Highland Park, Highland Park: 1500 N. Highland Avenue
Edward Manning Bigelow, Pittsburgh’s first director of public works, had a habit of seeing park potential where others saw only infrastructure. In 1889, with City Controller E.S. Morrow’s support, Bigelow persuaded the City Council to set aside 46 acres of City-owned property around the Highland Reservoir and to authorize the Department of Public Works and landscape architect Francis Xavier Berthold Froesch to create a public park. Over the next 15 years, Bigelow negotiated with 120 property owners to acquire additional land to expand the park’s footprint.
Today’s Highland Park holds true to Bigelow and Froesch’s original dreams while adding modern recreational options that would have been beyond even their expansive imaginations! Considerable walking trails, a dog park, public pool, volleyball pit, public art and memorials, stone archways, and city steps. And of course, there’s the super playground, zoo, and aquarium, which attracts families from all over the city and far beyond.
Still, it may be the landscape design and flower beds greeting visitors at the park’s grand front entrance that create the strongest impression and most lasting memory. Carefully tended by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and volunteers, their efforts are a continuation of the potential Bigelow saw in 1889 and what all of us eagerly look forward to with every visit.
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