Allegheny Riverfront Park

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Allegheny Riverfront Park is a small municipal park along the south bank of the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Cultural District.

It is sited between Ninth Street Pier and Fort Duquesne Bridge and consists of two 4,000 foot promenades running alongside the river there, one upland and the other at river level. The lower tier opened in 1998, and the upper was completed in 2001. The Three Sisters bridges—Roberto Clemente Bridge, Andy Warhol Bridge, and Rachel Carson Bridge—each intersect with the park.

The concept of riverfront parks in downtown Pittsburgh dates at least to 1911 and a plan of the Olmsted Brothers, son and nephew of Frederick Law Olmsted. The proposal was revived in the early 1990s when the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's District Plan called for a riverfront park to frame the Cultural District's northern boundary.

The Trust's Public Arts Advisory Committee commissioned a collaboration between artists Ann Hamilton, Michael Mercil, and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, who is a professor of landscape architecutre at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, to create the new park.

[edit] External links

• Allegheny Riverfront Park

[edit] References

• Amidon, Jane (2005). Michael Van Valkenburgh/Allegheny Riverfront Park: Source Books in Landscape Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1-56898-504-5.
• Patricia Lowry (1998). Allegheny Riverfront Park Opening: story by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved May 22, 2006.