

North Park vs. South Park
10/13/2010 | 57m 59sVideo has Closed Captions
They are Allegheny County's two largest and oldest county parks. Which is better?
They are Allegheny County's two largest and oldest county parks. Both opened on June 18, 1927, and both are full of good surprises. Which is better?
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The Rick Sebak Collection is a local public television program presented by WQED

North Park vs. South Park
10/13/2010 | 57m 59sVideo has Closed Captions
They are Allegheny County's two largest and oldest county parks. Both opened on June 18, 1927, and both are full of good surprises. Which is better?
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(peppy music) - [Announcer] This program is part of WQED's Pittsburgh History Series.
(lawn mower rumbling) - [Rick] This program begins with a text.
In the summer of 2010, one of our WQED cameramen, Frank Caloiero, who lives in the North Hills in Ross Township, not far from North Park, sent me a text.
(text chimes) North Park has 1,000 acres more than that small South Park.
(chuckles) "Oh, here we go," I thought, 'cause I grew up and have lived in the South Hills in Bethel Park, not far from the main entrance to South Park.
I texted back.
(text chimes) Do you have Buffalo in North Park?
See, Allegheny County has nine parks in the Pittsburgh area, but North Park and South Park are the two oldest and biggest ones.
Now Frank is right, North Park is bigger with its 3,075 acres.
(peaceful music) South Park has only 2,013 acres, but I say bigger isn't always better.
And South Park does have a small herd of American buffalo, bison, big American beasts that have been frolicking in the park since its earliest days in the late 1920s.
Then Frank sends another text.
(text chimes) Admit it, you're jealous because we have a lake.
Well, at that point in 2010, the North Park lake was dry.
They drained it to try and scoop out some of the accumulated silt and sediment that had almost filled the lake.
So I text back.
(text chimes) Do you have a lake or a mud hole?
And the war was on.
Two adults from polar opposite sides of the city squabbling over the relative benefits of the two biggest county parks.
"This sounds like a TV show," I thought.
And here we are.
This is a special edition of "It's Pittsburgh and a Lot of Other Stuff."
And we're calling this North Park versus South Park, a history in celebration of two big parks near Pittsburgh, a sort of ongoing Allegheny County civil war.
And we found out lots about both parks that we never knew before.
And now we both know which park is nearest and dearest to our hearts.
- [Man] Ya all right?
(light music) - [Announcer] "It's Pittsburgh and a Lot of Other Stuff" is made possible by the Buhl Foundation, serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927.
(lively music) - [Rick] All right, back in the late 1920s, there were buffalo in both parks, but now, they're just in South Park.
And if you wanna see them, you've gotta find the part of the park designated as the game preserve.
If you get there early enough, you may see Greg Hecker on his golf cart.
He brings breakfast to the buffalo.
- [Greg] They know the sound of this cart like a cat would of an electric can opener.
We're gonna get these big guys fed.
(chuckles) - Greg has been working for the county since 1984 and started taking care of the buffalo back in '97.
- I have, there's three newborn calves that were born in May in here.
I'm gonna turn this around.
We have 16 bison here, 13 adults, three newborn calves that were born in the spring.
For this amount of acreage, this is what you, you don't want any more than this.
Like any species of animal, it's survival of the fittest.
The big get the eat first.
Okay, fellas.
We're gonna settle a couple 'em down right away with a little bit of corn.
Whoops, watch little one.
They were quite patient this morning.
Okay, buddy.
Here we go.
There you go.
Go ahead.
Once the big guys get their fill, I make sure there's enough left so that the secondary ones can get some.
And obviously the little three calves, they're the last to eat.
There.
I try to basically routinely get them fed at 6:15 every morning.
See?
And you want to keep them in a routine.
And of course, with it being this hot out, you want to feed them early before the blazing sun really starts.
'Cause they're gonna basically, probably in another hour or less, head for that tree line up there.
(toddler babbling) - Do you see?
Bye buffalo.
- [Rick] The buffalo do spend a lot of time up by the trees, And sometimes when you come, you can barely see them.
Clarence Hopson, who's deputy director of Allegheny County Parks, knows these big guys too.
- Sometimes they're hard to find.
Because they are buffalo, we need to give them a large area to roam.
And sometimes they'll go over the hill, and you can't see them quite as good, but we have to have an area big enough for them to be free and roam around.
- Probably the biggest adult here is 1,800 pounds.
He may be close to a full ton.
Getting him to cooperate and put him on a scale would be a little bit difficult.
(laughs) - [Clarence] And we enjoy having the buffalo here.
It's a big attraction for us.
- [Rick] And the Buffalo are just one species that find a home here in the game preserve.
There are all sorts of critters around.
- A large variety of birds.
And you can see the migrant birds if you walk by the pond here, how many ducks, how many geese.
This is a truly functioning game preserve.
We have a large variety.
We even have peacocks here.
- We got the wild turkeys, the Canadian-American geese, which they basically don't know where Canada is.
- [Rick] But there's no question the buffalo have always been the headliners here.
- I've been told that they brought them in in 1927.
(cheerful music) - [Rick] The county did truck in 36 buffalo in 1927 when the parks were brand new.
Each animal cost $150.
Some of the buffalo today are thought to be descendants of that original herd.
- And Native Americans were here from the beginning.
They actually took care of the buffalo.
And then they left, and now we have people ourself that actually take care of the buffalo.
- They're pretty docile animals as far as, as long as you don't make any threatening approach to them.
If they don't feel threatened, they'll basically leave you alone.
But I can imagine what they would've been like in a herd of 50,000, back in the days when they roamed the plains.
'Cause whenever they do start running, the 16 of them together, it's quite intimidating, to say the least.
And they can run up to 35, almost 40 mile an hour and turn on a dime just like that.
