A changed vision
Architect tells story of how Three Rivers almost looked like PNC Park
Many believe PNC Park is the best ballpark in America. Whether it’s the splendid view of the Roberto Clemente Bridge and the Pittsburgh skyline, its accessibility, intimate setting or spectacular sightlines, there’s never any shortage of praise heaped on one of the country’s premier places to watch a baseball game.
Too bad it arrived more than three decades late. While Three Rivers Stadium, which opened 50 years ago this month, eventually would look like many of its counterparts of the multipurpose stadium era — RFK Stadium in Washington, Riverfront Stadium in
Cincinnati or Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia — cement circle status was hardly the original goal.
The original design, produced by local architecture firm Deeter Ritchey Sipple, now known simply as DRS, called for an open-end design, the one baseball fans now see — and fawn over — every time they enter PNC Park.
“I think the original design was a superior design to Three Rivers,” said Phil Hundley, who was an architect with the firm for 53 years, retiring in 2019. “There’s no question about it. Because of the open end and architecture, it had a lot of character to it.”
The story of how Three Rivers Stadium nearly looked like PNC Park is fascinating. It’s also something of a generational tale, as
members of the original design team are still around.
Mr. Hundley, it seems, is one of the last remaining links to that original design of Three Rivers, a futuristic structure that actually looks a little bit like Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
“You could see a fantastic design,” Mr. Hundley said from a conference room of DRS’ Gateway Center offices, where one side offers a view of Heinz Field and the other peers directly into PNC Park. “It would’ve been a remarkable stadium, which we know from PNC Park and how great that view is.”
So, what happened?
‘Part of the community’
Mr. Hundley isn’t from Pittsburgh. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1966 and expected to stay near home in Chicago and work for one of several bigdeal architectural firms there.
Then he fell in love with Pittsburgh.
During a job interview with Deeter Ritchey Sipple, Mr. Hundley was flipping through a book that detailed some of the firm’s many architectural accomplishments — Civic Arena and Mellon Square were the two that stuck out — and realized this is where he was meant to be.
“I fell in love with the place, the people and the office,” Mr. Hundley said. “I really thought the Civic Arena was pretty cool. They took me there, the dome opened, and I said, ‘Wow. This firm did that? That’s pretty cool.’ ”
Mr. Hundley’s first day of work was July 5, 1966. The initial design bids for Three Rivers were unsealed the following day. They showed this particular construct of the stadium that would cost too much money, forcing the group literally to go back to the drawing board.
Although he did not work on that initial design, Mr. Hundley was thrust into some Three Rivers duty, as the firm took an all-handson-deck approach to produce a revised design, one that was significantly cheaper.
“We had to put down the pencil and start doing something more practical,” he said. “That’s a tough time to be an architect. Everybody goes through it once or twice in their lifetime, but this was such a major thing.”
It was major, Mr. Hundley stressed, because of what Three Rivers Stadium was supposed to be — the first of many steps in the revitalization of the North Side.
DRS did not choose the 84 acres on which Three Rivers Stadium was eventually built, but all involved — most notably the Pittsburgh Stadium Authority, which would ultimately own the facility — sensed opportunity. Soon, the Stadium Authority hoped, miles of rusted track and twisted piles of scrap would be transformed into a long-term home for the Pirates and Steelers.
“[The original plan] had parking garages,” Mr. Hundley said. “It had retail. It had hotels. It had office buildings. It was just going to be packed on the North Side.
“We’ve realized some of that, but everybody was thinking, ‘How can we develop this area? How do you pull a stadium back into the city?’ It’s all about getting people to it and making it part of the community.”
‘Out of the ballgame’
According to the Stadium Authority’s own history of Three Rivers, in which it referred to the eventual building site as “a grotesque background to the Golden Triangle,” the estimated cost of designing, constructing and financing the stadium was slightly under $28 million in 1964.
Cheap, available land made the acquisition and demolition of property easier, but on Mr. Hundley’s second day of work, when the bids were unsealed, the cheapest was $38 million.
“As we read them in the packed, hushed City Council Chambers and totaled them — $38 million for the prime contracts — we knew we were out of the ballgame,” the Stadium Authority’s history reads. “With related contracts, financing charges and other expenses, we were looking at a $42 million to $45 million stadium. And we had $28 million.”
