History
The site of Schenley Plaza had been a deep gully called St. Pierre's Ravine, which connected to Junction Hollow. The ravine separated the new Carnegie Institute (1895) from the even newer Forbes Field (1909–1970). Linking these two civic institutions was a stone arch bridge: Bellefield Bridge. It carried Bigelow Boulevard toward Schenley Park.
Sentiment arose that Bellefield Bridge was not a sufficiently impressive park entrance. Also in 1911 a place was being sought for a monument to Mary Schenley, patroness of the park. The idea grew that a great public square, both for the memorial and the park entrance, was needed.
A national competition elicited 45 proposals for the site, and in June 1915, judges selected the plan of Horace Wells Sellers and H. Bartol Register, both of Philadelphia.
Between 1913 and 1914 St. Pierre's Ravine was filled in. The fill has been popularly said to be earth removed from Downtown's infamous "Hump" on Grant Street, but the supporting historical information for this story is disputed. The Bellefield Bridge remains buried here and supports some of the weight of the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain on the plaza.
In 1949 Schenley Plaza was converted into a parking lot to accommodate both university students and fans at Forbes Field, then home to the Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers, which stood on the west side of the plaza.
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“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)