Highland Park – Pittsburgh, PA
If you like your city parks grand and a little Victorian, Highland Park is Pittsburgh’s version done right. It sits on a hilltop in the East End, roughly 380 acres of lawns, woods, and formal gardens, and it’s built around two things most parks don’t have: a showpiece Entry Garden with a fountain worth the drive, and a pair of century-old drinking-water reservoirs you can walk a full loop around.
The Entry Garden
Come in off North Highland Avenue and the first thing you hit is the Entry Garden, a formal Victorian gathering space that got a full restoration in 2005. Broad stone staircases step down to a fountain and reflecting pool ringed with benches, with flower beds and old-style lamp posts laid out on a strict geometric plan. It’s the kind of place people get engaged, walk the dog, and generally treat as the park’s front porch.
The imposing bronze-and-granite gateways framing the entrance were designed by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, the same artist behind the two bronze youths taming horses over at the park’s Stanton Avenue gate. It all signals, none too subtly, that you’re walking into someplace special.
The Reservoir Loop
Climb the steps behind the garden and you’re up on the water. Highland Park holds two of the city’s big open-air reservoirs, and the loop around the main one is a longtime local favorite: a flat, easy walk with water on one side and trees on the other. When I was there the level was down a bit, so you could see the blue liner along the rim, but on a still evening the surface turns into a dead-flat mirror. Bring the running shoes, bring the dog, or just lean on the railing and watch the clouds reflect.
Who Built It, and Why
The park owes its existence to one man: Edward Manning Bigelow, Pittsburgh’s Director of Public Works, who set out in the 1880s to give the city a grand park system. Much of this land had been part of Alexander Negley’s estate and sold off to farmers over the years. Bigelow bought it back parcel by parcel, negotiating with something like 120 separate owners over 15 years and spending north of $900,000 in city funds to do it. Highland Park was officially established in 1889 and opened to the public in 1893, a textbook piece of the City Beautiful movement, and the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has it flagged as a historic landmark.
Set into the reservoir wall, you’ll also find a bronze memorial to Mrs. Nathaniel B. Hogg, founder of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a nice bit of civic history hiding in plain sight if you’re paying attention on the loop.
If You Go
Highland Park is free and open dawn to dusk, every day. While you’re up here, the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium sits right at the park’s edge, and there’s a big public pool, a super playground, sand volleyball, and picnic shelters if you’re making an afternoon of it. If you’re working the rest of the city, the Allegheny Landing sculpture park down on the North Shore is a short drive. Come at golden hour. The low sun raking across the garden is the whole ballgame.
