Masonry Magazine October 1975 Page. 8
The Golden Triangle
(Continued from page 7)
Place and the Hilton Hotel. Tourists get an oral interpretation, along with their visual one, through earphones and taped narration.
Work on the model was aided by 20-years of research and drawings preserved in the Royal Library of Windsor Castle, the British Museum, and the Public Record Office in London.
Masonry moods are evidenced everywhere in Point State Park as many types of skillfully laid stone vie for attention.
Surprisingly, the research revealed that the present tip of the point is 430-ft. downstream as compared to 1758. Rather than erosion by the rivers whittling away at the side, it has lengthened and widened, thus making the Golden Triangle much larger than the Old Fort Duquesne and Fort Pitt sites.
The restoration and the design of the fountain area, riverside theater, walkways and other features were by the Pittsburgh architectural firm Stotz, Hess, MacLachian & Fosner in association with Griswold, Winters & Swain, Landscape Architects. The General Contractor was F. J. Busse with Massaro Brothers, Inc., serving as Mason Contractor.
Restoration and contemporary construction in the park began in 1953 with work scheduled in five stages, according to Mason son Contractor Eugene J. Massaro. At that time, there were huge blocks of stone, each block weighing two or three tons, piled over the site. Twenty five stone masons used their skills to quarry and pitch the faces the hundreds of tons of stone and convert them into beautiful stonework seen today in Point Park and to be enjoyed by Americans and others for centuries to come.
Architect Fosner, for example designed the 600-ft. circumference rim of the fountain with Indiana limestone, New Hampshire granite and native limestone. For the inside and adjacent area of the fountain, Fosner designed a dramatic 30,000-sq. ft. work of art with a swirl pattern. Texture and coloration were created by stone masons who sorted tons of pebble rocks by size, texture and color, and then used their craftsmanship, to match the architect's ingenious design.
Comparable design and craft ingenuity with stone can be seen in dramatic paved areas throughout the park, and especially as you enter the park under an expressway. Architect Fosner turned what is generally a bleak wasteland under a highway span into a beautiful pool, with a bottom of swirl-patterned stone. A pedestrian bridge crosses (Please turn to page 18)
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masonry
October, 1975