I-579 park project would end Lower Hill’s Downtown isolation

pathways, musical features and water features to contain storm runoff.

The design has been imagined, sketched and played with in a series of workshops that once again called on Hill District residents to offer their vision and memories. They were at the table years ago to help envision Walter Hood’s Curtain Call walkway alongside PPG Paints Arena. They contributed ideas, historic photos and hours of enthusiasm and pride in a project that still has not been funded.

“I’m not going to give up hope on that,” said Renee Piechocki, director of the Office of Public Art at the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council. “People are still looking for funding for that. But this project is funded, and artists and landscape architects worked within a constrained [Pennsylvania Department of Transportation] framework to make something great.

“That has been the joy of this project, with members of the community and artists,” she said. “It has been a beautiful process.”

The the Pittsburgh-Allegheny County Sports & Exhibition Authority has worked with LaQuatra Bonci Architects and the Office of Public Art on a design that includes works by Hill District artists Kimberly Ellis and Amir Rashidd.

Stainless steel totems will be internally lit, with patterns of beads and braids running through them and horizontal shelves the height of a cafe table.

History walls will feature Martin Delany, a 19th-century author, newspaper editor, physician and abolitionist, and Frankie Pace, a 20th-century activist against the destruction of urban renewal. A 21st-century dancing sprite named “Keisha” was created asan animated character witha voice and flying braids, atour guide who will educate visitors about the park’s features on another wall.

Ms. Ellis and Mr. Rashidd will give Pittsburgh a highly visible display of art inspired by African-American culture, of which the city now has so little.

The African-American influence in the swirl of ethnic cultures that made the Hill a true melting pot also made it perhaps the city’s most richly storied neighborhood. It would have been sweet to see a little evidence in the design of the Jews, Syrians, Italians and other immigrants who gave the Hill such a compelling context for so long, but regardless, the design is beautiful.

For the Downtown side of the park to match the elevation of the Lower Hill, a swale behind the DoubleTree Hotel has to be filled in. That brings us to the 28 Virgil Cantini mosaic panels on both sides of a pedestrian tunnel behind the hotel. In order not to be buried under the park, they have to be removed.

Doug Straley, project executive for the Sports & Exhibition Authority, said the SEA is committed to removing the panels, but he said there would only be room for three in the park.

Such abridgment of the artist’s intent would be jarring. In Mr. Cantini’s vision statements, it was clear the panels, while separate, were meant as one work, like movements that make up a symphony.

If they all can be removed intact, it would be better if they all stayed together for installation elsewhere.

Since Mr. Cantini’s commission was specific to its setting, a tunnel, it’s no stretch to suggest that such a location probably already exists to accommodate the artwork.

The application for the federal funds contains aerial images of the area before the CivicArena, juxtaposed to the location of the proposed park. Visit http://www.i-579captiger.