Easy.
See, I actually worry about the little calves.
They could inadvertently get thrown around.
- In the mid-90s, for the 4th of July, we had fireworks here in the park.
On this particular 4th of July, the buffalo got spooked.
- I wasn't up here at the time, but the grand finale, the trajectory of the fireworks went off over, obviously, their pen, and yeah, they broke out at the far end.
- They broke through the fence, and they were actually running down Corrigan Drive.
Since then, we put in double fencing, and we haven't had fireworks in the park since.
The signature of this park are the buffalo.
- [Greg] They're synonymous with South Park.
- [Clarence] There's a shopping center that's about a mile down the road, and right on the shopping center, there's a large buffalo.
This area has an affinity toward buffalo.
I don't think the buffalo will ever leave this park.
- [Greg] Without them, South Park would just be another park.
- [Rick] Well, nobody wants just another park, so we went to North Park one day and met Andy Beckley, the guy who's been director of Allegheny County Parks since 2003.
He's in charge of all nine county parks.
So he didn't wanna say which one was his favorite.
- I like all the parks.
People are pretty parochial.
I am.
I actually get a kick outta you guys going back and forth about North and South.
I'm not gonna pick a favorite, but North Park's got the biggest lake in the county.
It's got the trail that goes around it that I can't tell you how many.
We do 80 special events a year probably, with just runs and walks around that.
We do more special events in North Park than all other eight parks added together.
- [Rick] Oh, no favorite, but North Park Lake, pretty great.
- I've always liked parks.
I came from a large family of seven.
So when nine of us went on vacation, camping was our vacation.
So I think I grew up in the parks, just loving 'em.
And I've always loved nature.
My first degree was to be a naturalist.
My confirmation name is St. Francis.
- [Rick] We also met Gary Rigdon in North Park.
He's the chairman of the group known as the Friends of North Park.
He's known this park all his life.
- I grew up right nearby.
(laughing) I grew up on Park View Drive, literally with a wonderful view of North Park.
A view from the south, and now I live on the north part of North Park, and I kind of have a nice view.
My best memories are of canoeing on the lake.
I was a really lucky guy.
My dad bought us a canoe, and we actually were able to store it at the boathouse.
And we could ride our bikes from our house down to the boathouse, actually put our bikes inside the boathouse, where our canoe was, 'cause that was our spot.
And then take the canoe out and paddle around all day.
And when we were done, go back to the boathouse, put the canoe away, get on our bikes, ride home.
- [Rick] We talked to Gary in 2010, beside little Lake Marshall, but he really wanted to be beside the big North Park Lake, but it was being drained and dredged.
- North Park Lake is a manmade lake, so it has naturally filled up with sediment.
The situation's gotten particularly bad because of all the development, the urban sprawl and all that that's going on in the North Hills.
So the lake got to a point where the average depth was probably four feet or something.
Whereas the deepest part of lake back when it was built was 24 feet, 22 feet, or something like that.
- [Rick] The North Park Lake was constructed in 1936.
At the same time that the very British-looking boathouse was being built.
(lively music) Engineers figured out how to dam and control Pine Creek, creating a 75-acre lake.
By 2009, the lake had shrunk to about 62 acres, most of it very shallow.
- [Gary] So the water quality really suffered.
It became very warm.
It became very stagnant and just full of muck.
The project started in September, October, 2009.
It's being done by the county and the Army Corps of Engineers.
And they are just about ramped up into sort of full production mode right now.
And if everything goes according to plan, they'll be done in May of 2011.
- [Rick] Well, it worked.
The lake is back, and everybody hopes it stays clean and cool and deep for many years to come because people who love North Park love this lake.
Lots of people want to get on the water.
At the boathouse, you can sign up and rent a lakeworthy vessel.
Claire Ward may be there to help you.
- So what kind of boats are you guys taking out?
I work for a company called Venture Outdoors.
This is actually Kayak Pittsburgh where we're at right now.
We get people onto North Park Lake in kayaks, in rowboats, in canoes, in paddle boats.
Anyone can do it.
Whether, as long as you are 35 pounds or more, you can fit into one of our life jackets.
The boat rental varies.
For a single-person kayak, it's $15 for the first hour.
And then we charge by the half an hour after that.
Canoes are $20.
Rowboats are $20.
Tandem kayaks are $20.
If you've never done it before, you come, we put you in a life jacket.
We size you up.
We make sure you're in a small life jacket if you need a small, not a triple extra large.
We give you a real basic paddle talk.
How to hold your paddle, how you want the paddle to look, what you want it to feel like when you're in the boat.
And yeah, then we walk you down, get you sized up in a boat.
There's little pegs that you can mess around with to keep your legs comfortable in the boat, and then we just slide you right on in.
It's a pretty, super, super easy process.
- [Rick] It's easy to imagine that when this lake is restocked, it will be a favorite of local fishermen too.
- [Man] There have been a lot of fish caught here over the years, and we have been collecting photos of big fish, little fish, kids catching fish, old men catching fish.
- [Rick] And if you want to catch fish around here, you may wanna stop in this little place Dwight Yingling and his family have owned and run since the late 1940s.
It's right outside North Park.
- I call it North Park Sports Shop because there's too many different things I could name it.
It's a bait shop, which people call it.
It's a bike shop because we repair bicycles.
It's a bicycle rental.
And we also have the big ice house.
We have a lot of different kinds of worms.
Our most unusual worm is the green night crawler.
It's from Canada, but Americans kind of like to buy made in America things.
So they put on their packed and distributed by Americans, (laughs) but they're Canadian.
And they are green.
And they glow in the water, and they glow green.
They do.
They bleed green too.
And these tanks are.
We try to keep 'em full all the time with fresh bait.
They sell a lot of the bait to go to other lakes too.
