Museum
Michael DeBerardinis, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, announced a $25 million dollar plan to renovate Point State Park and parts of the Fort Pitt Museum on October 11, 2006. The plans call for improving the green spaces within the park, expanding recreational opportunities, preserving historical installations and updating outdated amenities. The project was originally scheduled to be complete within four years, with the majority of the work to be completed in time for Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary celebration in 2008.
Sections of the park have fallen into disuse since it was established in 1974. The homeless have used the trenches surrounding the foundations of the remains of Fort Pitt as a temporary shelter for years. Graffiti on the structures of the park has become a major problem. Sections of the park are littered with fence posts, cut logs, plastic drums, and rolled up snow drift fencing. The walkways have become cracked and are beginning to fall apart. The goal of the restoration project is to re-establish the park as a recreational destination.
Plans for improving the park are well under way. They include, installing new pumps and pipes in the fountain, establishing a seating area around the fountain and a wading area for children, restoring the river walk with steps that lead into the river, building kiosks for information and concessions, renovating the rest rooms, renovating the water taxi landings and surrounding docks, and installing wireless internet access hubs. Currently (April 2011) the waterfront area is closed to pedestrians as the stone walkways and wharf area are being resurfaced. They are to be reopened during the summer, 2011.
These plans were not put into place without some controversy. On January 25, 2007, thirteen members of two different local labor unions were arrested for blocking access by contractors to the work sites at the remnants of Fort Pitt. The labor union protested the use of four non labor workers by the contractor responsible for completing the work at Point State Park.
On August 14, 2009, the state closed the museum and three other PHMC museums indefinitely due to a lack of funding as part of an ongoing budget crisis. Management of the museum is supposed to be taken over by the Senator John Heinz Regional History Center once the state budget is passed. The Senator John Heinz History Center re-opened the Fort Pitt Museum on Saturday, April 17, 2010. The History Center’s museum system also includes a Smithsonian-affiliated, seven-story museum in Pittsburgh’s Strip District; Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village, the oldest site of human habitation in North America located in Avella, Pa.; and the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum, a two-floor museum-within-a-museum at the History Center.
Currently, the Fort Pitt Museum is open to visitation seven days a week from 10am - 5pm. The museum is closed only on major holidays (Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving and Easter)
Read more about this topic: Fort Pitt Museum
Famous quotes containing the word museum:
“It is the space inside that gives the drum its sound.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 1189, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“Always clung to by barnacles.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2661, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“A fine-looking mill, but no machinery inside.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 1702, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)