While Pittsburgh once had a reputation as a steel city with a factory-filled skyline, today the bustling metropolis’ world-class museums and green open spaces nestled along the city’s three rivers cater to even its youngest visitors.
Expose your children to wildlife at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. The zoo, a 77-acre facility, is home to over 4,000 animals, including a petting zoo for little ones. Kids can also wander through a tropical rainforest filled with apes, spy on swimming polar bears through an underwater window and see elephants stalk across recreated African safaris. The on-site aquarium has a variety of penguins, sharks and stingrays on display. Kids can come face to face with more than 500 birds throughout the National Aviary’s massive walk-through exhibits. Home to 150-plus bird species, the aviary includes space devoted to eagles, condors, penguins and canaries. Events throughout the day include public feedings and live bird shows.
Children can explore four floors of interactive exhibits at the Carnegie Science Center. Learn the inner workings of complex robotic machinery, watch toy trains travel through hundreds of scenes in a miniature village and come aboard the USS Requin, a World War II submarine. Kids can also play in a two-story International Space Station replica, perform experiments in a laboratory and watch a short film in the IMAX theater. Wee ones can run loose at the 80,000-square-foot Children’s Museum. The facility’s 12 exhibits include a multimedia art studio, a small theater where kids can put on shows and a garage where children can play inside cars, trucks and trolleys. The museum also hosts arts and crafts workshops and movement classes for toddlers.
Phipps Conservatory is a sprawling complex home to an assortment of kid-friendly gardens. Children can watch as a miniature train travels through the South Conservatory and planters filled with colorful flowers, listen to the sounds of rushing waterfalls in the Tropical Forest Conservatory and watch butterflies flutter through the Discovery Garden. Special programming for kids includes outdoor story time sessions and science camps. The four-story Carnegie Museum of Natural History provides an array of hands-on exhibits geared toward children and covering such topics as anthropology, paleontology and wildlife. Kids can excavate fossils in the Bonehunters Quarry, examine more than 1,300 colorful gems and minerals and taxidermy animals from around the world in dioramas recreating their natural habitats.
Kennywood in West Mifflin, 20 minutes southeast of Pittsburgh, is an amusement park that first opened its doors in 1898. Today, the site is home to more than 30 rides, including five major roller coasters, bumper cars, Ferris wheel and a water flume ride. The venue has an area reserved exclusively for kids and a 110-year-old pavilion that houses a carousel. The park is operational from May through September and with select dates throughout October. Sandcastle is an outdoor water park in Homestead, just 15 minutes southeast of Pittsburgh. Kids can frolic on a playground equipped with geysers, fountains and spray jets, enjoy a leisurely trip down the quarter-mile lazy river and ride the curls in a wave pool. Adventure seekers can speed their way down 400-foot-long raft slides and racing body slides. The park is open from Memorial Day to Labor Day weekend.