So guys going to the river, guys going up north to Erie or what other lakes, they might want to take bigger baits.
- Do you know what?
This is better than going on vacation.
It really is.
I would just like to come here, rent a bike, rather than go on vacation.
I have a blast when I come here.
I give him five bucks, I have the time of my life for an hour, and I go back home, go back to work, and everything's fine.
Didn't have to pack, didn't have to fly, didn't have to do anything.
Just had a great time here in North Park.
- And got exercise too.
- And got exercise, yeah.
And good service.
I know the bikes work well 'cause he fixes them.
- There you go.
I have people walk in, and they look at me and they take another look, and they just say, "You're still here?"
(laughs) I'm like, "Well, what do y'all want a Walmart?"
I mean, come on.
- [Rick] Over the years, the Yingling family has just learned what people want at North Park Lake, whether it's full or drained.
- They'll be redoing the bike trail and the walking trail around the lake and redoing the shoreline and picnic groves are being redone.
It's nice that the county's cleaning up the park and not letting it just go to pot because it's a beautiful park.
It's the biggest park in Allegheny County, and it kicks butt compared to that South Park (laughing) with no lake.
- By their nature, all parks are different.
Some of 'em, they all have playgrounds and shelters, other than Heartwood.
But other than that, there's lots of different features.
North and South have a lot of old stone structures.
- Sometimes you come across them in the middle of the woods, an old structure or something.
And you can just, you feel like you've discovered it.
- [Rick] There are rustic stone structures in both parks that may seem as though they have been there forever, but both North and South Parks are actually planned landscapes that were designed on what was farmland in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
There are old farm buildings in both parks, but the most historically important building is undoubtedly the old Miller family house in South Park.
- This is the Oliver Miller Homestead, and we are the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates.
- [Rick] The Millers were the first family to settle in this area, just up from the stream, known as Catfish Run.
On Sundays, you will find reenacters and historians here like Mary Pat Swagger.
- [Mary Pat] Well, the house is actually a beautiful stone house made from locally quarried sandstone.
But it's a house that replaced the Miller's first home that was built in 1772.
When they formed South Park, and they took over all the homes that were in this area, they really didn't know what to do with this house because the Miller family had such ties with the Whiskey Rebellion.
They knew that the house deserved to be on the National Historic Record, even if it wasn't built when the Whiskey Rebellion was built.
- [Rick] The Oliver Miller Associates also sometimes stage scenes to help people understand more about what happened around here in 1794.
The first angry shots of the Whiskey Rebellion rang out here on the Miller property when federal agents came to collect a tax on stills used to make rye whiskey.
- [Re-enactor] William Miller!
William Miller, present yourself.
- You go home!
- Damn your tax.
(guns firing) - We're not really sure how many shots were fired, but we figure everyone with a gun was firing.
Although they say that those people were the kinds of shots that could have taken an eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards if they'd wanted to, so they were probably just firing to scare them off the property.
- [Rick] The stone house and the old spring house here are original.
But to help illustrate Western Pennsylvania farm life in the 18th century, the Associates have built a number of other buildings, including a log house, a forge, and a shed.
- And then farther down our newest addition is the barn.
That something that we didn't think we needed at first, and we ended up coming to love our barn because it has our meeting room and our library and it.
And it has the original Miller still in our little shop that we call the Trading Post.
- These are the dolls, and they're made with the period-correct costumes, all hand stitched.
And it comes with little tag that tells you about the history of the doll and how correct its clothes are.
They're $7, and you can buy them.
And we also have nice coloring books, too.
- Here's that picture I was telling you about.
It was taken from across the road over there on the other side of the creek, Catfish Creek.
- This way.
- [Man] Shooting towards the east.
This is the house.
This is the barn.
And several of the other buildings.
You can still see the spring house if you look just right.
- [Rick] See how clear it is, no trees.
- [Man] No trees.
- [Mary Pat] I know where a couple of trees are in the park that might have been here when Oliver was here.
But most of them are trees that either were planted or sprouted up on their own later.
- I know when we bought South Park, for instance, it was very few trees.
Most of the trees in South Park were planted by us.
It was a lot of farm fields, and they bought it for Catfish Run, the Creek to go through it.
I'm gonna tell you, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County was ahead of their times.
They were building parks when they really weren't popular or the trend.
- [Rick] The county officially dedicated both parks on one rainy afternoon, June 18th, 1927.
County Commissioner E.V.
Babcock, generally acknowledged as the father of the county parks, was cheered at both locations.
One day, we went out to South Park to meet Ron Block from Iowa.
He moved to Pittsburgh to work with U.S. Airways, but he's also a landscape designer, historian, and consultant.
He did his master's thesis at Chatham on South Park.
He knows about the early development of these parks.
- [Ron] It was kind of a growing movement at the time.
People were just starting to get cars, and they wanted to get out into the countryside and picnic and camp.
And Allegheny County didn't have anything like that.
So they wanted to keep up and be progressive with all the other cities and towns around.
And they wanted to have this sort of land for the recreation of the people.
They called them the people's country clubs, to give the average working person a place to get out of the city and to get out into the fresh air and enjoy the wilderness.
- [Rick] We met Ron on a little hill, just beside the Miller Homestead, where, among the grass and weeds, you can see stone remnants of something.
- It was a wading pool for children.
Some people call it the cascades, or it was called Stone Manse, but all this rock was quarried here in the park.
And then they dragged it all here, and they stacked it up to make it look like natural stonework.
- [Rick] All of this was part of the original design of South Park back in the late 1920s and early '30s.
- One of these big ones weigh as much as five tons.
But this was all part of the Prairie style of landscape design.
And they were celebrating America and American design.
Before that point, parks, a lot of times, were designed on the European model, very formal and very sort of Parisian if you would, or that formal kind of architecture.
