Mary E. Schenley Memorial Fountain/Song To Nature

The Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain

In late 1914, architects were invited to submit proposals for the Schenley Memorial. It took another four years of review and approvals by City departments and arts commissions, but the memorial fountain was finally dedicated on September 2nd, 1918 as the Pirates played the second game of a Labor Day doubleheader with the Cubs in nearby Forbes Field.

Brenner's clay model - 1916

Sculpted by Victor David Brenner (who designed the Lincoln penny), with the granite base designed by architect H. Van Magonigle (who was an assistant to Stanford White, the architect shot by Harry Thaw), the statue was entitled “A Song to Nature.”

The statue is a cross between Art Nouveau and Art Deco, and represents the sleeping Earth god Pan being awakened by Harmony, who plays a lyre for him.The architect dealt with the problem of unstable landfill used to level St. Pierre Ravine by using the buried Bellefield Bridge as the foundation for the Memorial.  After getting a little long in the tooth, the memorial was restored in 1988, then again in 2008 by the City and the Parks Conservancy at a cost of $500,000.

Laurie Anderson of the Parks Conservancy noted in a blog post that the memorial wasn’t altogether an altruistic enterprise. Pirate owner Barney Dreyfuss wanted to extend Forbes Field a bit into Schenley Park, although that violated the 1891 deed forbidding that the donated land be used for anything but a park.

Dreyfuss persevered and finally got his way when City Council voted on a back room work-around to allow the Pirates to lease rather than buy a half acre of park land for $1,000 per year for 20 years. At the same council meeting, an ordinance was also passed to erect a memorial to Mary Schenley, partly to honor her and partly as a peace offering to those who were against giving park land to the Pirates.

For many years, the sculpture was a stand alone attraction across from the Carnegie Library in an area known as Memorial Circle, complete with benches and a circular walkway. When the Schenley Plaza was converted to a parking lot, its grounds gave way to parking meters and that's how it ended up in its somewhat out of the way spot by the Fine Arts Building

Turtle spit detail

A little added local lore: it’s known as the “Turtle Spit” to those who were raised in Oakland, for obvious reasons. And in keeping with its roots as a ballyard compromise, a baseball splashing down in its waters was the mark of an epic homer from the Oakland little leaguers who played at Plaza Field (now Mazeroski Field), between Forbes Field and the fountain.

(Photo credits: fountain by day - Jacqueline Marino; clay model - Pgh City Photographers Collection; turtle spit - Pgh Murals; fountain at night - Rich Tenney)

The fountain at night.

The Hollow Trail - Part 1: The Hiking Path

Panther Hollow Lake is an unpolished gem, the largest of three lakes (Lake Elizabeth, Lake Carnegie) we know of in the City. But equally impressive are Panther Hollow and Phipps Runs, the only "daylighted" (above ground) streams left in the 'Burgh aside from Frick Park's Nine Mile Run.

They're jewels in their own way. Both tumble down steep channels, cascading over stony beds between the trees until they meet in Hollow to feed PHL, a hiker and nature lover's dream splashing smack dab through the heart of the City.

If you enjoy a tranquil stroll through the woods beside a splashing stream, the Panther Hollow Run Trail is for you. The Run is fed from above Bartlett Street - you can see its headwaters as you cross the top Tufa Bridge - and several smaller streams that come down the Schenley Drive Ravine. It's a little rough, wet and narrow in spots, but it provides the best nature hike in the Park.

You get on from the Bartlett Street trail entrance. Hang a right on the main trail, cross the Tufa Bridge, and make a left a few yards later across from the Faloon Trail entrance, at a rock handily painted with an arrow. You'll cross another stone bridge, and there the trail begins to your right.

This section is a half mile or so long from that bridge to its crossover. It starts off flat and wide, but at points, the path twists with small but sharp rises and pinch points that only one person at a time can get by. As we say in da 'Burgh, some spots are slippy. But you'll have a sun-dappled creek crossed with fallen logs and stone beds running along side of you, a slice of nature seemingly out of place in the middle of the City.

The topper is that there are several magnificent stone bridges built by the WPA in 1939, zig-zagging across the stream, replacements for Edward Bigelow's 1908-09 wooden spans. You'll note a couple of more bridges above you on the main trail, and a number of aqueducts pouring ravine-fed streams into the Run on its way to PHL.

Though you're braced by the Upper and Lower Panther Hollow trails, both well-used park lanes, you'll be in a world of your own, surrounded by greenery and crevasse walls. While the isolation is an inspirational boon to the soul, the path is also well traveled by parents taking their children on a stroll, young couples and folk walking their pooches.

Finally, your reverie ends as you approach a set of steps that leads you to the trail crossover. Bear to the left from those steps across another small stone bridge, and you'll be on a wide path that's a straight shot to the lake.

That's the end of the road for the hiker's trek of the Hollow Trail, and now you're just a couple hundred yards away from the ultimate destination, Panther Hollow Lake. We'll lead you down that road in another post.

(photo credits: Rich Tenney & Ron Ieraci, FOPHL)