Mary Schenley, an eccentric Pittsburgh heiress who had eloped at age fifteen with a British Army officer thirty years her senior, gave the city these 456 acres of wooded hillside and open meadow in 1889, after Pittsburgh's mayor tracked her down in London and convinced her to donate the land rather than sell it to a developer, and you are inside her gift, Schenley Park, at the edge of Oakland. Mayor William Brennen sent an agent to London with the offer; a competing real estate speculator had already identified the land's value. Schenley's gift was the foundation of what became the Oakland cultural district.
Andrew Carnegie built his museum and library complex on the adjacent land; Phipps Conservatory followed; the universities took the surrounding ground. Today Schenley Park contains Phipps Conservatory, running and cycling trails, a swimming pool, an ice rink, and the Panther Hollow — a wooded ravine where a creek runs through second-growth forest in the middle of one of America's most storied cities. On a weekday morning, with mist in the hollow and university towers above the trees, the park is one of Pittsburgh's most beautiful places.