And they wanted to celebrate the American model.
And so they looked at things like the Miller Homestead, that early American vernacular architecture.
And they used that as a model for the shelters.
They looked at natural outcroppings of stone, and they said, "Well, we can replicate that and celebrate that and make a nice waterfall here."
Paul B. Riis was the parks director, and he came outta Rockford, Illinois.
So he brought those ideas to Pittsburgh with him.
But Babcock wanted the best person he could find for the job.
And at the time, Paul B. Riis was one of the top park directors and park designers in the country.
So Babcock really courted him to bring him here.
And so all the shelters and waterworks and things like that were built sort of in that naturalistic style, which was very prominent.
- From my studies, it was, Oliver Miller had a pigsty back there, and they took the spring from the pigsty and made it in this beautiful work of art.
That, again, was 100 percent manmade but looked natural, looked 100 percent.
You couldn't tell that the rocks were cemented together.
They used all-natural rock that was quarried in the park.
- One other thing that was bothering me is the park seemed sort of schizophrenic to me.
There's parts that are very naturalistic and very park-like, and then there's things like Corrigan Drive, with the big monumental circle there and the monuments.
And I was trying to understand how that happened in the park.
So that sort of spurred my research further in digging deeper into the history of the park.
- [Rick] There turned out to be a lot of politics involved.
And a major change in commissioners in 1931, led to the premature ouster of Paul B. Riis as director and designer of the parks.
- So he did all of this work in a very short period of time, '28, '29, '30, '31, and then '32, he was out.
Mid-'32, I think, August, but he built the golf courses.
He built the swimming pool.
He built the golf course North and South Park.
All the wading pools here, the stone shelters that you see, a lot of the wooden shelters, the roads.
They planted over 200,000 trees in this park alone.
Riis's original plan for this park had an 18-acre lake right down in the center of the park here now where Kilmer Circle is.
So if you can imagine sitting here where we are and looking down and just seeing water all the way through that valley, it'd be a very different park here.
So I think South Park got cheated somewhat by the loss of Riis at the time.
(cheerful music) - [Rick] Both parks lost some of their all-American naturalism when Allegheny County Commissioner Charles Buck McGovern decided it was time for Riis to go.
McGovern had his own ideas about these parks.
- He decided he wanted to have a county fair.
And that was in 1933.
He announced, "We should have a county fair.
We haven't had one in years, and now we have these parks and we have a place to have one."
But what happened was, at the time, this was an old road called Catfish Run.
And it was an old red dog road, typical of the time.
So with the fair here, and thousands of thousands of people coming, (lively music) there was a constant traffic jam throughout the whole time of the county fair.
Some people were in traffic jams six, seven hours, never even made it to the fair.
So McGovern said, "That's ridiculous.
We gotta have a better road here."
So in 1934, they built this big superhighway through the middle of the park.
And then he wanted a war monument, war memorial in the park, so they built the Kilmer Circle there and put the monuments all around the circle.
And Henry Hornbostel designed that central feature there.
And he was a Beaux-Art trained architect.
So all of a sudden we have this very formal type of architecture coming into the parks versus the naturalistic style.
- [Rick] So the park style underwent some big changes.
From 1933 until 1973, the Allegheny County fair attracted hundreds of thousands of people every year to see the shows at the fairgrounds.
There were countless competitions, exhibitions, races, vehicles, all sorts of activities and shows that celebrated Allegheny County's contributions to agriculture and world culture.
- The first time I came to South Park was to go to the county fair, definitely to go to the county fair.
My dad brought us out.
I remember that, I don't even know, my dad called it the monorail.
I don't know what they called it.
I remember that.
I remember walking around and seeing the animals.
I remember that we all had to hold hands.
There were six of us, and we didn't wanna get lost because we weren't used to being in such big crowds.
Yeah, it was great.
- Look, if you wanna go to a county fair, you go to Butler County Fair.
(laughing) That's real cows and horses and pigs, the whole nine yards up there.
I don't think Allegheny County knows how to do a fair, really.
- That fairgrounds is one of the weaknesses of South Park.
They designed the park around one event.
And that's great when the event's going, but when the event goes away, then that design, that turns into a design flaw.
We're now struggling with what to do with the fairgrounds.
We've actually got a grant to look into rehabbing the fairgrounds from something new to restoring it to the way it was and maybe something in the middle.
I'm thinking it's gotta be multipurpose.
Some kind of a multipurpose area.
There's nothing like a fairgrounds in North Park.
There's nothing like a lake in South Park.
- [Rick] Hmm, that sounds like two points for North Park.
Not that he's taking sides, but maybe some healthy competition between the parks was always part of the plan.
I found a letter to the "Post Gazette."
Which park?
(lively music) Editor, the "Post Gazette," Which is generally considered the finer park, North Park or South?
I have been a good deal of a South Park fan, but this summer, the roads are all torn up.
And I also weary of the swarming crowds and have found North Park preferable.
Perhaps the answer is South Park for sports and for mixing with the crowd but North Park when you want to take the family to a quiet place for a picnic supper and a pleasant evening.
Signed Paterfamilias, Pittsburgh, PA, June 8, 1934.
In 1934, there wasn't even a lake yet in North Park.
That comes in 1936.
The same year the swimming pool was built with depression-era help from the WPA and the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC.
They built a beautiful bathhouse for changing in and out of your swimsuit, and the place is in great shape.
The snack bar, the veranda, the pool.
When we stopped by on a hot summer day, North Park Manager Don Schmidt.
- Right.
We'll have the gates open.
- [Rick] Was working with Dave Wilt and triathlon organizer Matt Meehan, getting ready for that weekend's race.
Jeff Jarvis, an assistant head lifeguard, offered to show us around.
