I’ve been playing a lot of Ingress lately– it’s an augmented reality game made by a Google spinoff that involves capturing territory anchored at portals. The portals are places of interest in the real world– historical markers, libraries, post offices, and… sculptures 
So ingress got me to spend some time in Mellon Park looking at the sculptures. There are 4 major works: Untitled (January Sprinter) by Thomas Morandi, Five Factors by Peter Calaboyias, Steel Cityscape by Aaronel deRoy Gruber, and Celebration by Clark Winter.
 January Sprinter |
 Five Factors |
 Steel Cityscape |
 Celebration |
All of these are fairly recent transplants to this park. Looking at January Sprinter, something finally clicked and I realized it was one of the sculptures that Discovering Pittsburgh’s Sculpture says is at the Squirrel Hill Library. I had walked around that library before, looking for sculptures, but there aren’t any– and January Sprinter and Five Factors are both from there, and were apparently removed when the library expanded in the 1990s.
Or perhaps I just read the plaque.
Five Factors, January Sprinter, two other sculptures from the Squirrel Hill Library, and Steel Cityscape were actually lost for a while. They were eventually found in city storage under the 62nd Street bridge:
Your city at work, ladies and gentlemen. The Five Factors sculpture in Mellon Park today is actually a replica that Calaboyias remade because the original had too many dents.
Steel Cityscape was originally at the City-county building in 1978, then was in a park where the David Lawrence Convention Center is now by 1985. It was painted purple at one point! I haven’t been able to find any pictures of its purple state or any mention of why it’s not purple anymore.
Celebration was at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts originally, and now is on Penn Ave on the site of the former Reizenstein School. The school is currently being demolished to make way for Bakery Square 2.0. I’ll be keeping an eye on what ends up happening to Celebration.
