This century-old glasshouse in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park pulls in more visitors than most state parks

It’s bigger inside than you’d think

Schenley Park covers 440 acres in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, and tucked inside it is a Victorian glasshouse that most people outside Pennsylvania have never heard of.

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens spans 15 acres, runs through 14 indoor rooms and 23 outdoor gardens, and pulls in more than half a million visitors a year.

That’s a lot of foot traffic for a building that started as one man’s gift to a city. The story of how it got here is almost as interesting as what grows inside.

A steel fortune turned into something green

Henry Phipps Jr. made his money in steel alongside Andrew Carnegie, his childhood friend and business partner. When he decided to give something back to Pittsburgh, he didn’t build a library or a museum.

He commissioned a glasshouse, designed by the New York firm Lord and Burnham, and filled it with plants he had shipped in from the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It opened on Dec. 7, 1893.

Phipps had one condition: it had to stay open on Sundays so working-class residents could visit on their day off.

The Palm Court is where it all starts

Walk through the front door and you land in the Palm Court, the original heart of the conservatory. The room rises in Victorian iron and glass, and tropical palms push toward the ceiling in every direction.

The 1893 opening plaque is still here, mounted in plain sight.

Look up and you’ll spot hand-blown glass sculptures by Dale Chihuly threaded through the foliage, catching light in ways the plants alone never could.

It’s the first room and, for a lot of people, the one they remember longest.

Hundreds of orchids, and glass frogs among them

The Orchid Room traces back to 1932, when 800 rare specimens came in from the estate of Charles D. Armstrong. That original donation grew into one of the more notable orchid collections in the country.

Hundreds of varieties are on display at any given time, arranged in colors and patterns that don’t look like they should exist in nature.

Among them, you’ll find glass frogs and elongated figurines by Hans Godo Frabel, tucked between blooms like they belong there. Each winter, the annual Orchid and Tropical Bonsai Show adds another layer.

The Fern Room feels like deep time

There’s a room at Phipps that doesn’t feel like Pittsburgh. Tree ferns push toward the glass ceiling.

Cycads, mosses and ancient plant families line the paths, many of them from species that have been on Earth for millions of years. A small waterfall runs in the background.

The air is cool and humid. Most visitors slow down here without meaning to.

It’s one of the quietest rooms in the building, and one of the few places where you can stand next to a plant that was already old when dinosaurs were alive.

Butterflies land on you if you stay still

From roughly May through early September, the Stove Room becomes the Butterfly Forest. Tropical foliage fills the space, and butterflies move through it in every direction.

If you stand quietly near a flower cluster, they’ll land on you.

The exhibit also gives you the chance to watch butterflies emerge from their chrysalises up close, which is the kind of thing that sounds ordinary until you actually see it.

It’s one of the most popular draws for families, and for good reason.

60 feet of rainforest, right in western Pennsylvania

The Tropical Forest Conservatory is the largest indoor space at Phipps, 60 feet tall and 12,000 square feet across.

The current exhibit, Tropical Forest Panama, opened in March 2025 and rotates every three years to a different region. Inside, live poison dart frogs move through the undergrowth.

Monkey calls echo off the glass. Waterfalls drop through heliconias and mangroves, and ranger stations let you dig into how the layers of a Panamanian forest actually work.

Panama’s national flower, the dove orchid, grows here too.

Chihuly glass hides in plain sight throughout the gardens

In 2007, a Dale Chihuly exhibit at Phipps drew more than 400,000 visitors. When it closed, 30 pieces stayed.

A chandelier hangs in the Welcome Center dome. A gold star sits in the Desert Room.

Glass cattails and macchia bowls rest in the Palm Court. After a 2009 exhibit, Hans Godo Frabel’s work joined the collection.

Jason Gamrath’s pieces arrived in 2017.

By now, glass art appears in so many rooms that you stop expecting it and start finding it by accident, which is the better way to discover anything.

Four flower shows a year, going back to the beginning

Phipps runs four major flower shows every year: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.

The tradition goes back to the conservatory’s earliest years, making it one of the longest-running flower show programs in the country. Each one transforms the display rooms with new themes and thousands of blooms.

The Winter Flower Show pairs with an outdoor Light Garden that turns the whole property into something worth visiting after dark.

If you’re planning a trip around a specific show, check the calendar before you book anything.

23 outdoor gardens beyond the glass

Step outside and there’s still a lot of ground to cover. The Japanese Courtyard Garden has bonsai trees, a koi pond and raked gravel paths.

The Children’s Discovery Garden is built around pollinator habitats and hands-on features.

The Outdoor Garden runs through herb beds, medicinal plant collections and stonework built by the Works Progress Administration in 1935. Up top, a rooftop Edible Garden grows produce used in Phipps programming.

You can spend a full afternoon outside and still not see every corner of it.

The greenest building you’ll probably walk through

The Center for Sustainable Landscapes opened in 2012 and sits on the Phipps grounds as a building you can actually go inside and explore. It holds multiple top green building certifications and is open to visitors.

The exhibits inside focus on environmental issues and show how buildings can work with natural systems instead of against them.

A green roof, native plantings and a landscape that fades into the surrounding gardens make it easy to forget you’re in a constructed space at all.

Trains, storytelling and something for kids to do for hours

Each fall and winter, the South Conservatory fills with the Garden Railroad exhibit, miniature trains winding through small plant landscapes in a tradition that goes back to 1999. Kids spend a long time at this one.

Beyond the railroad, Phipps runs weekly storytelling sessions, family parties and a Play Farmers’ Market. Educational programs go from botanical illustration to ecological gardening.

A digital guide on the Bloomberg Connects app lets you do a self-guided tour at your own pace, covering plants, sustainability and more.

Visit Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh

You can find Phipps at One Schenley Drive in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood. The conservatory opens daily, with extended hours until 10 p.m. on Fridays.

Timed entry tickets are required and need to be reserved in advance, so don’t show up without them. Plan for at least 90 minutes, though most people end up staying longer.

Cafe Phipps handles lunch on-site, or you can bring your own.

Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Carnegie Mellon University are both within walking distance if you want to make a full day of it.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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