Is there a special name for this place?
- The pool?
Just North Park Pool.
I don't even think we really have an address.
If you try to look it up because it's so big.
That's what we, the joke is around here.
- [Don] 2 Million gallons, 2.2 million gallons it takes to fill this pool.
- It's humongous.
- We have close to 12 or 13 lap lanes in right now.
And during the day, almost all will be used.
- 350 feet long and 163 feet wide.
It's one of the largest in the United States.
- [Jeff] A lot of people come here for exercise because it is an Olympic-size pool.
- It can be overwhelming sometimes.
- Even when it's full, it's not that full.
- When's the first I come here?
1937 when they built this place.
(cheerful music) - Yeah, I've heard the story that it was supposed to be built for the Olympic trials in, I think, '36.
And it wasn't completed in time.
- [Rick] North Park Pool officially opened on the 4th of July, 1937, when County Commissioner John Kane handed the keys to the place over to that architect, Henry Hornbostel, who had become Allegheny County's director of parks.
It's been open every summer since.
- We're here Monday through Friday, all summer long, June through August, until the guards go back to college.
- This is what we call the shallow end because it's shallow end.
- I don't know, swimming, it's a good exercise.
It seems all the bones in your body get moving.
- We were hiding from our brother, and then we got into the first thing of lanes, and they said, you can't dive here.
So we wanted to dive.
So we came over to the deeper end.
- The rope is right here, and it basically just means you can dive anywhere past this and not anywhere before this.
- Oh, I've been swimming, I guess, since out of college.
So I swim.
I'm a teacher.
So I just come here a lot in the summer, just to tone up.
- [Jeff] You wanna jump?
Every hour we have guards walk around and make sure everything's okay.
And we check on the guards to see if they want to jump in, cool off, just to make sure they're on task, watching the patrons.
Would you like to jump in?
- Sure.
- [Jeff] All right.
The whole pool goes from two and a half feet to 10 feet in the matter of a football field.
The whole pool is actually bigger than a football field.
So it's weird to imagine this and then look at Heinz Field.
- We were betting each other that nobody could go all the way there in one breath, all the way across the pool.
- Yeah.
I don't think anyone can make it all the way across the pool in one breath.
- [Jeff] I've seen people do it.
- Are you serious?
- Yep.
This is Dana Shear.
She's a lifeguard here at North Park.
And she's going to try to attempt to do the whole 50 meters underwater.
Let's see if she can do it.
- Underwater the whole time?
- Yup.
- [Boy] I can't imagine anybody doing that.
- Just going to the pool every day and just cooling off, it really helps during the summer.
- [Jeff] She is about halfway right now.
- It is nice out here.
I mean, can't beat it.
- I know this is very old park though.
I grew up here as a kid.
- [Jeff] Can she do it?
She's about 10 feet away from the wall.
- I don't swim the laps I used to, but oh, what the heck?
- [Jeff] I think she made it.
Let's see.
Oh, look at that.
That's pretty impressive.
Not many people can do that.
- [Older Man] There's no heat in the pool.
In this kind of weather, it's great.
I mean with the hot sun, but a lot of times it's a little chilly out here.
Yeah, it's part of the things you learn to live with.
- [Young Man] We'll be over there by the tree 'cause it's the only shady place around here.
- You can tell by looking at the wall and the structure here that it's older, but there's something about it.
- [Older Man] The place used to be packed, back in the '30s.
'37, '38, this place was always full.
- Nothing's changed, except for you don't go up in the bleachers.
- The guards and the people that work here care a little bit because it needs maintained a lot more than a newer pool would be.
But as far as patron-wise, I think they understand that it was built during the Great Depression.
- [Older Man] I was in high school back in them days.
- [Mother] It's really cool.
And the slide's different.
That's new.
I don't know how long it's been here, but it's not from the '30s.
- [Jeff] There are two guards stationed at the slide at all times, one at the top and one at the bottom.
Just to make sure they go one at a time and don't hit in each other, very safe.
- [Man] This is summer in the North Hills.
- [Mother] It's super.
We love it.
- [Young Man] It's why we come here.
- I like it here.
You can't beat it.
- Still refreshing as always.
Take care.
- [Rick] Now, before they ever built this pool in North Park, in early 1930s, Allegheny County dug and built three pools along Catfish Run in South Park.
(lively music) These first county pools featured huge stones on several sides.
Built to look like a natural pool you might find out here in the country, all designed by that first parks director, Paul B. Riis, who had done the wading pools over at Stone Manse.
- The same type of thing, it had the naturalistic style, which was what he was noted for.
The stone cliffs and the waterfalls looked like they were natural.
The swimming pool was actually the largest natural-looking swimming pool in the country.
I don't think anyone ever built one bigger than the one we had here in South Park.
- It was probably the most picturesque, most scenic pool that I've ever known in my lifetime.
- Ray Ames, originally from East Liberty, remembers the old pool.
- There were rocks that went out into the pool where it was like an old swimming hole for young people who would go right to the edge of the rocks and dive into the pool.
It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful.
When I was there, the capacity was about 8,000.
When it was first built, it was around 14,000.
There was no other pool in the area.
This was it.
- [Rick] It all became known as the Corrigan Drive Pool.
And in 1951, Ray came here to work as a lifeguard.
- [Ray] It was a political job.
- Really, a lifeguard?
- Yeah.
Lifeguard, we were appointed by the county commissioners.
- [Rick] Did you know how to swim?
- (laughs) Yes, I did.
We had to be certified, certified by the American Red Cross.
I came there in 1951, and I never left.
I taught school.
I came here in the summertime.
- [Rick] Well, I grew up not far away, and my mom brought us here a lot.
I remember those rocks.
- As the years went by, they had to remodel it in a way where those rocks wouldn't come out to the edge of the pool because it was dangerous.
