(Original sketch of Allegheny Riverfront Park — Courtesy: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates)
Riverlife, the City of Pittsburgh and partner organizations re-dedicated the upper promenade of Allegheny Riverfront Park on April 2, 2026. What follows is a look at the first decades of Allegheny Riverfront Park.
“The park is not only a gift of the river to the people of Pittsburgh, particularly to patrons and residents of the cultural district, but a handsome example for all cities in the challenge of reclaiming more riverbanks in the urban core.” – Carol R. Brown, former President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust in Allegheny Riverfront Park (2005)
There is no Allegheny Riverfront Park without Carol Brown.
In the early 1990s, when Brown was serving as the first President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, nearly every inch of the Downtown’s riverfront on the Allegheny side was reserved for motor vehicle traffic and parking. It would’ve been nobody’s idea of a perfect candidate for Pittsburgh’s newest park – no one, that is, but Carol Brown.
Before the Allegheny Riverfront Park was created, the area adjacent to the 10th Street Bypass was used for parking. (Courtesy: MVVA)
Under Brown’s leadership, the Cultural Trust was already doing its astounding work to transform a Downtown red-light district into a connected grid of theaters, plazas and other cultural venues. The mishmash of car lanes at the river’s edge became part of that planned renaissance.
“The Cultural Trust wanted an exemplary, inventive urban park to help draw people downtown,” said landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, who answered the Trust’s call for qualifications in 1994 to design a new riverfront park. “From the beginning the site’s limitations – which a lot of people would have been throttled by – were taken by us as strange gifts to be reckoned with.”
Michael Van Valkenburgh, Laura Solano, and Matthew Urbanski of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates with Michael Mercil, Ann Hamilton, and Carol Brown, circa 1994 (Courtesy: MVVA)
“Carol Brown had a brilliant urban vision: to build amenities at the end of the cultural district, so that people would come in,” said Laura Solano, partner at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), which the Cultural Trust unanimously selected from an international field to design the park.
When the park’s condition deteriorated beyond simple repair, Riverlife and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust jointly commissioned a study to chart a course for regenerating Allegheny Riverfront Park that would honor Carol and the original team’s legacies. Consultants Heather Sage and Susan Rademacher teamed with Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and Pittsburgh landscape architects LBA to deliver a report, Allegheny Riverfront Park: Building on Legacy, which served as a foundation for partnership and an outline for park improvements. It describes the implementation of Carol’s vision as follows:
“The design concept, by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Ann Hamilton, and Michael Mercil, created parallel linear experiences at the water’s edge and the city’s edge, connected by the scissoring motion of ramps, and made compelling by art that is fully integrated into the fabric of the park. These art elements are subtle expressions – each wholly unique – of the nature and history in this place.
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At the Upper Level, the promenade is buffered from Ft. Duquesne Boulevard by a sliver of topography with plane trees and underplantings. It can’t be overstated how important it was for the original park initiative to claim a portion of Ft. Duquesne Boulevard for green space. This allowed the Upper Level Park to become a shaded promenade of handsome character with stunning views. Interior social space is shaped by a long arc of stone bench seating and punctuated with islands of trees and benches. A striated pavement pattern in bluestone abstracts the structured civic landscape, and London Plane trees relate to the urban forest.”
The study went on to recommend that the park be cumulatively restored and rehabilitated through a series of “baseline” and “transformative” improvements. Baseline improvements would correct the fundamental and necessary issues, while transformative improvements targeted ambitious concepts that would bring new dimensions and value to the park, including options for future expansion. In both cases, the improvements were intended to respect the park’s history and position it to, when eligible, be listed on the national register of historic places, while updating the space for contemporary uses.
Riverlife President and CEO Matt Galluzzo walks with Carol Brown through Allegheny Riverfront Park in spring 2025, prior to the groundbreaking on its rehabilitation.
Riverlife hired original designers Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates along with LBA to redesign the upper promenade based on those recommendations, highlighting the historical elements that made it so remarkable, responding to its evolving context, and adapting aspects of the park to make them more durable while staying true to the original vision.
More than 30 years later, Pittsburghers are gathering at the river’s edge once again to enjoy a newly-rehabilitated Allegheny Riverfront Park, one that builds on the initial vision and provides more resilient elements to maintain the space’s vitality for decades to come.
“Carol Brown’s leadership not only shaped the park you see today, but also sparked a larger movement for riverfront reclamation in our city,” said Matthew Galluzzo, Riverlife President and CEO, “Her commitment to highest quality design, and to creating a welcoming and beautiful space is something we continue to honor and build upon.”
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates went on to become a renowned landscape architectural firm, designing some of the most transformative new waterfront parks of the last quarter-century in North America: Ralph C. Wilson Centennial Park in Detroit, Biidaasige Park in Toronto, Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City and a redesign of Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis.
Carol Brown had the vision. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates had the design. And at Riverlife, we’re honored to have fostered the partnerships and plans in order to bring Allegheny Riverfront Park’s upper promenade into a new era. When looking out over the Allegheny toward the North Shore, or reflecting back on the mighty Downtown skyline, or simply enjoying the shade provided by the park’s London Plane trees, we honor the people who made this great urban respite possible.
