Good things
come to those who wait.
And the wait for a Downtown home for the Public
Theater hasn’t been a short one.
The Public had long considered its North Side home
at the Hazlett Theater temporary quarters. But it wasn’t until 1989, when the
Pittsburgh Cultural Trust began its long-range planning, that the concept for the theater
began to take shape.
The original idea was to place the theater in an
office building on the block of Penn where the O’Reilly Theater now sits. After he
was selected in 1992 as the theater’s architect, Michael Graves separated the two
projects and, in the end, the office tower was never built.
Finally in 1997, ground was broken for the
Public’s new home -- the O’Reilly Theater. And now, as the calendar marks a
series of endings, Downtown marks the beginning of what is expected to be a long
theatrical tradition.
