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.