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Highland Park headed for full makeover
Tuesday, August 15, 2000 By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Correction/Clarification: (Published Aug 17, 2000) Highland Park covers 388 acres. A story in Tuesday's editions about the master plan to develop the city park gave its area incorrectly.
This is the third in a series profiling the city's four major parks, all of which are due for upgrades outlined in a master plan released in July. A report on Frick Park will appear next week; reports on Riverview and Schenley parks were published earlier this month.
There are so many orange detour signs in Highland Park these days that the park looks as though it could qualify for state highway funds.
Contractors from the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority are installing water lines and building a filtration plant that will keep city drinking water clean while allowing Reservoir No. 1 to remain uncovered. That way, the legions of walkers and runners who use the path around the reservoir will still have a view of water, rather than the plastic cover that was originally planned.
"We have 20 different contractors working on that project," said Greg Tutsock, deputy executive director of the authority, who hopes the new plant will be built by the end of this year.
"They are everywhere," said Mike Gable, assistant director of the city's Department of Public Works.
In addition, the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium, which is located smack in the middle of the park, is busy constructing a new shark tank, which is scheduled to open in September.
Beyond the immediate construction, the city and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy have big plans for Highland Park, a hilly 388-acre site that overlooks the Allegheny River and serves as a destination for 800,000 people who visit the zoo each year and as a community park for residents of neighboring Highland Park, Morningside, Lincoln-Lemington, Larimer and East Liberty.
The city's new 20-year master plan calls for restoring the park's entrances, rebuilding and designing a network of pathways, cleaning up Carnegie Lake near the park's swimming pool, restoring a historic farmhouse, and opening up more vistas so park goers can see views of the Allegheny River.
The city's master plan spells out major renovations for the city's four major parks -- Riverview, Schenley, Highland and Frick.
It is a plan that is well-received by some of the Highland Park residents who have worked for decades on restoring the park.
"I am more enthusiastic about the parks than I have been in 24 years," said Dell Ziegler, former president of the Highland Park Community Club, an organization that has been working on the park since it was formed in 1945.
The community has a long history of involvement in the park, ranging from planting flowers, restoring historic statues and building a playground to lobbying on its behalf. It was residents who successfully fought the plan to cap the reservoir with a plastic membrane and who were instrumental in the creation of the alternative now being built.
The reservoirs have been pivotal in the park's history and have set up the balance that has characterized Highland Park, a balance between the grand and the practical, between recreational users and the water needs of the city.
The need for safe drinking water is what brought the park into existence in the late 1800s. In 1879, the city fathers decided that the land where Highland Park sits today was high enough for a reservoir to be built to provide a safe water supply for the city. The lofty location chosen to facilitate water distribution also made for a dramatic entrance and good views.
In September 1889, Highland Park was officially established by ordinance, according to a history of the park written by Barry Hannegan of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks. The park was located on a piece of property first settled in 1788 by Alexander Negley, who had been given the land by George Washington.
"He owned all of Highland Park and East Liberty," said Douglas Negley Malone of Point Breeze, Negley's great-great-great-grandson.
Malone said the original parcel for Highland Park was not donated but sold to the city by Casper Negley, a great-grandson of Alexander Negley.
The park grew in size through an incessant campaign of acquisitions by Edward Bigelow, the city's director of public works in the late 1800s, according to Hannegan. The zoo was established in 1895 in the northwestern corner of the park.
By 1903, two reservoirs, including the double-chambered Reservoir No. 1, were built and the framework for the present-day park was established.
Negley, who died in 1809, and his wife, Mary Burkstresser Negley, who died 20 years later, are buried in a secluded section of the park above the zoo. The large marker for their joint graves states that 50 early settlers of the East Liberty valley also are buried at the site.
Mary Burkstresser Negley had the farmhouse that now stands in the park built after her husband's death so she would no longer have to live in the house that they had built, which is on the site of Reservoir No. 1, Malone said.
Over the years, walking around the reservoir -- which is elevated and bordered by a broad cement path -- became a popular activity for local residents. But when a new state law required that all open drinking water supplies be covered by the end of 1995, a group of citizens led by David Hance, a Highland Park resident and architect with Perkins Eastman Architects, waged consistent opposition to the idea of covering Reservoir No. 1 with a flexible plastic membrane.
It took nine years and massive mobilization by the community, but a solution was found.
The city water authority agreed to do $18 million in improvements, including building a handsome little microfiltration plant that will filter and pump 20 million gallons of water a day.
