North Side
National Aviary
Aviary on the site of the first Western Penitentiary
West Park, on the North Side, was the commons of Allegheny City. The first Western Penitentiary opened there in July 1826. William Strickland designed it. In the 1830s John Haviland rebuilt the cells. Charles Dickens walked through in March 1842.
From 5 August 1863 to 18 March 1864 the prison held 118 officers of John Hunt Morgan’s Confederate cavalry, captured near Lisbon, Ohio. A state marker set on the grounds in 1931 recorded that winter. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission later took the marker down. The prison was emptied in the 1880s. A new Western Penitentiary opened in 1882 at Woods Run, farther down the Ohio, and that is the building still standing. The old site became park. The Pittsburgh Aviary opened there in the 1950s, and became the National Aviary in the 1990s.
Visitors are sometimes told that the old prison is under the bird house. The prison still standing is the one at Woods Run. What stood on this ground was the penitentiary of 1826, and for one winter it held Morgan’s officers.
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