We are just over 30 days away from this summers Cortile Italian Car Show at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix!
We've got some great new things for you to enjoy this year!
Saturday & Sunday July 20-21, 2019

As you know, each year the Cortile selects a marque to highlight for our annual event.

The Macchina of Alfa Romeo have been selected as our 2019 Proiettore Macchina!

Joining us this summer is the Alfa Romeo Owners Club (AROC) who will be holding their North American Convention and honored also as the spotlight car of the 2019 running of the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix.. 

The theme for the AROC convention is "Cortile della Corsa", the "Courtyard of Racing" and will feature Alfa Romeo's on the track as well as iconic racecars on the showfield. Be sure to check out the poster car that was raced by Fangio and Phil Hill. 

Deb Schurko came up with the idea of Wine Tasting on Turn 9 a few years ago and it's become the best place to watch the races on Sunday. Plenty of shade and some wine tasting, courtesy of Mazza Winery, after the opening ceremonies and parade! This year we're introducing something new, but first...

This year, we've had a slight price increase on weekend registration to $150.  After 10 years we've experienced a few cost increases and it was time to adjust up a bit to make sure we where keeping our contribution to the charity growing compared to the other marques down the hill from us.

But, in conjunction with Wine on 9 at the Westinghouse Pond on Sunday,we've also got a NEW sponsor in JKS Financial . As a company with more than 45 years of combined experience, JKS Financial prides themselves with the relationships they build with their clients and they want to build some charitable relationships with us!  This summer they are sponsoring and hosting the Sunday Catered Lunch at the Westinghouse Fountain. 

This year your weekend entry will get you lunch for two on both Saturday and Sunday!
We've also upgraded some of our goody bag stuff. This year we're including a collapsible umbrella (to keep you in the shade of course) and some beeswax lip balm so your lips aren't burned for the wine tasting!  And you will love this year's t-shirt! It features the poster art you see up above. 


Artist Kelly Telfer will be on hand to autograph the posters and even your shirt or hat. Oh! I forgot to mention the hat!  This year's is different from previous years.  You'll just have to wait and see that!

If you have not gone over to the judges tent at the previous years events and chatted with the judges you may just want to do that.

Did you know that Steve Barney was the first person outside of a direct Ferrari employee to ever get to own a Ferrari Grand Prix Car?  Ask Steve about Nikki Lauda's F1 Car that he owned thanks to his friend Enzo Ferrari.  Steve is also the founder of Foreign Cars Italia in the south and is pretty intimate with all Italian marques.

You may also want ask some questions of Tom Frasca.  Tom was Dipendenti Ferrari for the North American Racing Team, more commonly known at NART. Tom served as Luigi Chinetti's right hand man for 26 years until 1994 and was a witness to much of the history that has made Ferrari an iconic name today.

Stop by the judges tent at 2pm to ask them some questions!

Now, to do all that you've got to register! 

If you have not done so already, click the button below and register now for the Cortile Weekend.  (If you own an Alfa Romeo CLICK HERE instead).

Thank you very much for your continued support of our charities!
Bernie

For the 2017 Cortile Courtyard of Italian Macchina there are some big plans in the works to make Sunday July 16th a MUST SEE event! The Cortile is very excited to announce "Wine on 9"

With the restoration of the Westinghouse Pond now complete, with the help of Cortile participants gracious donations and support to the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy for this restoration project, we now have the most opulent trackside viewing area of any of the car shows during the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix.  In conjunction with the 35th anniversary of the the PVGP we are very excited to announce that we will be taking full advantage of the newly renovated Pond area located on Turn 9 of the track.

Mazza Winery has partnered with the Cortile to host a private wine tasting during the PVGP Parade and opening ceremonies on Sunday July 16, 2017.  The VIP area is only open to registered Cortile Car Show participants and will kick off around 11am.  

The entire area is shaded within the tree lined track. It's one of the very best places to watch the vintage races cars jockey for position into the apex of Turn 9 and the execute passes on their way up to German Hill.

