Frank Lloyd Wright's unbuilt Pittsburgh comes to life
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Sketches and Skyline Ink animation stills of Wright's Point View Residences and Civic Center. Photo: Courtesy of Western Pennsylvania Conservancy
A new exhibit opening Friday reimagines Pittsburgh through Frank Lloyd Wright's unbuilt designs, revealing how the city may have looked if his ambitious plans had come to life.
The intrigue: "Frank Lloyd Wright's Southwestern Pennsylvania" features Wright's unrealized vision for Pittsburgh through animated videos and 3D models of his 1940s and '50s designs.
- Animations by Oklahoma-based Skyline Ink revive Wright's polished postwar plan for The Point — a colossal 10-story civic center housing a 15,000-seat concert garden, zoo, aquarium, opera house, sports arena and more.
- City leaders deemed it too costly and oversized, eventually opting to build Point State Park and the Lower Hill District's Civic Arena instead.
- Other works in the exhibit include a self-service garage for Kaufmann's department store and Pointview Residences, a high-rise apartment tower on Mount Washington.
The big picture: The exhibit, which has traveled across Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., runs through May at Downtown's 820 Liberty Gallery in partnership with the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Fallingwater and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.
Context: The Kaufmann family, famed for their Downtown department store and for hiring Wright to design Fallingwater, commissioned many of the projects on display.
- It was part of a larger effort to reimagine a more sustainable, civic-minded Pittsburgh after decades of industrial growth, Scott Perkins, the show's curator and senior director of preservation and collections at Fallingwater, tells Axios.
Between the lines: The designs join decades of enterprising but shelved plans for Pittsburgh, from a futuristic stadium once proposed on the Monongahela River to zip lines from Mount Washington to the North Shore.
What they're saying: Anastasia James, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's director of galleries and public art, tells Axios that Downtown was a natural fit for the exhibit because it's where many of Wright's designs were meant to rise.
- The gallery invites visitors to explore how Wright influences today's architecture — and to celebrate Pittsburgh's recent transformation, she says. Its extended run overlaps with the NFL Draft to offer tourists a look at one of the city's overlooked stories.
- "I think it's a lovely companion, looking at new civic spaces like Arts Landing opening next spring and these imagined projects from the past to think about where there's some synergy," she says.
If you go: The exhibit opens at 820 Liberty Gallery on Friday with a reception at 6pm. No RSVP required.
- 📍 820 Liberty Ave., Downtown
- ⏰ Wednesday–Sunday, 11am–5pm
- 💰 Free