The concept of a riverfront park has existed since 1911 when the Olmstead Brothers, son and nephew of Frederick Law Olmstead, creator (with Calvert Vaux) of New York's Central Park, proposed the creation of two narrow strips of public land - one following the south bank of the Allegheny River and the other running along the north bank of the Monongahela River.

The proposal lay dormant until the early 1990s when The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's District Plan called for the creation of a riverfront park to border the northern boundary of the Cultural District.

At that time, the Trust's Public Arts Advisory Committee commissioned a first-time collaboration between artist Ann Hamilton and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh to create the Allegheny Riverfront Park.

The Allegheny Riverfront Park project was actually separated into two phases. Phase I resulted in the creation of the lower level park, which spans the distance along the Allegheny River from the Ninth Street Pier to the Ft. Duquesne Bridge.

The lower level park at its broadest point is 35 feet wide and spans east to west over 3,000 feet. A pair of pedestrian ramps, each six feet wide and approximately 350 feet long, focus the geographic center of the new riverfront park at the Seventh Street Bridge.

Thirteen-foot-high rectangular screens support Virginia Creeper vines to form a continuous green plane behind the ramps along the Tenth Street Bypass. Along the river side of each ramp, Ann Hamilton designed undulating bronze handrails to contrast physically with the straightforward engineering and materials of the support structure.

New dense groves of native flood plain trees and groundcover, chosen for their ability to withstand potential damage from flooding, are scattered throughout the site.

Informal clusters of large indigenous boulders offer convenient places to sit. Pedestrian and non-motorized traffic in the lower level park move along a central pathway that sweeps out over the Allegheny River and around the piers of the Seventh Street Bridge allowing boats to land.

Phase two completed the City's connection with the river and resides along the river side of Ft. Duquesne Boulevard between the Ninth Street Bridge and just west of Stanwix Street.

Between the Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Street Bridges the upper park will unfold as two symmetrical riverside promenades that cut back toward the city. Simple stone ledges define the edge of these open pedestrian courts and provide stepped seating that physically emerges from the swelling ground below.

Formal arrangements of shade trees will reinforce and screen the street-side of the upper park. The landscape then will flatten out at the street corners where the diagonal sidewalks will wrap around patterned fields of paving stones, and a generously planted median will assist safe pedestrian passage.