Gable said the master plan calls for connecting the two piers that extend from opposite sides across the reservoir to create a bridge across it. It also calls for rebuilding trails so that the park could be crossed on foot.
The city has completed other work at the park and will do more with the help of 16 maintenance workers who now are assigned to Highland Park, Gable said.
The swimming pool and its buildings were painted and restored, the grounds were redone and a sand volleyball court was constructed. The tennis courts on Stanton Avenue are being resurfaced, and the city soon will introduce an off-leash exercise area for dogs on Lake Drive.
The city found a new use for the old drivers' testing center that state police ran on Washington Boulevard on land that actually is part of Highland Park.
"We took the old drivers course and created a bicycle and in-line skating course," said Gable, who credited the city Parks and Recreation Department with the idea.
Highland Park also is a place with a hidden and deteriorating infrastructure of steps, walls and overgrown pathways.
"There is a lot of wildlife. We have seen deer and interesting birds and hawks and flocks of mallards all year round," said Mary Barr of Highland Park. She and her husband, Charles, walk to Carnegie Lake every day to enjoy nature and pick up litter.
The 1.4-acre lake is one of the park's major problems, Gable said.
Bigelow, the city's first parks director, named the lake for his friend, Andrew Carnegie, who donated money to develop it. In its early years, the lake was used for boating, swimming and even diving. By 1932, the northern part of the lake was converted into a swimming pool.
Water in the present-day lake comes out of the filtration system, but the lake is overgrown with cattails and water lilies and has a depth of only about four feet. Gable said future plans call for draining and dredging the lake, removing its concrete pads and aerating it with a fountain.
As a short-term solution, the city plans to introduce about 20 grass carp, fish that cannot procreate, into the lake. The fish are supposed to eat the overgrown vegetation and improve the water quality.
In March, the farmhouse sustained about $40,000 worth of damage from a fire. Plans call for the house to be restored and the city would like to find a partner to develop programs for the center.
"At one time, they think it used to be a park office," Gable said, adding that the building has been used for summer programs and as a picnic shelter but not as a nature center.
"This is the only park that didn't have a nature center," he said.
The city will study whether to relocate the ball field that is near the farmhouse, possibly along Stanton Avenue, and also will consider developing new ball fields in the Washington Boulevard section of the park, which is currently being used as a maintenance storage center. A separate field study is under way in all four city parks.
The master plan also calls for building distinctive park entrances and restoring the main gardens and fountain that once graced the main park entrance off Highland Avenue.
Ann Buckman, director of development for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that is the city's partner in the park restoration project, said the conservancy has committed to restoring the grand entry garden, fountain and reflecting pool at Highland Park as one of its four pilot projects for the park.
Ziegler said that project will pick up where the citizens group left off in its decades of work to improve Highland Park.
Debbie DeAngelis, a local art restorer, led the effort about five years ago to restore the bronze welcoming statues on Highland Avenue and the horses on Stanton Avenue. She said the project was funded by Regional Asset District money, plus private donations.
DeAngelis also initiated the restoration of a Victorian entrance garden to the park's Highland Avenue entrance. A mural on a building at North St. Clair and Bryant streets in Highland Park, based on a turn-of-the-century photograph taken at the reservoir, depicts how the entrance would be restored.
DeAngelis said about $200,000 has been raised for the project through a $75,000 Keystone grant awarded to her, which was matched by the city, and an additional $50,000, which came through the efforts of City Councilman Jim Ferlo.
She said it probably will cost between $1.2 million and $1.5 million to restore the entrance to its grandeur at the turn of the century.
"It will be a pilot project for the conservancy to finish," said DeAngelis, adding that the community will continue to raise money to help pay for it. She said individuals can make private donations. Anyone who is interested may call DeAngelis at 412-363-4948.
"I am so thrilled that the parks conservancy is on board. I think they will be able to do things that have never been done before," Ziegler said.
Community involvement will remain crucial to the park's success, and the community has proven itself in the past, Ziegler said.
A decade ago, Ziegler said, the community raised about $120,000 to build a "super playground" in the park. Residents then built the large, wooden, castle-like structures of the playground themselves in a well-organized community event. Materials were purchased and brought to the site, community volunteers were recruited and those with construction expertise supervised. Over a weekend, the playground went up, a product of the community's labor.
"It was the most fascinating project I have ever been involved with," Ziegler said.
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