So they had to move the pavement out and the rocks back.
That pool closed in 1977.
This pool opened in 1978.
- Hi.
- [Girls] Hi.
- [Rick] This pool is the South Park Wave Pool, where Ray is now the manager.
It's said to be one of the largest wave pools ever built.
- [Ray] Oh, it's truly exciting.
There's no question about it.
- Every time or 15 minutes, there's a loud siren that goes off, and everyone just screams and yells.
And they just run towards the waves.
- [Ray] Some of these kids from the inner city have never seen waves.
They've never seen an ocean.
- But the ocean isn't as fun, 'cause it's colder.
- [Ray] It's not for everybody.
- [Girl] But if someone drowning, they automatically stop waves and lifeguards jump in.
- We just witnessed that like two minutes ago.
- So let's say 14 years of age, all the way up to maybe 25 or 26.
After that, most of the people lose interest.
- There's a bell.
- There's a bell and a blinking light.
Sure, we'll go with that.
- [Girl] And everybody screams, so you know when they're coming.
- [Ray] The waves can be treacherous.
They really can.
For a young person who doesn't know how to swim, they can be really dangerous.
- Don't block me.
- Hi, Mom!
- Look, I'll tell you the truth, to me, I was always from the city.
All I knew was asphalt.
But you come out here, it's like a dream world.
To me, being from the city, fresh air trees, flowers, and you have a pool and you have an ice skating rink, and you have tennis courts.
Most everything that a young person would want is in the park.
(lively music) - [Rick] There was another pool in South Park.
Built in 1938, officially called the Hundred Acre Pool, it was widely known as Sully's Pool.
At the time, when some aspects of American society were still racially segregated, Sully's Pool was used primarily by Allegheny County African Americans.
Deputy Parks Director Clarence Hopson recalls the place.
- I have gone to Sully Pool before.
When I was a kid, there was an event in the Hill District, where I was born, where we'd have Sully's Pool for a day.
And my mom took us and my two sisters there several times.
There would be rental buses at the YMCA on Centre and Francis Street.
There'd be a line of buses, and we would get on the buses and come into the park.
- [Rick] All these photos, taken by Pittsburgh's famous photographer Teenie Harris, capture a lot of fun times in the park, including legendary beauty pageants around on the pool.
- I came in toward the end of that.
I don't remember that as well as I do as going into the pool, of course.
I was a kid.
That was very fun for me.
It was.
It was like going to a whole nother universe for me.
I was inner city born and bred, and coming into a place like this was like a paradise.
It was a totally different experience.
- [Rick] Nonetheless, Sully's Pool was long an embarrassment.
It looked like government-sanctioned segregation.
It stayed open until the late 1970s, just before the Corrigan Drive pool closed too.
Now some of the old Sully structures are part of an annual Halloween fright house attraction.
The nearby house and barn are called One Hundred Acre House.
But photographer Teenie Harris also shot parties in North Park, many at what's called The Lodge.
Social groups, like the Frogs Club and fraternities like Alpha Phi Alpha, used the lodge as a venue for good times and assorted social get togethers.
The Lodge is still here, still available for rental, and it shares a parking lot with an odd old structure.
It's an old metal stand pipe, a water supply tower for the park built in 1938.
Gary Rigdon from the Friends of North Park, told us to check it out.
- Well, what makes it very unique is there's a set of stairs that you can walk on to get all the way to the top.
And there's an observation deck.
- [Rick] It's not open to the public anymore, but we got special permission to take our camera up there.
The floor of the deck is terrazzo tile decorated with snazzy zodiac symbols.
- The view, the view from that observation deck is fantastic.
It's unbelievable.
I thought I knew the Park really well, and I wasn't expecting to see anything that I hadn't seen before.
But when I was up there, I was like holy cow!
This is unbelievable, beautiful.
All the ridge lines, and you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere.
It's really nice.
Well, it wasn't long before some folks noticed we were up here.
- Just on a whim this morning, I decided to come up here with my book, and I saw the door was open.
And so I followed you up.
(laughs) - I was just telling my boy here that years ago, we used to come up here, but it was a chain-link fence down there, and we climbed it.
(laughs) But we seen you're open here, so.
- [Gary] It's closed to the public 'cause the facility needs some improvements made to it.
It's not really safe right now to go up there.
- [Boy] I'm kind of scared.
- (laughing) Why?
- 'Cause it's really high up.
- And really rusty.
- Yeah.
- I used to come up here quite frequently when I was younger.
It's beautiful.
It's unbelievable, the view.
- How about the tile on the floor?
I told him, I said, there's neat little tile work all around the floor.
I haven't, this is probably 25 years ago I was up here.
- A lot of times when I'm running, there's a trail up on the golf course, and I stop sometimes 'cause you can see straight up, and I stare up here.
- [Gary] It's a great feature of the park, and it'd be really, really great in particular to open it up during, for special events.
- [Rick] Okay, yeah, it's a pretty cool observation tower, but it's closed.
When we met John Stibrik, who's been manager of South Park for almost 20 years, he agreed to take us to see a fable lost place in South Park.
You can't just drive up to it.
No parking lot.
To find it, you've gotta take a little hike through the woods like people did in the 1930s.
- [John] I'm sure a lot of people walked more than they did drive.
That's what people did.
They walked.
- [Rick] John was taking us to a place known as the Vale of Cashmere.
- The Vale of Cashmere, that's where they took an existing creek that went down a beautiful valley, and they diverted some of the water into these stone-lined little pools that went from one pool to the other.
And it just was, I would assume, a very relaxing place to picnic and just hang out.
- [Rick] It's a beautiful walk.
Eventually we come into a clearing, the valley, the vale.
John knows where to look.
