Mellon Square is a landmark park in downtown Pittsburgh.  Built during the city's 1950s Renaissance, the park provides a green oasis that highlights and enhances the buildings around it.  As the first modern garden plaza built over a parking structure, Mellon Square is one of the nation's original "green roofs."  The project was designed by Pittsburgh's leading "Modernists," the distinguished landscape architecture firm Simonds & Simonds and the eminent architects Mitchell & Ritchey, and quickly became influential as an icon of the modern city.

Due to subterranean leaks into the parking garage and additional programming needs, the Square was reworked in the 1980s.  While somewhat changed, this modern urban piazza provides an artistic civic gathering space that adds liveliness, beauty, and green space to downtown Pittsburgh.  Today, life cycle failures, weathering, and abuse are signaled by deterioration of specific elements throughout the Square.

The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy completed a Preservation, Interpretation, and Management Plan for this historic space in 2008.  Led by the historic landscape architecture firm Heritage Landscapes, a multi-disciplinary team developed recommendations for programming, maintenance, and physical preservation of the park.*  Future projects will restore the original 1950s design and improve drainage, structural integrity, and lighting.  The first project will get underway in 2010, making dramatic improvements along the Smithfield side of the Square.  It will include renovating the steps, restoring the cascading fountain, and opening up a new terrace above the retail shops. 

Today, we are working alongside the City of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Parking Authority, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, and the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation to address the needs of both the park and its users, and to keep Mellon Square vibrant for years to come.

* Project Credits
Heritage Landscapes, Preservation Landscape Architects & Planners, with Robert Silman Associates, Grenald Waldron Associates, LaQuatra Bonci Associates, MTR Landscape Architects, Neil Silberman, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, and EDP Landscape Architects