Frick Park's Enduring Legacy

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy A Treasure

by Design

Cover image: Watercolor painting of Reynolds Street Gatehouse Artist: Anne Watkins End papers and bird cameos throughout: Ezra C. Stiles 1939

Produced by The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy © 2013

Printed on Rolland Enviro100 For every 100lbs. of this paper used over virgin paper we save: 1 tree, 47 kg of waste 3,132 liters of water, 123kg of CO2.

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Design by Little Kelpie Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy A Treasure

by Design 1

There may be just one public institution that exists almost exclusively for the enjoyment of people in a community: parks.

Parks provide pleasure in innumerable ways. They are refuges where we can shout or whisper, think hard or clear our minds, run or sit very still.

They are the most democratic spaces in America—gathering places where people can come together to strengthen social ties.

Well-maintained parks increase property values and attract new investment. And they provide wide-ranging ecological services: wildlife habitat, clean air and water, and stormwater management.

Our focus has been on the four large regional parks, including Frick, but we also work to the best of our ability to enhance the quality of the entire park system.

To date, the Parks Conservancy has raised more than $65 million toward park improvements and completed 14 major capital projects. Because of our focus on Frick Park, Elise Frick became a founding board member and Arabella Dane was invited to attend our first Hat Luncheon in 1999, which was held on the lawn at Clayton. Arabella exchanged her lovely dress hat for a hardhat when she reached the podium to speak.

“Now let’s get going,” she said, undaunted by the challenges we all knew lay ahead.

Melissa McMasters

In Pittsburgh, there is one nonprofit institution formed expressly to enable people in the community to value and enjoy their parks in prime condition. A group of citizens concerned with the future of Pittsburgh’s parks founded The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy in 1996. As an independent, nonprofit organization, the

Parks Conservancy works with government and community groups to restore the city’s parks to excellence.

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

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All of our Parks Conservancy projects are conducted with environmental sensitivity, respect for historic landscape design, and an appreciation for the recreational needs of modern users. We are passionate about both the past and the future of public parks in our community; among them, Frick Park, a cherished community landmark.

In Frick Park, our major projects have included: • A half-million dollar restoration of the Reynolds Street Gatehouse and Landscape, designed in the 1930s by John Russell Pope and Innocenti and Webel.

• Wayfinding and interpretive signs.

to construct a new Environmental Center as a place of discovery and learning for the Pittsburgh region. As you will read in this booklet, nature education was a key component of Frick Park from its inception. Now, together with the City of Pittsburgh and other partners, we are creating a facility that supports and embodies our vision of the entire park as a learning environment where people of all ages—but especially children—will form a life-long bond with nature. It will be a place of wonder and enjoyment—just like the rest of Frick Park.

We invite you now to read on, to learn of the inspiring heritage of Frick Park.

• Trail reconstruction.

• Ecological restoration initiatives through establishment of youth education programs, volunteer stewardship programs, and organizational partnerships.

Meg Cheever President and CEO The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

Melissa McMasters

It is with a mixture of excitement, determination and respect that we undertake our next and very ambitious project in Frick Park:

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

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Henry Clay Frick, who had risen from modest circumstances in Westmoreland County, Pa., to become one of America’s most influential and wealthy men, fully intended Helen’s debut to take place in New York City. It was there, he insisted, that she would be presented as one of the most refined and eligible young women of the year. She anticipated her father’s plan with dread, for she had seen 6

many an accomplished debutant marry soon thereafter and promptly relinquish her individual influence or become the pocketbook spouse of a cash-poor European royal. Helen Frick had something else in mind: to make her debut at her beloved Clayton among her dearest friends.

The very idea of a Pittsburgh debut outraged Frick so much that he refused to consider it. And so it was that Helen developed her plan to stand up to a man who was accustomed to being the person who gives the orders.

This time, Miss Frick would have her way.

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Helen Clay Frick (far right) with friends at her Pittsburgh debut, December 1908

Helen, the daughter of Adelaide and Henry Clay Frick, yearned for Clayton, the family’s original residence in Pittsburgh. Clayton seemed much more like home than did the gilded mansion in New York. And Helen fervently wished to evade her father’s plans to present her to New York society in a lavish debutant ball in early 1909.

