Allegheny Landing – Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh’s North Shore is stacked with big-ticket stops, PNC Park, the Warhol, the science center, but tucked right on the riverbank between the Roberto Clemente and Andy Warhol bridges is a quieter one worth slowing down for: Allegheny Landing, a small riverfront sculpture park with about the best free skyline view in the city.
The Landing opened in 1984 as one of Pittsburgh’s first modern riverfront parks and one of the first urban riverfront sculpture parks in the country. That timing matters: in 1984 the North Shore was still lined with rusting barges and the mills across the river were going dark. Turning a stretch of industrial riverbank into an art park was a bet on what Pittsburgh could become, and standing here now, with a manicured lawn running down to the water and downtown glittering across the Allegheny, it’s a bet that paid off.
The art is the point. Scattered through the park are commissioned works like George Sugarman’s bright, cartoonish Pittsburgh Variations and Isaac Witkin’s The Forks, plus Ned Smyth’s Piazza Lavoro, a columned plaza with mosaic and relief work that got a full restoration. The sculptures are owned by the Carnegie Museum of Art, and after decades of the park getting overshadowed by the stadium next door, the nonprofit Riverlife has spent years bringing it and the riverfront trail back.
Some of it is grand and some of it is just plain fun. A few of the pieces look like friendly monsters grazing on the lawn, which makes this a good spot to wander with no particular agenda.
It’s free, it’s open all the time, and it connects straight into the North Shore riverfront trail, so you can hit it between ballgames and museums or just come for the view. Cross the yellow Roberto Clemente Bridge and you’re downtown; stay on this side and you’ve got the whole skyline laid out in front of you.
