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 StateAllegheny Commons’ planners were Central Park in New York, Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, and BostonCommon.There is a clear lineage between Central Park and Allegheny Commons, both as expressions of the Victorianlandscape parks movement of the mid-19th century and through the person of William Grant, who contributedhis engineering expertise to the creation of both parks. Like Central Park, Allegheny Commons represents asuccessful municipal initiative to transform underutilized urban land into a healthful and beautiful publicamenity. Unlike Central Park, Allegheny Commons’ origin as public land determined one of its distinguishingfeatures: its central location. The centrality of Allegheny Commons owed to the unique layout of the settlementof Allegheny, described by planning historian John Reps in his book Town Planning in Frontier America: “Ofparticular interest is the town of Allegheny, planned in a neat square of thirty-two (sic) blocks, with an opencentral green four blocks in size. The commons surrounded the town on all sides, beyond which lay thegarden or farm lots of the community.” 24 In terms of planning, Reps notes, Allegheny was one of the pioneercities of the Ohio Valley.But Central Park was not, at first, central, and its location at a remove from New York’s then-downtown centerinfluenced its design, as did its size. At 843 acres, or 153 square city blocks, Central Park is considerablylarger than Allegheny Commons, and its monumental scale allowed for a design which encompassed a varietyof landscapes and features, including seven major meadows, a large area of natural woodlands, a number oflakes and ponds, a zoo, a wildlife sanctuary, bridle paths, carriage drives, a conservatory, theaters, and otherattractions. While clearly influenced by Central Park’s picturesque design, Allegheny Commons’ compact sizeand geometry, not to mention the challenges of an existing railroad, prison, and roads on its premises, dictatedthat its designers apply a site-specific approach focused more narrowly on an ornamental landscape. In fact,Allegheny Commons’ planners opted to work with Central Park’s engineer rather than with its landscapedesigners, Olmsted and Vaux, who also submitted a proposal for developing the Commons site. Ultimately,Mitchell and Grant developed a unique design solution for the peculiar geometry of the Commons by applyingClassical symmetry and formality to its linear north, south, and east sections while reserving the pastoral idiomfor more spacious West Common.In the state of Pennsylvania, Fairmount Park, whose Fairmount Park Commission was establishedcontemporaneously with the Allegheny Park Commission, in 1867, provides another illustrative comparison.Land acquisition for Fairmount Park predated 1867, however. Fairmount Park’s development originated in theCity of Philadelphia’s efforts to protect its municipal water supply from industrial development in the early 19thcentury and grew through cooperative efforts by the city and private citizens to purchase estates along theSchuylkill River; the date of the Park Commission’s establishment reflects an enlargement of Fairmount Park’soriginal purpose to embrace the urban parks movement and its mission to provide the healthful benefits ofpublic open space to a metropolitan population. Thus, Fairmount Park is actually a vast park system,encompassing 9200 acres and 63 neighborhood and regional parks, as well as city squares, river valleys, rockoutcroppings, a working farm, roads, a tunnel, and historic houses, institutional buildings, and an inn. Unlikethe landscapes at Central Park or Allegheny Commons, which had unified designs, Fairmount Park evolvedover decades through the agglomeration of the original estates, their trees and meadowlands, withoutsignificant alterations; followed by the landscapes and buildings associated with the United States CentennialExposition of 1876 and later design schemes imposed on various areas of the park to enable them to servespecial purposes during subsequent eras. In contrast, Allegheny Commons hews closely to boundariesestablished in the 18th century and exists today as a single discrete park whose entirety it is possible toexperience, on foot, in a single visit. And, again, Allegheny Commons’ central location resulted in anorthogonal site which fits within the historic urban grid, in contrast to Fairmount Park, which was onlyconnected to the heart of central Philadelphia by a highway, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, during the CityBeautiful period.In its conversion from common gazing land to public open space, Boston Common provides a comparison to apark which underwent a process similar to Allegheny Commons, and, at 50 acres, Boston Common’s scale is24 John Reps, Town Planning in Frontier America. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1980, p. 183.31