Portrait of Helen Clay Frick taken around the time of her debut, 1908 Images courtesy of The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives

Miss Helen C. Frick of New York City, age 20, wanted desperately to depart for Pittsburgh.

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A Nature Reserve

Recreation at

Frick Park

The story of Frick Park begins with this quarrel between the powerful businessman and his lone surviving daughter, a strong-willed yet dutiful young woman who had only just graduated from Miss Spence’s School in Manhattan.

Tennis courts The city’s only red clay courts can be found along Braddock Avenue. Clay was moved from the former Pittsburgh Country Club courts.

Today, Frick is Pittsburgh’s largest park, encompassing 644 acres. The park’s dominant feature is its natural landform of ridges, ravines, and creeks, teeming with native plant and animal species. The largest stream, Nine Mile Run, flows above ground for 2.2 miles, crosses Frick Park, and empties into the Monongahela River. The park’s planners had the foresight to concentrate recreational facilities and vehicular access along the edges, preserving the interior as the city’s most intact and healthy woodland.

Lawn bowling Each of the two greens is a 120-foot square of carefully mowed, rolled, and gently watered grass that can accommodate seven games at one time.

Blue Slide playground

In fact, the park’s original 151 acres are now called “Frick Woods Nature Reserve,” marking it as land set aside for ecological conservation and enhanced educational opportunities. The protected urban forest constitutes the essential heart of Frick Park. This is exactly what had been intended from the very beginning.

Sit and slide on cardboard to ride the Blue Slide, and climb on the Space Net. Bicycling Frick Park’s variety of trails makes it a popular destination for mountain bikers.

Forbes & Braddock playground The playground is based on a nature theme and includes an imaginary stream and natural rock displays with native plantings.

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The popular Off-Leash Exercise Area is located about a half mile past the Blue Slide playground on Riverview Trail.

Walking/Running Trails range from ½ mile to 2 miles, and from easy to difficult.

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Melissa McMasters

Dogs

Helen Frick had a plan for removing herself from New York, and she found an accomplice in her mother. Waiting until her father had gone downtown one day, Helen and her mother boarded a train for Pittsburg (then spelled without an “h”).

A New York Times news story datelined December 7, 1908, reported that mother and daughter reached Pittsburg “some days ago, and the big house was aired over Sunday and formally opened this morning.” Acting in earnest opposition to her father, Helen sent out invitations for the debutant party she planned herself.

It would occur on a carefully chosen date— Wednesday, December 16, 1908—her mother’s 49th birthday.

There would be an afternoon reception followed by a dinnerdance for her friends and their escorts.

Helen was well regarded, according to The New York Times.

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But the looming question that December of ’08 was whether Frick would tolerate Helen’s insurrection. She sent an invitation to her father, still in New York, and across the corner wrote: “Papa, mine, won’t you come to my party?”

This time, Helen prevailed. Her plea melted her father’s resolve, and Papa came to Pittsburgh for the party.

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Helen carried a bouquet of pink rosebuds and lily of the valley, given by her father.

She wore another of his gifts, a ruby and pearl teardrop necklace. Serenaded by members of the Pittsburgh Orchestra, she received her guests surrounded by her girlhood friends. But as one report noted, “most interesting of all was the young girl herself.”

Beechwood Entrance to Frick Park, 1937 Courtesy of Heinz History Center

Helen’s participation in philanthropy, as the Times story noted, initially arose out of her position as a child in a wealthy family that naturally took on charitable activities.

Helen gained further exposure to applied philanthropy during her schooling at Miss Spence’s. “A docile pupil” at finishing school, according to a 1937 profile in The New Yorker, Helen was academically

successful, graduating with an “A” average.

While at Spence School, Helen also worked in the tenements and took courses in settlement and social work at the New York School of Philanthropy. The school’s social work methods emphasized self-sufficiency, “heroic imaginations,” and introducing the poor to beauty. It was excellent preparation for Helen to become a benefactress of women and children, a role that her father encouraged because it paralleled his own interests.

Indeed, Helen had a heroic idea of her own that day. She asked her father if he would honor a promise he had made to her as a young girl—to grant her a single wish at her debut. Yes, he said, his promise held true.

Miss Frick asked her father for a park for the children of Pittsburgh.

Melissa McMasters

“ ‘Little Helen Frick,’ as she is known to the young people of Pittsburg, is one of the most popular of the rich society girls of the city. For many years she assisted her mother in dispensing the charities for which the Frick family is so justly noted.”

