Schenley Park

Schenley Park opened in 1889 and was created from land gifted by Mary Schenley, who inherited the land from her father. Mary Schenley donated the land for the park under the conditions that it bear her name and never be sold for other use. Thus, Schenley Park was born and has been a staple of Pittsburgh’s green spaces ever since. The park’s 456 acres can be accessed from entrances in Oakland, Greenfield, and Squirrel Hill. The address listed above is for the Schenley Park Café and Visitor Center, which is typically reached by crossing over Schenley Bridge, which features hundreds of locks placed on it by couples and friends, and continuing past Flagstaff Hill and Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens.

Schenley Park provides picturesque hiking, biking, and walking trails, along with various other attractions. The park includes the Bob O’Connor Golf Course and the Schenley Oval Sportsplex, which is open for ice skating in the winter and swimming in the summer. Scheduled events are often planned, such as Cinema in the Park that is held on Flagstaff Hill in the summer, the Vintage Grand Prix, and the Pittsburgh Race for the Cure. The park offers a green escape for city dwellers, especially for the many students who live in the area. As one of the largest parks in Pittsburgh, Schenley Park is one of the public places that helped change the city's image from industrial to environmental, and it literally cleaned the air from the smog created by the Steel Mills. Back in Pittsburgh's industrial heyday, Schenley Park was the place that people went to escape the city's excessive smog. Panther Hollow Lake was a popular spot for park attendants to do activities that they couldn't get anywhere else in the city such as swimming or using the boathouse that used to sit next to the lake for boating in the summer and then going ice skating on the lake in the winter. Today, the old boathouse is no longer in use and Panther Hollow Lake serves as a more picturesque location in Schenley Park.

The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy aided in the rehabilitation of the Phipps Run stream channel in 2005. The stream reaches down to Panther Hollow Lake, which the Parks Conservancy is continually working to restore the quality of water in, so that it can be used for recreational use. The Parks Conservancy is happy to have volunteers to help keep the parks clean for visitors and free of invasive species that can harmful for the present plant life. Volunteers are an important part of the upkeep of Pittsburgh’s parks, and it can be rewarding for community members to become a contributing visitor by volunteering in their neighborhood park. In the 2019 local election, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Tax Referendum was passed which raised property taxes and granted the Conservancy more money and power within Pittsburgh's public parks. We'll have to see how this impacts Pittsburgh parks like Schenley!