Park over Pittsburgh's Crosstown Boulevard will bear name of Hill District activist Frankie Pace

A park over Pittsburgh’s Crosstown Boulevard will be named after the late Hill District activist Frankie Pace.

City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the proposal to name the three-acre park in her honor.

The park is being built as part of the $32.3 million Interstate 579 “cap” project, which aims to reconnect the Hill District with Downtown. The areas were split when the portion of I-579 known as Crosstown Boulevard was constructed in the 1950s.

The park, which will be built over the highway, will link the Hill District and Downtown. The project should be finished next year.

Officials had been planning to name the park after Pace since the project was in the design phase, Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle said during a public hearing last week. As the project nears completion, he said, City Council needed to formalize the name.

Pace, born in 1905, was a longtime community activist and head of the Hill District Community Council. She owned Pace Music Store.

Pace died in 1989.

Now, her memory will live on in a park that will feature pedestrian pathways and bicycle routes, along with recreation and educational areas, rain gardens and design elements developed by local artists.

The park also will feature two story walls. One will feature Pace. A second will honor Martin Delany, an abolitionist, journalist and educator from the Hill District.