Miss Frick asked her father for a park for the children of Pittsburgh.

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Riverview Park 259 acres Residents of Allegheny City (later part of Pittsburgh) pooled money to purchase land that became Riverview Park in 1894. Mary Schenley donated $10,000.

Downtown Pittsburgh

The park opened informally in 1879 as a drinking water reservoir on public land, and finally became a city park in 1889. The Highland Park Zoo opened in 1898.

Highland Park 378 acres

Frick Park was the fourth to be created in the city’s system of regional parks.

The initial 151 acres donated

by Henry Clay Frick were worth approximately $500,000 when he announced his plan in 1909.

Schenley Park 434 acres

Frick Park 644 acres

Emerald View Park 257 acres

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The newest of Pittsburgh’s regional parks, created in 2012 by joining seven smaller parks together with greenways and trails atop Mt. Washington.

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Pioneer heiress Mary Schenley donated 300 acres in 1889 for a park, with the stipulations that it would bear her name and that it would never be sold.

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Nine Mile Run

Helen’s idea for a park was shaped by a series of personal experiences.

There was, for example, a visit from the president of the United States.

John Moyer

Meeting Present and Future Needs The timing of Helen Frick’s request was impeccable, for parks were very much on the minds of Pittsburgh’s leaders in those years. The Pittsburgh Civic Commission had engaged landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., renowned for his work on the U.S. Capital McMillan Commission, and instrumental in the creation of the National Park Service, to assess Pittsburgh’s potential for growth and development. In December 1910, the Civic Commission adopted Olmsted’s report, titled “Improvements Necessary To Meet the City’s Present and Future Needs,” which particularly emphasized the prospect of improved thoroughfares and parks.

Of all the possibilities Helen might have chosen as her debutant gift, she asked her father to donate the wooded ridges and ravines next to Clayton as a park for Pittsburgh’s children.

Helen’s idea for a park was shaped by a series of personal experiences.

There was, for example, a visit from the president of the United States.

One location that caught Olmsted’s eye during his survey of the area was the Nine Mile Run stream valley in the lower reaches of what would become Frick Park nearly two decades later. “Perhaps the most striking opportunity noted for a large park,” Olmsted wrote, “is the valley of Nine Mile Run. Its long meadows of varying width would make ideal playfields; the stream, when it is freed from sewage, will be an attractive and interesting element in the landscape; the wooded slopes on either side give ample opportunity for enjoyment of the forest, for shaded walks and cool resting places; and above all it is not far from a large working population…and yet it is so excluded by its high wooded banks that the close proximity of urban development can hardly be imagined.”

President Theodore Roosevelt came to call at Clayton on July 4, 1902, during his second year in office. While Frick’s purpose was to discuss anti-trust legislation and labor-management issues that might affect U.S. Steel, 13-year-old Helen came away with her own impressions.

To her father’s dismay, she was enthralled with the president’s social agenda as well as his efforts to conserve natural resources.

During his two terms, Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service and created 150 national forests and five national parks.

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Helen Frick also garnered ideas about park philanthropy from very close to home.

Her father had already made the gift of one park—in 1905 when the family moved to New York, Frick had donated a city block with lawns, play areas, and a water fountain to the nearby steel factory town of Homestead.

In Pittsburgh, citizens took great pride in the namesake park that was a gift of the heiress Mary Schenley in 1889, and in the conservatory given by industrialist Henry Phipps in 1893.

As Helen made her wish in 1908, the city had hundreds of acres of parkland. Residents could swim, golf, ice skate, or bicycle in a city park. They could picnic or stroll, play tennis, or ride on horseback. They could listen to concerts or visit a zoo.

Helen sought something else entirely—an expansive woodland where children could be safe from the dangerous practice of playing in the streets, and where nature would provide both education and entertainment.

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She had her own intimate knowledge of this forest, for it was here that she and her older brother Childs had often walked, and where he developed the fondness for nature that would propel his university studies and travels. It was land where Helen rode her mare “Patricia,” and which the family passed through for their picnics on the banks of the Monongahela. Most touchingly, though, the northernmost corner of this land lay between Clayton and a place that was sadly familiar to the family—Homewood Cemetery.

