Schenley Plaza wins international award

Schenley Plaza won the Silver Award in the Environmentally Sustainable Project category at the 2009 International Awards for Livable Communities (LivCom Awards) held October 8-12 in the Czech Republic city of Pilsen. Meg Cheever, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy presented the project to a panel of judges and an audience representing 15 [...]

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Schenley Plaza, Three Years Later

On Friday I was lucky enough to take some photos of the WYEP Summer Music Festival from the Cathedral of Learning with an open window, thanks to a very nice WYEP volunteer.  When I got back to the office this week, I thought it’d be fun to compare Friday’s photo with one taken at the [...]

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Calling all amateur DJs!

Wanna be a DJ?
f you have an MP3 player and an hour for lunch, we want you to share your favorite tunes with us at Schenley Plaza!  We’ll be opening the Plaza soon for the 2009 season, and we’re looking for music enthusiasts to create playlists for the lunch hour several days a week.  We’ll [...]

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How Schenley Plaza lights up the night

Those of you passing by Schenley Plaza in the evenings lately may have noticed a few swaths of green glowing from the middle of the lawn.  This “foliage” is the first step in our third Plaza lighting project, and will grow–from leaves, to stem, to blooms–into five 16-foot-tall daffodils over the next few weeks.  The [...]

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Nature by design

This is an article I originally drafted for Sylvan Communities magazine, but I thought I’d share it here as well.
It’s easy to forget when taking a walk through the lush woodlands in our regional parks that these natural wonders are actually designed landscapes.  When Frick, Highland, Riverview, and Schenley Parks were being developed from the [...]

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Madcap recap

So what does it take to turn a park entrance into party central on a chilly weekend in Pittsburgh?
A little creative tenting, some cool lighting, heaters, and 450+ people dressed as everyone from Sarah Palin to Predator to a pink gorilla.  We had our fourth annual Madcap Masquerade last Saturday, and Schenley Plaza certainly rose [...]

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Come as you aren’t…

We’re more excited than ever about Madcap Masquerade this year, because for the first time ever the event is being held in one of our parks!  On October 25, Schenley Plaza will host the zaniest, most colorful, most entertaining party of the year–and surrounding all the psychics, salsa dancing, costumes, and haute couture will be [...]

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Art from above

Two things seem to be dominating life at the Parks Conservancy at the moment: the Body and Soul: Parks and the Health of Great Cities conference (next month!!), and the restoration of the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain.  So following up on Laurie’s excellent post below, I’d like to talk a little more about the fountain [...]

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Mary and Barney

ou know how sometimes you learn something new and then you start reading or hearing about it everywhere?  Well, something like that happened to me recently as I was working on a grant proposal requesting funds to restore the Mary Schenley memorial.  (The memorial is the magnificent fountain and sculpture across the street from the [...]

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Blessed by the Old 97s

This past Friday, Schenley Plaza hosted its biggest event yet: the 11th Annual WYEP Summer Music Festival.  We’d been tossing around the idea of putting on a show with WYEP for a while, and it was fantastic to see it come to fruition with great sets from Good Night, States, Juliana Hatfield, the Watson Twins, [...]

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