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Riverview Park retains rustic charm, but roads, trails, buildings in bad shape
Tuesday, August 01, 2000 By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
This is the first in a series profiling the city's four major parks, which are all due for upgrades outlined in a master plan released in July. Stories on Schenley, Highland and Frick parks will appear this month.
Riverview Park on the North Side is a hidden jewel, albeit a tarnished one.
It is so deeply hidden in the Observatory Hill neighborhood adjoining Brighton Heights and Woods Run that many native Pittsburghers have never been there.
Yet Riverview Park is the home of one of Pittsburgh's landmarks -- the Allegheny Observatory -- where astronomers have been looking at the stars for 87 years.
It also is the only city park where people riding horses can be spotted on a labyrinth of rugged trails.
"We are probably the only group who uses those trails. They are in bad shape," said Moses Carper, who runs a private stable near Mairdale Avenue on the perimeter of the park. He also runs a nonprofit organization that brings city kids to the park for day camp programs that provide horseback riding and teach stewardship in caring for environmental treasures.
A master plan for restoring Riverview calls for establishing an equestrian center where an existing public works facility is located, restoring a picnic shelter that once was a working chapel, rebuilding a historically significant log cabin and rebuilding the once grand entrance in front of the Allegheny Observatory on Riverview Avenue.
The planners found that the park is perceived to be "wooded and rugged, isolated and unknown."
Even Meg Cheever, executive director of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, said she didn't know much about Riverview Park before she started working on the 20-year master plan for restoring the city's four major parks -- Riverview, Schenley, Highland and Frick..
"It is an old park with a rich history and strong sentiment," said city Councilwoman Barbara Burns.
Riverview opened in 1894 on part of a farm that belonged to Samuel Watson, whose cabin remains in the park.
The impetus for Riverview Park appears to have come from William M. Kennedy, mayor of the City of Allegheny on the north shore of the Allegheny River, according to a historical summary of the park, written by Barry Hannegan, a historian for the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
Although it was not part of the park at the time, the Allegheny Observatory, with its three domes and commanding view, was built in 1900 for the University of Pittsburgh.
At different times in its history, Riverview Park also had a small zoo, an aviary, a carousel, and a bear pit with real bears. None of those attraction exists today, and now Riverview Park has many problems. Its winding one-way road is crumbling and not user-friendly for the walkers and motorists who must share it. Its swimming pool building looks shopworn. Several historic buildings, including the Watson Cabin, are in ruins.
And the main entrance to Riverview Park on Riverview Avenue, which was designed and built in the early 1940s, has seen better days.
The master plan calls for restoring some of the grandeur to that entrance with new plantings, gardens, a terrace and fountain. It also calls for restoring the park visitor center, now a business office for the Pittsburgh Big League sports program, which runs youth sports programs across the city.
Access into the park from neighboring communities is poor, especially at the Davis Avenue entrance from Brighton Heights, where there's no sidewalk, a narrow berm and a drainage ditch where pedestrians end up when cars force them off the road.
Paul Ungerman of Brighton Heights said the city is risking a lawsuit, failing to meet the standards of Americans with Disabilities Act and failing to provide a safe access for Brighton Heights residents.
"Brighton Heights should have a safe, appropriate way to enter this park," said Ungerman, whose Friends of the Parks, a grass-roots organization, plants flowers, cleans trails and removes debris from Riverview and other parks.
"We have had dozens of near-mishaps on this road," said Ungerman, who is upset because the master plan does not specifically address the Davis Avenue problem.
Fred Bonci of LaQuatra Bonci Associates Inc., landscape architects, said developing easy accessibility to pedestrians is a primary concern for all four parks. He said the master plan is "a framework," not the final design, and the fact that Davis Avenue isn't addressed in the plan doesn't mean it won't be fixed.
Bonci urged residents to contact the city with additional comments about the plan.
The plan by the city and the Pittsburgh Park Conservancy calls for expanding the natural space in Riverview Park and rehabilitating some of its historic facilities.
Cheever said the conservancy has chosen the chapel shelter, an old wooden chapel once was known as Watson Presbyterian Church and now serves as a picnic shelter, to be its "pilot project" in Riverview Park.
The shelter was moved into the park in the 1890s from the site of the present-day Riverview United Presbyterian Church, according to a history of the park, written by Hannegan.
Cheever said the city had allocated $300,000 in Regional Asset District money to tear down the chapel shelter, which was infested with termites. Instead of using the money to tear down the building, the money will be used to restore the shelter, Cheever said.
"Our goal is to raise additional money to bring it back to the charming condition it once was in," Cheever said.
The master plan calls for restoring the Watson Cabin and turning it into a historic interpretative center or park picnic shelter.
"My biggest issue was Watson's cabin," said Skip McCrea, president of the Observatory Hill community group. "I have been waiting to see it rehabbed for the past 10 years. Now it is getting vandalized."
Bonci said the single quality that makes Riverview Park so special is its topography, which also makes it so hard to develop. "The road network is very difficult to maintain. Certain parts are very steep. There are landslides," he said.
The city will explore better ways to move cars and people through the park. Bonci said questions revolve around whether portions of the one-way loop road should be closed, whether the road should be made two-way, or to redesign it so that parking and pedestrian trails are better organized.
Burns said some people in the community want to see ball fields built in Riverview Park, but there is not a lot of flat land. She said the city is undertaking a separate "fields study" to determine the best places to locate ball fields.
The master plan calls for removing large-scale public works facilities from all the parks and giving each park a small individual maintenance center.
In Riverview, a horse stable, small maintenance center and garage are planned for the site of the existing public works facility off Grand Avenue.
The city has not said who would run the stable or what services would be offered.
Stacey Himmelstein White, whose family runs Himmelstein Stables, a privately owned stable on Grand Avenue at the park's hidden south entrance, says she is excited about the plans.
"I think it will be fantastic," said White, whose family used to rent horses to people to ride in Riverview Park and even helped map and cut some of the 30-some miles of trails that crisscross the park. But in 1968, they got out of the business of renting horses. Now they train and show horses and give riding lessons.
Carper, whose stables are off Perrysville Avenue, would like to expand his "urban cowboy" trips into the park with inner-city kids.
Future plans for the observatory are uncertain. George Gatewood, director of the observatory, said funding for research has been cut, but the center is doing its best to continue research with the help of the University of Pittsburgh.
He said the observatory is looking for grant money that will allow it to expand its tour programs for the public. Free tours are available by appointment on Thursday and Friday evenings.
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