“This area is characterized by forest in which the deciduous temperate trees such as oaks, hickories, tulip-tree, sassafras, and red-bud thrive and shelter the cardinal, the tufted titmouse and the opossum.”

From Where is Frick Park? by O.E. Jennings, 1920

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Melissa McMasters

Viewing the forest in 1920

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Ezra C. Stiles, 1939 18

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

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When the family moved to New York, these walks ceased. Clayton was to be opened only at Christmas. And though Helen seldom walked in these woods anymore, she wished other children should have the chance to do so.

Word of the gift was made public six months

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The park, according to the news story, would be “devoted particularly to the entertainment of children.” Frick made the donation in the form of a pledge, however.

The actual transaction, he decided, would not occur until after his death.

Frick was intensely private and wanted none of the public attention and approval that others craved. According to Pittsburgh historian Jay Gangawere, “Those who knew him well, like

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Oil painting by Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862–1938) ca. 1910, National Portrait Gallery

Henry Clay Frick was so bereft that he cleared trees so he might see Martha’s grave from the second floor of Clayton.

And the family’s daily routine of father and children playing together in the evenings gave way to a new ritual, walking hand-in-hand at twilight to Martha’s and Henry Jr.’s graves.

after Helen’s party.

“The children of Pittsburg who have not been so fortunate as Miss Helen Frick has been will enjoy part of the young lady’s great wealth,” stated a story in The New York Times dated June 14, 1909.

“It is announced here to-day that H.C. Frick will donate to the City of Pittsburg a plot of ground for a park, the land being valued at $500,000. The formal offer will be made next week, and Pittsburg has already made up her mind to accept it.”

Helen Clay Frick and Henry Clay Frick

Helen’s family had lost two children. Martha Howard Frick died tragically at age seven in 1891, and Henry Clay Frick, Jr. lived only a month after his birth in 1892. The two children were buried side-byside in Homewood Cemetery, just a tenth of a mile from the family home.

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the Englishman James Bridge, said that behind the protective armor of his imperious business facade, ‘there was a singularly charming, humane and charitable side to the character of Henry Clay Frick.’ When Frick died in 1919, he left 80 percent of his $145 million fortune to purposes from which the public could benefit—a charitable conclusion to a life by any standard.”

Braddock Trail in Frick Park

Frick’s death was brought on by heart failure that followed years of inflammatory rheumatism. A service was held at Clayton.

On December 5, 1919, Henry Clay Frick was buried in Homewood Cemetery, beside his children. The cemetery was just a short walk away, through Frick’s Woods.

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Helen, at 31, her father’s stalwart supporter, was the chief beneficiary of his will.

It made her America’s wealthiest unmarried woman. The will also made good on Frick’s 1908 promise. He gave the City of Pittsburgh 151 acres and set aside $2 million in a trust fund to be used for expanding and maintaining Frick Park in perpetuity.

On December 9, 1919, a week after Henry Clay Frick’s death, The Pittsburgh Press published an update on his bequest of Frick Park. It began: “Rugged hills, heavily wooded, surmounting grass-garbed valleys through which tiny brooks twist their way, picturesquely beautiful natural bowers, and fairy-like grottoes, largely compose Pittsburgh’s newest park, the gift of the late Henry Clay Frick.

“Unimproved, as the property stands today, nature lovers will find it a source of inestimable pleasure. Hundreds of tree trunks, sug-

gestive of days when Indians roamed the hills, lie moss covered and crumbling in artistic arrangement where wind and storm and lightning sent them crashing.

“Officials of the Bureau of Parks yesterday said that much work would be necessary to establish the property properly as a public park.”

That work began in earnest and continues unabated.

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City government immediately embraced the idea of Frick Park. A 1923 report called “Parks, a Part of the Pittsburgh Plan” noted that “Approximately 11,500 persons live within a 15-minute walk of the tract,” a statement that anticipated the park’s future popularity. The report strongly urged the City to examine the possibility of incorporating the Nine Mile Run valley into the park, specifying that the wooded hillsides should be maintained, reforestation should take place where necessary, and that “no plan should be determined upon except after the most careful study and with the advice and assistance of the best landscape architect obtainable.”

“On June 26, after a long period of anticipation, the people of Pittsburgh were privileged to consider the city’s newest park, Frick’s Woods, their own….”

