Frick Park, Pittsburgh

I was able to go to Frick Park last week. It is located on the east end of Pittsburgh. I was told it is the second largest urban park in the world (but maybe just the US), the first being Central Park in New York. The park has many playgrounds, tennis courts, fields, and walking paths. And all in between are patches of forest. Children could play forever in those woods and never get bored. They could let their imaginations run wild as they too run through the wild. I hope you enjoy some of the photos that I took.

I was able to do some open space and playscape design in a previous course, but I never really considered a  forest as a playground until very recently. Frick Park is an excellent example of how it works. The picture above shows a field that I came across after walking on a foot path for sometime. The forest just opened up and there was this secret playing field. I was told that there were probably several more similar to this throughout the park.

There was at least one stream flowing through the park where I was walking. The park wraps around much of the nearby canyons so there were probably more streams like it. 

Along the perimeter of the park there were several playgrounds, baseball fields, tennis courts, and probably much much more. 

It was a neat experience, especially the forested areas, and it made me want to add more nature in any future open space designs that I might do.