kovacic, Kathy Boykowycz, Walter Boykowycz, Ed Pace, Melanie Bozic, Mary Shea, Zoe Lardas, Nick Lardas, Sharon Leak, Scarlet Morgan,   Martha Garvey, Tony Woods, Terrence Downey, Arthur Coley, Michelle Freeman and Yulanda Woodson.

Consultants: Susan Golomb,Oakland Planning & Development Corp.; Kenneth Metz, dean, School of Education University of Pittsburgh; Farrell Rubenstein; Ernestine Reed, Frick International Academy principal; Maggie Schmitt, Pittsburgh Board of Public Education board member.

Your newspaper has asked for community input on how to improve Oakland. I want to respond only to the call for community input. Oakland has been the home for three generations of my family beginning in 1919 until the present. My grandparents bought their first home on Lawn Street and moved their family from Uptown a year after WWI. My father inherited and owned that house until he was 80 years old.

He met my mother who lived nearby on Kennett Square. I live on Juliet Street and have returned to Oakland after being away from Pittsburgh for 34 years. When I wanted to return to the city, after all those years, I wanted to look for a house in Oakland. One needs to return to the familiar.

I am so proud of my neighborhood. I am also glad that nothing has changed since I was a grade school student 50 years ago. The houses are the same. The streets are still where they were then. The cultural area is the exact same. Schenley Park is the same, and it makes me glad to be back.

My adult children come to visit, and I can tell them about the trolley that used to go to Atwood and Forbes and stop. The conductor would go to the other end of the trolley for the return trip around my neighborhood. The passengers would pull the back of the seat in order to reverse the way one sat facing the other end of the trolley. I would tell them that I would ride that trolley with my friend and get off at that location, and she and I would walk to the Carnegie Library to borrow books from the children’s room. I was 9 years old. Then, we would get the trolley home.

I want to relate to your readers that the best thing in Oakland is the sameness. The neighborhood does not change. The lifestyle here is wonderful in my opinion. I am glad to be living in this section of the city. I think I demonstrated that by buying a house here to return to after a long time away.

Illa Jean Boggs, Oakland

The entrance to the city via the Boulevard of the Allies from Downtown has been completely ignored. Make this a real boulevard, with trees and grass in the middle, instead of an expressway, particularly as it heads toward Schenley Park. An outside consultant to the city suggested this many years ago and was ignored.

There are a number of major vacant properties along this route, particularly the old Cadillac dealership (vacant for years) that the city should take an interest in. This has the potential to be the most beautiful road in the city, contrasting on one side the parkway and Forbes and Fifth on the other.

There’s a neglected parklet across from the old Isaly’s that right now is simply a dumping ground for dog waste. There’s an opportunity here. The city should take advantage of it.

The city wonders why Oakland residents seem shrill at times. It’s because no one seems to hear us. We lost our police station -- a major slap in the face to this community from which it has yet to recover. The city assumes Oakland’s population is transient, so it doesn’t care. There are a lot of residents in South Oakland who are trying to raise families here. The city makes it more and more difficult.

If Schenley Park is a jewel of a park, that jewel should be bordered by more than rubble. If the city’s not careful, that’s what it’ll end up with. All the attention and high profile projects go to Downtown or the North Side or the South Side. Our city councilman is "South Side" Gene Ricciardi -- the neighborhood has no clear councilperson, no clear spokesperson. Oakland is seen as the home of the universities, not as the home for people like us.

Jim Daniels, Oakland

I am a mother of a Pitt student and a future Pittsburgh resident. My family enjoys all the time we spend in your fine city. I do not think Pittsburghers realize how lucky they are to have their community. My son is an apartment dweller, so we have some insight into Oakland and some suggestions. Please get a grocery store, like Giant Eagle in Squirrel Hill. I noticed there are all sorts of people living in Oakland, including retired people. It is too bad all the residents have to take a bus to get their groceries.

Down the hill from Forbes, all those residents could use a convenience store or two. There are only tiny shops (only one I saw). This type of shop for quick buys is really handy. I can just imagine what that climb is like on the ice in winter.

Forbes Home Center is handy, but the area needs a store with clothing and housewares. There are a lot of eateries, mainly on Forbes. That is good for the college kids in the dorms, but that’s not the feeling of a community. There are people actually living in houses that need to be served by shops and services. The college kids would benefit from this sense of community and not just a place to nosh and then leave.

Can the police do walking patrols so that the street people at least move around and don’t camp in the same spot every day all day? If someone was to give them a nudge, they might go.

Can the community leaders get the landlords to clean up the front lawns of their properties? My son was told by his landlord to do nothing. Well, then who will? If everyone could plant trees, shrubs and plants instead of having ground-up concrete and weeds, then the place would shine. The houses are nice, and they can be enhanced even more.

Everyone loves green, everyone needs green. Oakland is a good place, but you definitely can make it better.

Janet Reiff, Fredonia, N.Y.