Mary E. Schenley – Real Estate Magnate and Philanthropist

Mary Elizabeth Croghan was born to William Croghan, Jr. and Mary Carson O'Hara Croghan in 1826 near Louisville, Kentucky, at William Croghan's family estate, Locust Grove. Her mother was one of three heirs to the extensive Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania landholdings of James O'Hara, an early settler of the city. Mary's mother died when she was young, whereupon William Croghan Jr. decided to move his daughter to Pittsburgh, building an estate in present-day Stanton Heights called "Pic-Nic," where Mary spent some of her early years. 

When Mary turned nine years old, William sent her, for fresh air and a suitable education, to a boarding school established by Miss Lydia Inglis McLeod on Long Island in New York. When Mary was thirteen, the Scottish widower of Miss McLeod's late sister, a 41-year-old captain of the Royal Navy and veteran of the Napoleonic Wars named Edward Wyndham Harrington Schenley, came to visit during an extended leave from service. Captain Schenley caused quite a stir among Miss McLeod's schoolgirls, and Mary fell in love with him. She and Captain Schenley eloped when Mary turned fifteen. For Captain Schenley, it was his third marriage. The scandal hit newspapers across the country, as the new Mrs. Mary Schenley joined her husband to live in Suriname, where he took up a royal appointment as commissioner of arbitration to the British and Dutch Court. The newspapers accused Captain Schenley of kidnapping "the richest heiress in the United States, or probably the world," and the backlash led the Pennsylvania legislature to consider passing special legislation removing Mary as the heir to her property, to keep it out of Captain Schenley's hands. Eventually, William Croghan came to terms with his daughter's elopement with Captain Schenley and their life in London, where Captain Schenley briefly served as a member of Parliament. Mary and Captain Schenley had eleven children together in Suriname and London.

After her father died in 1850, Mary Schenley received her full inheritance, becoming the largest owner of property in Allegheny County. Captain Schenley died in 1878, leaving her a widow at the age of 52. Although she hired local administrators to manage the leasing of hundreds of acres of Pittsburgh property to individual residents and small businesses, her friend Andrew Carnegie said that she had a "comprehensive grasp of business details connected with her property," operating as an astute businesswoman. After a change in the method of real estate taxation in Allegheny County in 1889, Mary Schenley began to sell off pieces of her Pittsburgh estate; but most significantly, it was her gift of 300 acres of undeveloped countryside that became Pittsburgh's first major urban park, Schenley Park. She made other gifts over the course of her life, including the land for West Penn Hospital, the Western Pennsylvania Institute for the Blind, and the Newsboys Home, as well as the land encompassing the old Fort Pitt Blockhouse near Pittsburgh's point, now a historical landmark.

When Mary Schenley died in 1903, Andrew Carnegie became one of the trustees of her estate. In his hands--and through the vision and salesmanship of a real estate developer, Franklin Nicola, among others—Mary Schenley's property became the site of the development of the Oakland section of Pittsburgh in the style of the "City Beautiful" movement. The development of her land would ultimately include an upscale residential area, Carnegie's Library and Museum, the new campus of the University of Pittsburgh, Forbes Field, the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, and several other important civic buildings.

For her role in shaping the future of Pittsburgh, Mary Schenley continues to be honored as the namesake of the now 456-acre Schenley Park, and by the gift of the city of Pittsburgh of the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain (1918), a landmark public sculpture in bronze and granite by Victor David Brenner. (--Ron Schuler)