In 1924, the first tangible changes began. City Council voted to accept a deed for 189 acres of land purchased by the Frick estate, which increased the park size to 340 acres. “It would not be easy to exaggerate its value to the city in the days to come,” a news report stated. “Pittsburgh is singularly fortunate in being able, through the bequest of Mr. Frick and the public spirit of his executors, to acquire a large new park adjoining the thickly populated Squirrel Hill section of the city.” Council also authorized employment of a landscape architect to convert the woods into a park. The City and the Frick estate agreed to hire the Boston firm of Lowell and Vinal, which developed a preliminary master plan, including trail layout and a definition of spaces. The choice of such a highly regarded design firm was an emphatic first statement on the part of the Frick Trust that the park was to be no ordinary place.

Melissa McMasters 24

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

The People’s Own Woods

The park opened in 1927. H.W. Correll of the Chamber of Commerce wrote: “On June 26, after a long period of anticipation, the people of Pittsburgh were privileged to consider the city’s newest park, Frick’s Woods, their own, for on that date it was formally opened for their use; and 25

those who have already availed themselves of the privilege of roaming through the woods were charmed by the natural beauty of the surroundings, as no work of man has marred the original forest.”

The main source of Frick Park’s loveliness is its woodlands, but through the decades, some of the nation’s best-known designers have enhanced the beauty and usefulness of the landscape profoundly yet sensitively. The park enjoyed the possibility of excellence even during the depths of the Great Depression through the family’s close involvement and because of the ever-growing trust fund. A Bureau of Parks report from 1939 praised the prudence and wisdom of Frick’s decision to provide an endowment: “The maintenance, operation and development of Frick Park under the Frick Park Trust Fund by the Frick Park trustees is a practical demonstration of efficient, far-sighted park administration which might well be followed by the City Administration.”

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

A V i s i o n a ry Commitment “I G I V E A N D B E Q U E AT H

t o T H E U NION TR U ST COMPANY OF PITTSBURGH,

of the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as Trustee, the sum of TWO MILLION DOLLARS, IN TRUST, to hold the same as a trust fund for the maintenance of the said park, and to invest and reinvest the same and to collect and receive the income thereof, and after paying the expenses of the trust, including a reasonable compensation to the said trustee, to pay and apply the residue of the said income to maintaining, improving, embellishing and adding to the said park and keeping the same in proper condition.”

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Courtesy of Heinz History Center

Of course, the notion of “untouched wilderness” was and remains a popular and frequent misconception. Preceding centuries of human use, including Native American hunting trails, pioneer gristmills, Civil War fortifications, and a golf course, had profoundly altered the “natural” landscape. But the property, then 370 acres, held immediate picturesque appeal as well as great potential as parkland if the landscape could be restored and protected. Correll continued: “City authorities, aided by Mr. C.F. Chubb, of the Frick Estate, have been making all possible haste to make the woods readily available for the children and for tired business men and women. Here, where the sounds of industry cannot come, every one, in his own private country estate, may give himself up to healthful play, knowing that through the generosity of a fellow-citizen this is his woods.”

Last Will and Testament, Henry Clay Frick

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Reynolds Gatehouse Artist: Michael Maskarinec 28

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

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At Play in the Park

Mary Jane Bent

“Across the street from Walter Milligan’s football field was Frick Park…Only one trail crossed it; gravelly walk gave way to dirt and led down a forested ravine to a damp streambed. If you followed the streambed all day you would find yourself in a distant part of town reached ordinarily by a long streetcar ride…I roamed Frick Park for many years.

“Our family moved from house to house, but we never moved so far I couldn’t walk to Frick Park. I watched the men and women lawn bowling—so careful the players, so dull the game.

After I got a bird book I found, in the deep woods, a downy woodpecker working a tree trunk; the woodpecker looked like a jackhammer man…I saw sparrows, robins, cardinals, juncos, chipmunks, squirrels….

An American Childhood

by Annie Dillard, 1987­­­­

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

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Blue Slide Playground

“The deepest ravine, over which loomed the Forbes Avenue bridge, was called Fern Hollow. There in winter I searched for panther tracks in the snow. In summer and fall I imagined the woods extending infinitely. I was the first human being to see these shadowed trees, this land; I would make my pioneer clearing here, near the water…In spring I pried flat rocks from the damp streambed and captured red and black salamanders.”