"Wine on 9" is the brainchild of Deb Schurko,of Pittsburgh Opera gala's fame. According to Deb, "This is really how we've got to use such a gorgeous place! It's so beautiful to begin with and what better place to sit back, savor some good wine and watch vintage racing! It's just the kind of classy thing that the Cortile has become known for!"

We could not agree more! 

The major renewal of the Westinghouse Memorial started in 2011 in Schenley Park is now complete!

The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy partnered with the City of Pittsburgh in 2009 to renew this remarkable space with the financial help and support from members of the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix's Cortile Italian Car Show participants. The fully restored Westinghouse Memorial includes a reestablished lily pond; renewed memorial sculpture; native plant landscape; new nighttime lighting; and stormwater management and we will be celebrating on the newly completed restoration this July 15- 16! 

Architects Henry Hornbostel and Eric Fisher Wood designed the monument and the surrounding landscape, including the pond, trees, and location of black granite benches. They chose sculptor Daniel Chester French to design the sculptures, including the bronze “The Spirit of American Youth,” the figure of a young man taking inspiration from the life of Westinghouse, which was described by art critics as “the finest portrayal of American boyhood.” The center portion of the monument depicts Westinghouse between a mechanic and an engineer. The surrounding panels were created by French’s collaborator, sculptor Paul Fjelde, to illustrate Westinghouse’s achievements.  The boy stands facing the wall dedicated to George Westinghouse, and is supposed to take inspiration from the other man's life. The boys carries books in one arm and a hat in the other.

The memorial was originally financed from $200,000 in donations made by approximately 55,000 workers of Westinghouse companies in electricity. It was dedicated on 6 October 1930. There opening ceremony was attended by over 10,000 people, including U.S. Representative James F. Burke and Pittsburgh mayor Charles H. Kline, and a celebratory dinner was held the night before at the William Penn Hotel. The memorial was on the original site of the Pittsburgh Zoo.

The Westinghouse Foundation paid for the memorial's restoration in 1986 in honor of the centennial of Westinghouse Electric.

Bigelow's plans for the park system included a system of boulevards that would link them together, and he began constructing bridges in Schenley Park to make it easier for travelers to reach the park. The first, constructed in 1897, was the Bellefield Bridge, which spanned St. Pierre's Ravine and linked Bigelow Boulevard to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). 

​When St. Pierre's Ravine was filled in around 1911 (providing a solid foundation for what is now Schenley Plaza), the Bellefield Bridge was buried along with it and is today the foundation for the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain. The Panther Hollow Bridge opened in 1897, followed by the Junction Hollow Bridge in 1898.

While two of the three bridges remain, many of the attractions to which they provided access in the 1890s have disappeared. Among them: a 120-foot circular electric fountain on Flagstaff Hill that offered nighttime light shows; the marvelous Schenley Casino (on the site of the present-day Frick Fine Arts Building), which featured Pittsburgh's premier indoor ice skating rink but was destroyed by fire after only a year; and a band shell designed by architects Rutan and Russell on the site of the present-day Anderson Playground.

1907-1909 saw the development of park features that are still present today: the Schenley Oval and racetrack, the tufa bridges in Panther Hollow, and Panther Hollow Lake, which was created from an existing small body of water. 

The park also underwent large-scale planting in its early years. Bigelow's reports indicate that the land was mostly barren when the City acquired it, and he pursued the highest standards of horticulture in hiring William Falconer, who was trained at London's Kew Gardens, to take charge of Phipps Conservatory and of the park's landscape. Falconer's tenure lasted from 1896 to 1903.

Schenley Park underwent a second period of growth in the 1930s and 1940s during Ralph Griswold's tenure as the Director of Public Works. Griswold designed several gardens around Phipps Conservatory, but the park's biggest change was the construction of the Anderson Bridge, which brought the Boulevard of the Allies through the park and linked Squirrel Hill to Downtown. Since then, there have been few major changes to the park as a whole, as certain amenities (like the Panther Hollow Boathouse) have disappeared while others (the ice skating rink) were introduced.
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