Hartwood Acres Park

Hartwood Acres is a six-hundred-and-thirty-acre Allegheny County park that preserves the Tudor Revival country estate of John and Mary Flinn Lawrence, completed in nineteen twenty-nine. Mary built the estate with money inherited from her father, Senator William Flinn; she pursued horses and English country life with equal enthusiasm. The estate's stables, modeled on an English manor complex, were state of the art for equestrian use.

Mary Lawrence sold the property to Allegheny County in nineteen sixty-nine and lived there until she died in nineteen seventy-four, and the county opened it as a public park in nineteen seventy-six. Today the mansion, filled with antiques and English furniture, is open for tours, and the grounds host outdoor concerts under the stars each summer, a tradition that has drawn hundreds of thousands of Pittsburghers across fifty years.