By the beginning of next season, the exterior of PNC Park along West General Robinson Street and Mazeroski Way will have a new look, one that will be even more distinctive.
By then, a series of commemorative bronze plaques, featuring thousands of messages from Pirates fans that were originally displayed as part of the Bucco Bricks program will be installed on the lower portion of the limestone façade.
That’s according to the final design that Pirates president Travis Williams presented to the Sports & Exhibition Authority (SEA) of Pittsburgh on Thursday morning. The plan was developed in consultation with renowned architect and urban planner Janet Marie Smith, who also worked with the Pirates on a multitude of other meaningful enhancements to PNC Park in recent years.
The SEA approved the Pirates’ plan, which will be reviewed with the City of Pittsburgh’s Arts Commission later this month.
“We know how important these messages and memories are to our fans,” said Williams. “This plan accomplishes our stated goal of improving upon the permanence of the display while maintaining the essence of the original program. We believe we have developed a solution for these messages that will stand the test of time, and the passion and dedication of our fans will remain a permanent fixture at PNC Park.”
There will be a total of 60 bronze plaques with each measuring approximately five feet in height and six feet in length and including nearly 170 messages. Each message will be displayed in the original format, with the font size the same as the original messages that were engraved on the bricks embedded in the sidewalks around PNC Park. In all, the plaques will display more than 10,000 messages that have been part of the ballpark since its opening in 2001.
By Opening Day 2026, the bronze plaques will be on display on the PNC Park façade, with the height of the plaques following the stone’s height to fit well into the original aesthetics of the ballpark.
The new vertical design will allow the messages to be viewed and photographed more easily in comparison to the original display on the sidewalks, where fans often had difficulty finding their messages. The new plaques will also be more sustainable, with the bronze being much more durable than the original bricks.
The 25-year-old sidewalks around PNC Park were in dire need of repair. Over the years, a host of environmental factors, including weather and heavy foot traffic, led to significant damage to the bricks and unsafe conditions for fans. Such deterioration prompted the Pirates to look for a better way to preserve these cherished messages for many years to come.
“Putting these bronze plaques along West General Robinson Street and Mazeroski Way was a way to be able to preserve the messages and memories that were on the bricks, but put them in a vertical format, so that people could easily find them and they would stand the test of time,” Williams said. “We’ll begin the installation in January and be able to finalize it by Opening Day of the 2026 season."
The Pirates have indicated that their intention was always to carry on the essence of the fan message program and admitted they didn’t effectively communicate the plan to their fans earlier. The project will be funded entirely by the Pirates.
In addition to ensuring that the fan messages and memories live on at PNC Park via the new display, the Pirates proactively engaged with the original brick owners and offered them a free replica of their brick as a keepsake. To date, the team has received more than 3,500 requests for a replica.