- Okay, what we have here is the first, actually this was a pond at one time.
And the water would flow over that.
This is the first in a series of ponds that flew down into the big pond.
But this is all that's left of it right now.
As you see here, we have more of the structure.
Actually, it's a channel that leads to the bigger pond.
- [Rick] It's starting to look like something now.
Are we on Middle Earth maybe?
But these stones start to look more carefully placed.
- [John] And here it is.
All in here.
This is the edge of it.
- [Rick] It's overgrown and lush.
You've got to look for remnants of the Vale of Cashmere.
You can still relax, but there are no ponds left.
- I would be standing in probably about two and a half, three foot of water.
Cold mountain spring water, watching it flow over the waterfall.
- [Rick] There are more big flat stones here, and you have to try and imagine this in its glory.
- [John] Quiet down here.
I believe it was a meditation, meditating spot, I believe.
If you want to call it back in them days.
Very surreal, it's just another beautiful spot in the park.
- [Rick] When we hiked out, we asked John about the mysterious, odd stone thing near the corner of Corrigan and Hundred Acre Drive.
It looks like a piece of a castle or maybe a portal to some forbidden underground world.
- I believe it was built back in the WPA days.
If you could see these steps at one time, you were able to walk all the way down, and there's a big stone bench down there.
And it would obviously would be cool down there.
Just sit on that bench, and there's a natural stream that ran through here, and you could get a nice cool drink of water.
It's called the Silent Brook because you can't hear it.
And that's what the barn is named after, the Silent Brook.
- [Rick] Unfortunately it's full of tree limbs and trash and who knows what.
- [John] The spring's still there.
I'd love to see it restored.
This is all quarry stone from the park, by the way.
It came outta Sleepy Hollow at the far end of the park.
Who came up with this idea?
I have no clue.
It's one of the unique things about South Park.
Where else can you go?
- [Rick] How about North Park?
Do you think they have one of these in North Park?
- I don't think so.
I hope not.
- [Rick] Oh, I'm sure they'll come up with something.
- We have our own fountain of youth in North Park.
It's an old spring house that somebody built years ago and fashioned into this special place that you can go and find youth, eternal youth.
(chuckles) - [Rick] There are many stories about what happened to the rejuvenating spring here.
Some say it was just a broken water pipe, not a spring, but it obviously also captured some imaginations.
- It's off of Kummer Road.
It's not like a major destination.
Not very many people even know about it, but it's there.
- [Rick] It's cool.
The emblem, the wall, and the temple-like entryway all look like they were influenced by, if not personally designed by, Henry Hornbostel in the late 1930s.
Hornbostel definitely oversaw the design and construction of many park buildings, including the clubhouses for the golf courses in both parks.
This is the North Park golf clubhouse.
And Bill McGrady is the golf course manager in South Park, but he also used to be the manager at the North Park course.
He knows both well.
- They're both really nice courses.
They're both challenging.
They were built in the '30s.
Not a lot has changed, other than the trees growing up.
But Pittsburgh's different than a lot of markets.
You go out to Ohio, the courses are flat.
You come here, every shot is a challenge.
You're hitting up.
You're hitting down.
You could just see by the terrain out there, we got a lot of nice holes out there.
- [Rick] And both courses have always been public courses, open to everybody, phenomenally popular.
And because African Americans were allowed to play on the same course as white golfers, Teenie Harris often shot pictures of golfers on both courses.
(lively music) Boxer Joe Lewis liked to play South Park when he was in town.
And there's even one photo of Lewis with Bill Bojangles Robinson on the links.
Lots of people like golfing here.
- Oh yeah, we have the little restaurant here.
The guys come in.
Even when they're not golfing, they're up here.
We got our old timers come up here on the days they don't golf, sit and have coffee and enjoy the view of the golf course and watch the other guys play.
A lot of kids grew up on these courses, so they come back as adults and their grandparents, bring the grandkids.
It's sort of tradition to come to South Park.
But they're both nice layouts, like I said, and this clubhouse is, it's pretty impressive.
I've never seen another building like it.
The brickwork, I challenge you to find another building with this type of brickwork.
It's amazing.
You can see the golfers.
They have the club, the bags.
You have the trees.
It's just really, really neat.
It just stands out.
A lot of people don't even notice it when they come up.
And you really look at this building, it's just so unique.
It's old, it's a little rundown, but it gives it character.
- [Rick] For sure.
Now Hornbostel definitely designed this building, and its unusual arch and passageway through the middle of the building may have been inspired by his travels to Mexico.
And the whole structure ends up being a classy centerpiece of a golf course that's beloved by many golfers.
- It's one of the busiest, by far.
Between North and South Park, they're probably two of the busiest golf courses in the area.
Even like if the guy who does our carts comes, he goes, "It's unbelievable.
I come here and it's raining, and your parking lot's still filled with people."
It's impressive how many people we get here to play.
- [Rick] Well, playing is what gets a lot of people to any park.
And if you've got the right kind of bicycle, you may find yourself at the BMX track in South Park.
This sort of cycling got started in California in the early '70s, and before the end of the decade, it was already here in South Park.
- BMX is like, if not for use of a better word, it's like a off road type of biking.
There's special type of bikes.
There's moguls.
There's hills that they go over.
It's fun, but it can be dangerous.
But it's very popular.
There's a BMX magazine, nationally known.
And our BMX track, for the last four to five years, has been rated the number one BMX track in the country.
The people who run the track, the people who maintain it, they're all volunteers.
It doesn't cost the county to maintain that track.
And that's a good thing for our economy here.
- [Rick] And how's the BMX track at North Park?
- There is no BMX track at North Park.
There was one.
There was one, but it wasn't used quite as much as this one.
- [Rick] Say no more.
For BMX, you come to South Park.