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A Focus on Design Excellence In 1931, the City Parks Department and Frick Trust engaged John Russell Pope’s architectural firm to design gatehouses at the Reynolds Street, Beechwood Boulevard, and Forbes Avenue entrances. The renowned Pope was at the same time designing the extension of the Henry Clay Frick mansion in New York City, as the building became an art museum. The family’s alliance with the respected architect likely led to the commission for Pope’s firm to design the Frick Park gatehouses and cairn, which were completed in 1935 with $70,000 in funding from the Works Progress Administration. (Pope would go on to design the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.) This was a period of exhilarating expansion and improvement at the park. In 1936, the Trust paid $197,500 to purchase the Pittsburgh Country Club property, 83.8 acres that adjoined the parkland. The trustees also acquired the eight-acre site on Nine Mile Run where once had stood the old Swisshelm grist mill, which for a time had ground most of the grain in the Pittsburgh area.

The genius of their plan was to merge disparate tracts of land—each with its own history of human use and development—into one whole that effectively recreates the experience of an arcadian environment. They immediately recommended converting the former country club property into 32

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Jon Pratt

In 1935, the Trust again sought exceptional design assistance, this time from landscape architects Umberto Innocenti and Richard K. Webel of Long Island, New York. Having specialized in country estates (Childs Frick tapped them in 1941 to design the landscape around the guest cottage of his Long Island estate, also named “Clayton”), Frick Park was the firm’s first large-scale municipal project, and the partners’ work there would continue until 1957.

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parkland; transforming Nine Mile Run’s swamps into lakes; protecting the park’s wooded interior by focusing recreation and parking facilities around the perimeter; and improving park entrances.

From the 1920s to the 1970s, an estimated 200 million tons of slag were dumped on the slopes of the Nine Mile Run valley. an estimated 200 million tons were dumped on the slopes of the Nine Mile Run valley. Other sources of degradation included the 1940s construction of Interstate 376, which changed the natural boundaries of the stream and watershed, in some places sending the stream underground into concrete culverts. And Pittsburgh’s overall growth has put unbearable pressure on natural

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Joe Pye weed along Nine Mile Run Stan Franzos

Nine Mile Run’s poor condition presented an ongoing challenge for Frick Park. As the city’s industrial core had expanded in the early 1900s, development eclipsed the stream valley’s natural beauty. The Duquesne Slag Company bought land on the banks of the stream to dispose of slag, which is a waste product generated by the production of steel. From the 1920s to the 1970s,

Duquesne Slag Company train

In 1940, Innocenti and Webel began to plant the park as a natural arboretum, arranging new plantings in natural ecological groupings and in large masses. During the ensuing years, they pressed for cleanup of Nine Mile Run; developed designs that would minimize the need for expensive maintenance; sought to protect the park and stream when the Penn-Lincoln Parkway was built; and emphasized a need for long-term planning so that the park could remain sustainable as a natural landscape and as a haven for the people of Pittsburgh.

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Stepping into Another World

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Phil Costanzo had wanted to be a teacher, but couldn’t stand the thought of being indoors all day. So from 1968 until his retirement in 2012, Phil taught schoolchildren in the expansive outdoor classroom that is Frick Park—as a naturalist for the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Reclamation work began in the 1990s and continues today. In an innovative reclamation strategy, a private residential development atop the slagheap became the catalyst for a stream restoration project funded through the City of Pittsburgh and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The stream has been removed from pipes and returned to daylight, and a remarkable and growing variety of fish and other wildlife has returned, thanks to this urban stream restoration project touted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as its most successful in the nation. All told, the reclamation project has added 110 acres to Frick Park along Nine Mile Run, with another 100 acres of adjacent slopes to be transferred to the park in the near future.

Melissa McMasters

He remembers teaching in the first education facility, a converted mansion on Beechwood Avenue where the windows looked out on the park and where, sometimes, Helen Frick’s driver would bring her to stroll.

He remembers greeting children who grew up surrounded by concrete, as they got off the bus scared of the woods rising before them. “First we’d take them to a grassy spot, then to an area under a small tree, moving gradually so that kids were not going straight into the woods. For a lot of these children, a trip to Frick Park was their first exposure to nature. They were stepping into another world.”

stream systems through the city’s drainage system, which allows sewage to overflow into streams during heavy rainstorms.

