Allegheny Commons - City of Pittsburgh

United States Department of the InteriorNational Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration FormNPS Form 10900 OMB No. 10240018 (Expires 5/31/2012)Allegheny CommonsName of PropertyAllegheny County, PACounty and Stateroyal hunting grounds, private estates, and, in the American colonies, the gardens of southern plantations – allopen to a limited population, on a limited basis.The first public park in the United States, Boston Common, was originally set aside – like Allegheny Commons– for animal grazing and provided a powerful model of this kind of transition from agrarian to urban amenity.Other early American open spaces were town squares, like those in William Penn’s plan for Philadelphia in1683 and John Oglethorpe’s plan for Savannah in 1733. Blocks in the urban grid reserved to be surrounded,not built upon, by the city, these represented a vision of urbanity inspired by town planning ideas in England. 12A major difference, however, was that in England, such residential squares were private; those in the UnitedStates were public in keeping with the American ideal of an egalitarian society. Yet Victorian reformersobserved that the value of property surrounding such open spaces increased. And they saw additionalcommercial and moral benefits to the creation of parks, as well. During the industrial revolution, they arguedthat healthier, more contented workers could and would work harder, increasing production and profits. Theyalso sought to provide urban dwellers a wholesome alternative to taverns as places of leisure-time activity.While the Victorian urban park movement was taking hold in the United States, fueled by arguments for publichealth, outdoor leisure, capitalist profit, and moral uplift, the residents of growing American cities sought thebenefits of open space where they could. Cemeteries became popular places for picnics and strolls. Inresponse, the rural cemetery movement, in which extensive, landscaped burial grounds were establishedoutside of churchyards, emerged in the first third of the 19th century with the establishment of Mt. AuburnCemetery near Boston in 1831. The designed landscapes of rural cemeteries were an important precursor ofthe 19th century urban park movement, establishing as an ideal the creation of symbolic, man-madelandscapes that appeared to be natural with artfully-arranged plantings and water features set among openmeadows and parklands. In the western Pennsylvania region, Allegheny Cemetery (National Register ofHistoric Places, 1980) was established soon after Mt. Auburn as the area’s first landscaped cemetery in 1844.The popularity of rural cemeteries as recreational and tourist attractions highlighted the demand forprofessionally-designed public parks and provided an important training ground for landscape architects,whose field was then emerging from those of horticulture and planning as a distinct profession. Yet a foremostpractitioner in the field, Frederick Law Olmsted, argued that cemeteries should not resemble pleasure groundsor double as recreational areas. His design (with Calvert Vaux) for New York’s Central Park – set asidespecifically for public respite and recreation in the 1850s – was the first of the professionally-designedAmerican pastoral parks which were spoken of in this period as “rus in urb,” or the country in the city. Thedesigners of these parks combined agricultural methods, civil engineering techniques, and artistic principles toshape the land into simulated rural landscapes in the midst of industrial cities.The planners and designers of Allegheny Commons were well aware of all of these motivations and traditionsfor providing public open space. Central Park, in particular, provided a stirring example of professional publiclandscape design as a remedy for the congestion and toxicity of the industrial city at a time when AlleghenyCity officials wished to redevelop a considerable acreage of public land. A prosperous city with an establishedtradition of far-sighted planning, Allegheny was eager to join the nationwide movement toward the provision ofprofessionally-designed public parkland for its citizens.The City Councils of Allegheny authorized the conversion of the Allegheny Commons into a public park just 10years after the dedication of Central Park in New York. They were persuaded by a report of the municipalCommittee on Common Grounds Improvement, which argued for the creation of a park on the grounds of“providing breathing places for an overworked population” along with increased property values, and thereforemunicipal revenue through taxation. 13 The city immediately established a Park Commission and appointedCharles Davis, City Engineer, to oversee the new park’s planning, development and construction. One ofDavis’s first tasks as park planner was to visit the “Eastern cities” – Boston, New York (including Brooklyn),12 Anne Whiston Spirn, “Urban Parks,” in American Landscape Architecture: Designers and Places, William H. Tischler,ed., Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1989, p. 206.13 First Annual Report of the Park Commission of the City of Allegheny. Pittsburgh: A.A. Anderson and Sons, 1869, p. 9.21