How Paris appreciates the value of its river frontage
The outlook from The Point, Pittsburgh
Wherever in the world, as an incident of the highways and wharves along its riverbanks, a city has provided opportunity for the people to walk and sit under pleasant conditions where they can watch the water and the life upon it, where they can enjoy the breadth of outlook and the sight of the open sky and the opposite bank and the reflections in the stream, the result has added to the comeliness of the city itself, the health and happiness of the people and their loyalty and local pride. This has been true in the case of a bare, paved promenade, running along like an elevated railroad over the sheds and tracks and derricks of a busy ocean port, as at Antwerp; in the case of a tree-shaded sidewalk along a commercial street with the river quays below it, as at Paris and Lyons and hundreds of lesser cities; and in the case of a broad embankment garden won from the mud-banks by dredging and filling, as at London. Pittsburgh has an unusual opportunity to secure this incidental value for recreation in the treatment of its river front. Immediately across the Monongahela are the high and rugged hillsides of Mt. Washington and Duquesne Heights, and below these are the lesser but still striking hills along the Ohio River from the West End to McKees Rocks. The outlook over the river with its varied activities to these hills immediately beyond, would be notable in any part of the world. Furthermore, the rivers and the hills are the two big fundamental natural elements characteristic of the Pittsburgh District. Thus, any provision close to the heart of the city, whereby the people can have the enjoyment of these mighty landscapes, is of peculiar importance.
Mt. Washington hillside from the Monongahela water front
It does not diminish the essential grandeur of the situation that the river swarms with barges and steamers; that it is spanned by busy bridges; that the flat lands along the rivers are crowded with railroads, buildings and smoking factories; and that the hillsides are crowned with houses. It is a spacious and impressive landscape in any case. But for the people to get the good of it two things are needful. A locally agreeable place must be provided from which the scene can be enjoyed; and the landscape must be treated with the respect which it deserves, by the elimination of certain features which are merely indicative of neglect, waste, and abuse, and which have no economic justification. Especially is it desirable that the precipitous hillside rising to Mt. Washington, now largely an unfruitful waste, a place of raw gulleys and slides mingled with some painful advertising signs, should be treated with respect as a vital part of the great landscape of the city. It should be protected from defacement and its earthy portions should be reclothed with the beauty of foliage.
The accompanying illustrations are suggestive of the sort of thing which might be done by Pittsburgh with its remaining public water front, and in time, let us hope, with portions of the water front which have passed into private hands. But the actual details of the treatment to be adopted can be properly worked out only in connection with the comprehensive plans for flood protection with which the Flood Commission is now grappling.
Water front and hillside at Lyons