Today, Frick Park serves as a refuge from urban life, a habitat preservation zone, and an ideal location for environmental education. More than 38,000 people live in the six neighborhoods that adjoin the park—more than three times the 1923 population.

Phil hopes those thousands of schoolchildren became better stewards of our environment. He also hopes they learned that Frick Park is a true and lasting gift to Pittsburgh’s citizens. “For people to have had the foresight years ago to make the woods a park, and to keep it a park, amazes me.”

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Enjoying the outdoor classroom

He remembers how the kids would become familiar with that world. He would lead the group into the interior of Frick Park, where they would sit, listening in wonder to silence instead of traffic. “You would feel you were in the middle of the wilderness.”

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From the time the first trails were laid out by park designers in 1927, the intention was to entice visitors into the interior. Trails looped up and down the ravines, crossed the streams, and traversed the fields. Among the earliest developments was a nature education program that conducted regular trips through the park.

Throughout the years following the initial bequest, the Frick family continued to play an important role in the growth of Frick Park. Helen Frick funded the Nature Museum in the 1930s, and Dr. William LeRoy Black was hired as a naturalist to initiate the nature education program for the city parks. The Park Bureau’s annual report from 1939 noted, “This is one of the most outstanding nature educational programs conducted by any park system in the country and has received national recognition.” In 1939, workers from the National Youth Administration, a New Deal program that provided jobs and education for young people, built an outdoor “Nature Study Amphitheater” near the Frick Nature Museum, which then was housed in a converted home on Beechwood Boulevard.

Frick family involvement increased during the 1960s and 1970s, ensuring that the park continued to preserve its woodland character and provide nature education. A bequest from Childs Frick, who died in 1965, enabled the park’s Environmental Center to continue offering education programs.

Childs Frick passed along his natural history interests to his son, Henry Clay Frick II, who became chairman of the Helen Clay Frick Foundation, and also a trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the American Museum of Natural History. His aunt Helen was influential in the decision that a replacement Environmental

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

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Embracing a recycled flowerpot, Hannah Sagastegui-Hunninen is a second-generation participant in environmental education at Frick Park. Lydia Konecky

Melissa McMasters

Creating a Lifelong Bond with Nature

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In a field day assessment of forest health, students from the Environmental Charter School measure the diameter of a tree.

Center building, planned during the mid-1970s and opened in 1979, would nestle into the contours of the surrounding landscape, so that the building itself would be part of the woods.

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Elise Frick recalls of her father, Henry Clay Frick II, that his “great love was the outdoors and helping my great aunt Helen. And Mother, of course, was always interested in environmental education. She just insisted that the whole family get involved in supporting the Environmental Center. The new design is going to be wonderful!”

Over the years, Frick Park has hosted children from throughout the city for field lessons, nature hikes, and summer camps. With the hands-on approach of “Education through Restoration,” the programs help children and adults create and nourish a life-long bond with nature.

The Environmental Center’s main building burned in 2002, but programs for the public have continued to be offered, including summer camps and year-round workshops on birding, composting, weed identification, and nature photography. Students from Pittsburgh Public Schools, charter schools, home schools, and private schools learn through outdoor classes within the park.

“Expanding education programs” was the top priority of 67% of the registered voters surveyed about the future of Pittsburgh’s regional parks in 2009.

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The Environmental Center at Frick Park embraces and goes beyond the historic Innocenti and Webel design (right), using cutting-edge techniques to achieve an enriched and sustainable place.

View of the new Environmental Center at Frick from the fountain looking down the allĂŠe of trees toward the park entrance

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Courtesy of Innocenti and Webel

Conceptual rendering: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

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The next generation of park advocates helping to plant trees

sident Birds Re

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

The new environmental education center will showcase how buildings and nature can complement one another, while respecting historic structures and landscape. Design is complete for the project, which is slated to begin in autumn 2013, and anticipated to conclude in 2015. Conceived as a beautiful and effective portal to the larger park, the center will be constructed with sustainable materials.

The building is designed to use 40 percent less energy than a typical building of its size in the northeast, and its energy needs will be met through solar panels. Stormwater and sewage will be captured and treated on site.

The building and outdoor spaces, including an amphitheater, will provide rich learning, cultural, and social experiences. Its visitors will experience a relationship with the natural world that is healthier and more rewarding, with a much lower impact on the environment.

