PHL HISTORY

Panther Hollow Lake started out as a small natural water feature, probably no more than an over-sized pond.  It’s been speculated that it may have been first formed behind a beaver dam near where the Phipps Run and Panther Hollow Run met on their way to Four Mile Run.

The lake in its natural state was likely an attraction of the old Linden Grove picnic grounds, which per an 1872 Darlington map was located nearby where Boundary and Neville Streets intersect. We do know the lake was an early landmark, as JM Kelley in his 1885 Handbook of Greater Pittsburg mentioned “Panther Hollow, where there is a pretty little lake and picnic grounds...”

Some early postcards show a small shelter; whether for picnicking or boat rentals, we’re not sure. It even boasted of a couple of small islets. The sylvan area was secluded yet easy to reach by trolley or foot (Boundary Street was open then). There were boats, picnic benches, walking paths, bridle trails and stables galore, so it was an early entertainment destination for Oakland and the East End.

Panther Hollow Lake postcard from the turn of the century

The small lake escaped local cartographer’s notice until 1904 when its outline popped up on a Hopkins’ map.  According to Pitt’s Krissy Hopkins in the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy blog, that’s also about the time the lake lost its “daylighted,” or above ground, outlet to Four Mile Run when piping connecting the yet undeveloped lake to the sewer system was built.

Public Works Director Edward Bigelow had big plans to develop Mrs. Schenley’s Mt. Airy donation even before the turn of the 20th century. According to the 1899 Annual Report of the Department of Public Works of the City of Pittsburgh: “... it is contemplated to cover the bottoms of the ravines about the main entrance of Schenley Park with a chain of ornamental lakes, stretching from a point somewhat below the mouth of Panther Hollow up both branch ravines to Forbes Street, both at the site of the Carnegie Library Building and at the bridge beyond over Junction Hollow. This will give connected bodies of water about three-quarters of a mile long, and besides adding greatly to the sightliness of that section of the Park will give opportunities for boating in the summer and skating in the winter.”

Even though the City couldn’t quite pull off an island chain, it was armed with a bond issue that provided park construction funds and a workforce culled from men desperate for jobs during the depression that followed the Panic of 1907. Between 1907-09, the City, under Public Works Director George Burke, built a 2-½ acre lake, formed by  damming Four Mile Run. Two tufa bridges over the freshly minted Panther Hollow Trail (then a wide, grassy lane rather than a crunchy trail) provided the finishing touches, and the boathouse with a deck overlooking the lake went up shortly afterward in 1911.

Panther Hollow Lake - photo by KitAy from Flickr

Early on, it went by a handful of names - Lake Schenley, Lake Bigelow and Lake Carnegie (which later was claimed by Highland Park) until it became Panther Hollow Lake. No matter what name it went by, the Lake did add greatly to the “sightliness” of the park and provided decades of boating, fishing, skating and picnicking opportunities along with memories for generations of locals.

Then, as now, it had an access problem. The Citizens’ Committee on the City Plan of Pittsburgh suggested in 1923 that “...the City consider an exchange of location between the Junction RR (which had track laid in Junction Hollow since the 1880s) and Boundary Street so that the street may be between the RR and the park...This would make it possible...to have access without crossing the RR at grade. If the change is not made, an underground or overhead crossing may be required so that pedestrians can reach Schenley Lake without hazard.” Folks were more accustomed to strolling in those days, so it never became a major deal-breaker, but the issue lingers on today.

We assume the City didn't want to cut off Boundary Street, limiting its development potential, and that the RR saw no reason to reroute the tracks at their expense. Folks were more accustomed to stretching their legs in earlier times, so it never became a major deal-breaker, though the "wrong side of the tracks" issue lingers on to this day.

The watershed area received a big boost during the Great Depression when Parks Director Ralph Griswald was successful in drawing FDR’s Works Progress Administration projects to improve the overall City park system, including Schenley Park. The WPA workers built stone bridges (which still bear the chiseled “WPA 1939” brand), created and/or improved roads and trails, cleared the deadwood and streambeds, planted new trees,  and even renovated the lake boathouse. They built the stone step system that accesses the lake.

The WPA works remain - photo by Melissa McMasters of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

The project would be the last major renovation of Panther Hollow Run until the late fifties when Mayor Dave Lawrence had it overhauled. The $125,000 project included draining and dredging the lake to both deepen and help clean out contaminated soil, then adding concrete steps around the lake shoreline to prevent erosion. The renovation was completed in 1958.

1957 dredging authorized by Mayor Lawrence photo by Joe Natoli via the Pgh Parks Conservancy

The boathouse wasn’t part of the renewal project; it appears that the major alteration to it was the removal of the outside deck (though that may have been done prior to this project). It deteriorated until it had to be torn down in 1979.

The urbanization of the rural East End took a huge toll on the watershed. Krissy Hopkins in the PPC blog noted that... “To make room for development, the streams through Squirrel Hill were piped into the sewer system and diverted out of the watershed through a sewer main along Greenfield Avenue. As a result, the streams in the eastern half of the watershed no longer feed the Schenley Park streams. The watershed was cut in two.” Of the watershed’s original 384 acres, only 177 drain into the lake now. The remaining upper watershed carries into the Greenfield Avenue/Four Mile Run combined sewer mains per the Watershed Restoration Plan.

Hopkins reported in 2014 that “The system channeled raw sewage, street runoff, and stream water directly into the Monongahela River until 1959. That year, the city installed sewer mains along the river to collect sewage to be sent to the new treatment plan along the Ohio River. However, when it rains the pipes are too small to hold all the water, causing excess water and sewage to flow into the rivers to this day. And it not only caused problems for the Mon.

It was a double whammy for the lake. The runoff that wasn’t diverted into the basins and culverts cascaded over paved surfaces, causing erosive flash flood events that carried silt into the lake while the feeder system lost half of the Panther Hollow watershed’s usual discharge. Water flow to the lake became feast-or-famine.

Panther Hollow Lake today (photo by Ron Ieraci)

In the seventies and eighties, you could still fish there, with bluegill, bass and carp all present in the lake (regularly stocked by the City; Oakland’s Steve Khoury even held urban fishing classes in the early eighties), although the arsenic and lead levels were high. 

People say there were yet bass and carp there in recent times, and one gent we met recently at the lake with a fishing pole in hand swore that there was a huge catfish under the waves. People to this day troll its muddy waters hoping to land that momma of all catfish, even though to our knowledge it hasn't been stocked with fish since the mid-nineties, save an occasional bucket of fish tossed into the waters by frustrated PHL anglers.

In 1983, it was cleaned of pollutants and stocked with fish. The lake was dredged and stocked in 1993 (the last time the City stocked the lake, so far as we can tell) and cleaned it out again in 2001, so it seems a ten-year cycle for maintenance is SOP.

Schenley Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and recognized historic by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in 1989. The lake is a big part of that century-old history.

(Click on the PHL - PPC Era tab to find out what's going on with Panther Hollow Lake now.)