Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Terri Baltimore and Denys Candy view the Strip District from Arcena Street District. Nearby the concrete footers still stand from an incline that use to go down the cliff. Ms. Baltimore and Mr. Candy are steering a group called Find the Rivers!

By Diana Nelson Jones
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Beelen Street dead-ends in an illegal dump, but for the sake of the visionaries, don't look down. Turn around and look out.

Wow. Downtown is straight ahead. Just to the left is the Monongahela River. And just beyond is the South Side and the Slopes. All that from a backwoods lane that, on the map, hangs like a loose thread over the Boulevard of the Allies.

"People do a double take when I show them images of these views," Denys Candy said. "They say, 'I know this is in Pittsburgh, but where?' "

The Hill District never has been touted for its views, but Find the Rivers! -- a collaboration of Hill District advocates, the Riverlife Task Force and Carnegie Mellon University's Urban Lab -- is out to change that.

The vistas are just one piece of the broader goal of patching the neighborhood back into the city quilt and contributing to its economic rebirth.

Mr. Candy and Terri Baltimore are steering Find the Rivers! His vehicle is the Community Partners Institute, a consulting firm he founded. Hers is the Hill House Association, where she directs art and neighborhood development.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Kirkpatrick Street intersects with Centre Avenue in the Hill District. The street is important as it acts as a connector between the South Side and Polish Hill. Click photo for larger image.

Ms. Baltimore invited Mr. Candy to join design discussions for the Urban Lab's Hill design study several years ago. He conceived Find the Rivers! in 2002 and, with his collaborators, began holding community idea sessions. More than 150 people have participated throughout, he said.

The imperative has been "dream, dream big," he said, and people did. In their discussions, they freed the natural streams from their culverts. They also envisioned trails, an elevated walkway through the woods, outlooks, a new incline to the Strip and an amphitheater in the woods, one developed from a natural bowl below Burrows Street. The participants already have dubbed it the August Wilson Amphitheater.

"Wilson in the Park," said Mr. Candy, smiling delightedly.

But a practical first step was to establish the importance of Kirkpatrick Street as the Hill's major transverse, almost from river to river, a connector between the South Side and Polish Hill. Kirkpatrick is a quintessential Pittsburgh street, serving a tight urban universe and separating rugged woodland.

The Community Design Center of Pittsburgh granted $12,000 last year for Find the Rivers! to hire a design firm. Klavon Design Associates created a resource book, which includes the design of an amphitheater carved into the land, and joined the design team that will proceed to plan for public art, plantings, water features, innovative uses of lighting -- on the street and in the green spaces -- all along Kirkpatrick.

The Local Initiative Support Corp. has since granted $20,000 for the first public art projects.

"Kirkpatrick is a road people use as a cut-through," said Jason Vrabel, who represents the Community Design Center on the project team. "Even if people don't stop and get out," a distinctive and beautiful face lift "is a way of changing their perception" of where they are.

Ms. Baltimore said that children at Weil Elementary School have participated in the project, learning about the rivers, the culture and history of the Hill and interviewing older residents who remember the Hill when it was less isolated.

The payoff, she said, is if children feel a link to the beauty that results "and want to be part of sustaining it."

Emory Biko, a sculptor who was born and raised in the Hill, has been in on community discussions that include residents, designers and other artists.

"It means a lot to me to be involved in beautifying the place where I walked to school, where I played ball," he said. "I was talking to my aunt the other day, and she said, '[Your parents] would be proud of you.' One of the things I hope to contribute is a sculpture of a giant sankofa bird, a bird of Africa" near Kirkpatrick's intersection with Fifth Avenue.

Mr. Biko's parents, Rebecca and Jesse Johnson, raised their son on Cliff Street, which overlooks the Allegheny River.

"One vivid memory I have is that you could look out the kitchen windows and see the Heinz sign. If the snow was so heavy you couldn't see the sign, you knew you didn't have to worry about school the next day," he said.

As a child of the 1960s, Mr. Biko was born too late for the incline that scaled the mountain off a bluff at Arcena Street until the 1950s, giving the Hill and the Strip mutual access. Mr. Candy said he wants eventually to hold a design competition for a new hillside transportation.

From that bluff, you can see along the Allegheny past Washington's Landing and its miniature boats, the bluffs of the North Side, the West End bridge over the Ohio River, the hills beyond it and a big slice of Mount Washington.

"There are views like this all over the Hill," said Mr. Candy, who came to Pittsburgh 25 years ago from Dublin, Ireland, got a master's degree in community organizing from the University of Pittsburgh and began consulting in the Hill.

He said his epiphany for Find the Rivers! came when a French urban designer named Michel Cantal du Parc visited the city for a conference about eight years ago.

"He asked why we weren't more connected to the rivers," said Mr. Candy. "He said, in a gruff voice, 'Recherchez les fleuves!' (roughly translated as a command: Find the Rivers!) It struck a chord with me, because when I came here, I saw all these great rivers, but I couldn't get near them."