Nine Mile Run Viewfinder

Nine Mile Run Viewfinder is a series of portals for seeing, hearing, and smelling the waterway beneath our feet. Part of Shiftworks’ Environment, Health, and Public Art Initiative, this artwork was created to bring attention to the connections between Nine Mile Run, the stormwater and sewer systems, the Monongahela River, and the water we drink. The artwork advocated for a healthy watershed in eastern Pittsburgh and neighboring communities.

To create this interactive piece, Brooks Takahashi worked with Pittsburgh-based designers Clear Story to design an edition of three manhole covers constructed with ADA accessible metal grating. From 2021-2023, these covers replaced three existing storm sewer manhole covers in Wilkinsburg, PA that provided access to Nine Mile Run. Designed to bring light to the underground stream, the Viewfinders focused and framed a real time view of the flow. Gaps in the metal grating allowed for the transmission of sound and smell, and photovoltaic cells powered light to the bottom of the culvert.

Nine Mile Run Viewfinder is an immersive sensory experience that opened a door to a hidden underground world and challenged perceptions about how we are connected to the Monongahela River and beyond.

Between 2021 and 2023, Nine Mile Run Viewfinder was located at three sites in Wilkinsburg, PA: Hunter Park, West Street between Penn and Ross Avenues, and Whitney Park. Several online resources provided additional information about the artwork and navigation of each site.

Three written scores by the artist provided an intimate, self-guided experience of Nine Mile Run Viewfinder. Download these text-based scores to learn more about the landscape, ecological features, and environmental history of each site.

Listen to an audio version of each score on the Echoes website.

Download an artist’s rendering that shows connections between the headwaters of Nine Mile Run, our sewage system, the Monongahela River and our municipal tap water.

Brooks Takahashi was inspired by the work of artists Bob Bingham, Reiko Goto and Tim Collins at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, whose efforts led to the establishment of Nine Mile Run Watershed Association (now UpstreamPgh) in the early 2000s. Building on their work as well as that of her Wilkinsburg-based partner organizations – Center for Civic Arts and UpstreamPgh – Brooks Takahashi undertook extensive research into the waterway.

Its headwaters begin north of Wilkinsburg and enter the Borough in an underground culvert, ranging from 8’ to 30’ below ground. The water then runs south through Wilkinsburg and flows out as a stream that runs through Frick Park for two miles. It then finally empties into the Monongahela River, one of Pittsburgh’s three major waterways. Along its length, the health of the Run and the ecologies that surround it have been endangered by combined sewage overflow, inadequate drainage, and dumping of industrial and chemical pollutants.

By providing three points of connection along the largely-unseen underground stream, the artwork built awareness of our subterranean reality and drew connections between rainfall, sewage overflow, and the proximity to our watershed’s source. Nine Mile Run Viewfinder advocated for continued human awareness and intervention to our stream’s health, as well as a shared responsibility for our role in ensuring the health of a much larger ecosystem of waterways.