And if you get bored with that, you can just ride down the parking lot to this place.
- This is three B's action park, bikes, blades, boards.
- [Rick] That's Carson Cook, one of the best young skateboarders at this park that opened in 2007.
- I got used to it in like about a week.
- Yeah, this is pretty much the best concrete park I've skated around here in a while.
- [Rick] That's Lonnie Hudspeth, who's one of the older young folks here.
- Everybody really does everything.
We try to respect each other, like the bikers, they usually have that section.
You know what I mean?
And we, the skaters, street skaters, we normally have that section right there.
And every now and then you'll have the collaborations of two coming over to different sides.
But we try to give each other space.
- [Rick] Susan Cook was there too, the mother of Carson.
- He's been the on a skateboard since he was about four and just absolutely loves it.
And if it's sunny and not wet, we're here.
- [Rick] There isn't one of these in North Park either.
But riding on wheels through various parts of both parts has gotten more and more popular in recent years.
You remember Gary Rigdon.
- This is North Park, and it is very special for many, many reasons.
But one of them is it has some of the best mountain biking opportunities to offer than any other place that I know of.
And I can ride my bike into these secluded areas of the park, and I think I'm way, way, way, way, way, way, way far away from civilization.
It's almost like being in a wilderness sometimes.
- People used to walk their horses in the park.
Most people don't have horses anymore, so I feel like today's mountain bike is yesterday's horse to get around the park.
- Historically, there were just a handful of bridle trails in this park.
And they were used by equestrians and hikers.
And within the last 10 years, the Pittsburgh Trails Advocacy Group became real involved with building and maintaining trails in the park.
And we have a fantastic partnership with the county.
- [Rick] Well, one day in North Park, at the mountain bike skills park, we met David Biber from PTAG.
- PTAG is Pittsburgh Trails Advocacy Group, and we are a trail advocacy group that works to sustain and maintain the single-track trails in the region.
- [Rick] They've also helped make this unusual training area in North Park possible.
Here, if you've got the right kind of bike, you can learn if you want to get into what's called free riding.
- How's it going?
Have you gotten in the air?
- Yeah, 12 feet at least.
- 12 feet.
(laughing) Awesome.
- What?
- Free riding and this kind of stuff is more of an outlaw form of biking.
And rather than allow these things to become, in parks, illegally made, we've embraced them and worked hard for almost two years to get permission to build this.
A lot of these parks will be designed by professional companies that design bike parks.
This is all volunteer.
And it's made by just a bunch of guys with amazing skills.
They're built better, I think, than anything professionals will do because they do it with love.
They know they're gonna use it, and they better, they're gonna make damn sure that it's gonna work.
(chuckles) - [Rick] We also met Don Watt here.
- How's it feeling, Rob?
- [Rick] He's one of the volunteer builders who helped create this park (bell rings) as well as the nearby extreme downhill trail.
- This is a great way for kids to start learning body position and get some confidence on their bike.
The downhill track's about 100 yards away from us.
And it starts up on top of a hill like this, and literally goes downhill the whole way.
- [Man] When you see the downhill stuff, it's just, they're works of art.
You need a big bike with big suspension to go on it.
And we run hydraulic disc breaks like a motorcycle.
You need them to stop.
- [Man] You just have to wear the right equipment, take care of yourself, and ride within your limits.
- [Don] Well, someone once told me that it's fun to almost hurt yourself, so.
Ya all right?
- [Rider] I'm good.
- Riding like this gives you a little bit of adrenaline rush.
You gotta be on your toes, and reflexes gotta be up.
There's not too much time to think.
I feel 10 years younger since I started doing this.
One trip down the trail takes us just under two minutes, and it takes us about 10 minutes to push back up.
- Woo!
- Nice.
- [Rick] You might start to get the idea that there's no limit to these parks.
- Look, recreation's different things to different people.
There's amazing diversity of folks playing in the parks, from nice, sophisticated model airplanes to people that just wanna walk their dog.
- It's just so nice to come out and relax.
You can just pick your recreational activity.
- People need somewhere to go that's not too far from home, but they can still get an outdoor experience.
Communing with nature changes you.
- We want people to come to the parks, have fun, and have a good time.
So you can talk about it to your children, and you can remember it.
I think the parks will always be here.
- [Gary] I tell you, these parks have served millions of people for many years, and we'll do that again forever.
These parks are here.
- [Rick] And that's great, but we're left with that one big question.
Well, which do you prefer North or South?
- I knew that question was coming.
(laughing) - [Rick] So in the end, North Park or South Park?
- It's a toss up.
It's a toss up.
I love 'em both.
They're both different, but they're both great places to come.
- [Man] Sort of like siblings, right?
North Park maybe has a little better genes, little better looking, right?
But once you get to know them, they both have their charms, and it's hard, hard to pick a favorite.
- [Rick] Yeah, Frank and I got to know both parks pretty well, and we sort of came to the same conclusion, two great parks in spite of their respective locations.
Although, I think we both still know which one is better.
The one closer to home.
(mellow music) - [Announcer] If you want see other productions from Rick Sebak and his cohorts at WQED, check out the many DVDs offered at ShopWQED.org or call 1-800-274-1307.
- [Children] I love South Park!
- And of course, we have a lake.
- Yep, those are the Canadian geese.
- South Park's the other side of town.
- They poop all over everything.
Especially in North Park.
(laughing) - I guess North Park wins.
- Those of us that live over here, we don't cross rivers a lot.
- [Cameraman] Since you guys just kissed, would you mind doing it again?
- Oh no, not at all.
- [Rick] Have you ever been to South Park?
- No.
- I know if it's a TV show, but that's it.
- South Park, definitely South Park.
- It's a nice place too.
(lively music) - [Rick] You ever been there?
- No.
(laughing) Why bother?
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