The main building will have a modest footprint of nearly 6,000 square feet with 15,500 square feet of usable space on three levels, accommodating flexible indoor learning areas, public gathering spaces, a “living room,” public restrooms, offices, and storage and other support facilities. The building is expected to meet the highest standards of sustainable design through the Living Building Challenge and LEED Platinum certification.

At the time Frick Park opened in 1927, an extensive article in the Pittsburgh Gazette Times foretold the significance­­that the park would have for future generations. “Some day, men and women will get the significance of Frick Woods….men and women who visit will look and remark: ‘All life centers here.’ ” 45

A Natural Progression

Looking to the Past, Leading to the Future The next phase of life for Frick Park is about to begin. There is much left to do to improve the park and expand its impact and legacy, and the path ahead is hopeful and exciting.

The new Environmental Center will restore the historic entrance composition of gatehouses and tree-lined walkway leading to the fountain, while adding demonstration gardens, and improving the nearby meadow and woodlands. Its buildings and outdoor spaces will equip the entire park to be the region’s premier site for learning about nature and the urban environment. The emphasis on hands-on stewardship will create a path toward a future in which the people of the community will help to sustain Frick and other parks.

What will the century ahead bring? Through the Environmental Center, Frick Park will take the next stride in fulfilling its destiny and in living up to Miss Frick’s enduring dream of a park for the children of Pittsburgh.

Frick Park was just down the street from where Kathryn Hunninen grew up—equally at home in the park as within the four walls of her house.

“Oh my goodness, we went there all the time.

Frick and the Environmental Center have always just been there. I have amazing memories of playing in the park, and of the staff talking and interacting with me.”

Frick Park and its environmental education programs have propelled the direction of Kathryn’s life. She was a camper from age 3 to 9, then a junior counselor and volunteer from age 13 to 17, then a counselor during college, then a program coordinator and teacher from 2006 to 2010.

These experiences shaped her career in urban environmental education and stewardship. “It gave me a foundation for developing as a leader,” she said. Kathryn has earned an undergraduate degree in human ecology and a master’s degree in environmental education, and is now a program manager for Pittsburgh’s Emerald View Park.

One of Kathryn’s favorite places in the park is a small waterfall on Falls Ravine Creek. “About halfway down, there’s a place where the rocks flatten out, and the creek falls. When I was little, my dad and I would go there for picnics. To me, then, that waterfall was huge. Now, every time I pass by there, I think of those times with my dad. And of course the waterfall is only about three feet high.”

View of the Environmental Center at Frick Park from the amphitheater 46

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

Rendering: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

New memories are in the making. Kathryn’s daughter Hannah, a third grader, is already in her sixth year as a camper at the Environmental Center, learning the very lessons about nature, stewardship, and ecology that had so influenced her mother. And naturally, Hannah now has a second home in Frick Park: “My daughter and my dad disappear there for three hours at a time. She and her grandpa, having a picnic in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”

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Selected References My Father, Henry Clay Frick

by Helen Clay Frick as told to Mary O’Hara. August 1959, The Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh; reprinted by The Frick Art & Historical Center, Inc.

Henry Clay Frick The Man

by Colonel George Harvey. 1928, Beard Books, Washington, D.C., and The Frick Collection.

Making a Landscape of Continuity, The Practice of Innocenti & Webel

by Gary R. Hilderbrand, Editor. 1997, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Mass.

Henry Clay Frick, An Intimate Portrait

by Martha Frick Symington Sanger.

1998, Abbeville Press, New York, N.Y.

Helen Clay Frick, Bittersweet Heiress

by Martha Frick Symington Sanger.

2008, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Henry Clay Frick, The Life of the Perfect Capitalist

by Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr. 2010, McFarland & Co. Inc., Jefferson, N.C. www.frick.org/collection/history www.pittsburghparks.org/history www.3rbc.org/documents/birds.pdf 48

Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

With Thanks The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy wishes to express appreciation to the Pennsylvania Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; the Library and Archives at the Heinz History Center; the Archives Service Center at the University of Pittsburgh; and Innocenti & Webel LLC. 49

2000 Technology Drive, Suite 300, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 412.682.7275

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Frick Park’s Enduring Legacy: A Treasure by Design

www.pittsburghparks.org