The discrepancy was the result of several factors, Mr. Hundley explained, the first of which was inflation and how the economy had changed since the process started. A second was an inconsistency in bidding by vendors.
As for the building itself, several things contributed to that higher-than-expected price tag, including a complex system of concrete trusses and beams that varied in size and resulted in extra material and labor costs.
“One of the biggest things was the fact that it wasn’t symmetrical,” Mr. Hundley said. “It was an oblique form.
“They did an analysis and determined that they needed to make it more of a round dome, something circular-shaped that was regular with the same co-lumns all the way around, which meant they had to give up the view of the city. That was hard, but when you’re over budget, you have to get back on budget.”
Getting back on budget pushed the project forward, but it diminished any sort of uniqueness or ingenuity. It made Three Rivers like a lot of the other buildings that were being constructed at the time, and the worst part was that eventual cost overruns brought the stadium’s final building cost to $55 million.
“Buildings do come in over budget,” Mr. Hundley said. “Normally you can fix it up by getting a little more money or finding some way to make it happen. But that wasn’t possible here. We tried and tried and tried.
“We could have had that building if we had a little more guts.”
‘Proud of that’
Mr. Hundley traveled a lot for work and would get excited every time his plane flew over the city, the architect looking out his window and marveling at Three Rivers Stadium and what became of the North Side.
While many have criticized Three Rivers’ sameness, Mr. Hundley is quick to defend it and point out the awards it has won, calling some of the pitch-in work he did among the most fulfilling of his career.
“Three Rivers, I thought, was a good piece of architecture,” said Mr. Hundley, who said he watched the implosion in 2001 — which he called a “wake” — and admitted he probably had a few too many bloody marys as many DRS staffers cried. “It had character in many ways, but it just didn’t have the open space like the other one would have had.”
A Pittsburgh sports fan to this day, Mr. Hundley spent much of the 1970s going to Pirates and Steelers games. Occasionally, he’d be in charge of dispersing the firm’s 14 luxury-box tickets and attended the 1980 Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., marveling at its design.
There, the same as he has done during five-plus decades in the field, Mr. Hundley watched people move about the building, observing how they interacted with the space and listening to any comments they made. It’s the same thing he did on another one of his favorite projects: the design of the Allegheny Campus of Community College of Allegheny County on the North Side, where parking quickly became a problem because the space was used so much.
“The great thing to do is go to a building that you built and sit down,” Mr. Hundley said. “They don’t know who you are. Just watch people react to the building and use the building. You don’t have to say a word.
“Three Rivers Stadium was busy with the Steelers and Pirates, and it was all about the people. That’s what sports are about. That’s why we miss ’em.”
As sports stadiums shifted away from the cookie-cutter models seen throughout the country, the Sports & Exhibition Authority — which would effectively replace the Stadium Authority — saw what DRS originally saw when it came to building orientation. How opening up PNC Park to the city connected it to Downtown. How fans could park Downtown and walk to the ballpark via the Clemente Bridge. How it gave fans a better experience as they peered out and saw the city and water as opposed to more seats, cement or banks of lights.
“In an enclosed circle, you’re just seeing the same thing; it’s continuous,” Mr. Hundley said. “Now when you go to Heinz Field or PNC Park, you can look out and see the river. You can see things in the background. It makes it more exciting. It’s not symmetrical. Symmetry brings boredom in some cases.”
Added Paul Cali, another architect at DRS: “[PNC Park] engages the city. Plus, it probably looks better on TV.”
Three Rivers was hardly boring, Mr. Hundley made sure to clarify. The championship teams that played there made it electric, which is all you can ask for any space. He also thinks the prototype’s seating capacity for baseball — roughly 54,000 — would’ve been tough to maintain.
But for football, Mr. Hundley said he could easily see the original version of Three Rivers Stadium, where 8,000 outfield seats slid into place along the 50-yard line for a football game, standing the test of time.
“If the old stadium had been built, it might still be in use today for the Steelers. It wouldn’t be for the Pirates because it was too big. But it might have been kept because it was such a unique building.”
“However, Three Rivers served its purpose. As I mentioned, the times that were had at Three Rivers, it was just phenomenal. And it was great to be part of the firm that built Three Rivers. I was proud of that.”