The best picture of the Point isn't one of those blue-sky Chamber of Commerce glamour shots of the Golden Triangle being squeezed between two rivers.

It's a photo from 1916 that shows a big roller coaster sitting just about where Point State Park's famed fountain now spurts.

Found at spdconline.org/history/Facts/Facts.html, the old image proves that Pittsburgh's signature wedge of urban real estate was not always as wasted, useless or lifeless as it's been for the last half century.

Along with the amusement ride and a few river barges parked along the Point's steep riverbank, in the 1916 photo you can see the old Exposition Hall, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center of its day. Not visible are the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, warehouses, a few residences and the offices, restaurants and hotels that stretched back to Fourth Street.

All that socially untidy, ever-evolving human and commercial activity at the Point was obliterated in the early 1950s by the perpetrators of urban renewal. They thought clear-cutting 35 acres of a city's center and replacing it with an artificial, deliberately unusable green space and a cold, sterile office park was a blow for progress, planning and civic beauty. The great Jane Jacobs saw it for what it was, is and always will be -- a crime scene.

In the decades since, we've mostly only been able to look at Point State Park or sit quietly in it. Owned by the state, managed by the city, grossly underused by the public except for official events, it's been a no-fun zone.

Just about everything you'd naturally want to do in a park -- bicycle, roller skate, wade in the fountain pool, ice skate, play ball, buy your kid an ice cream cone -- was either not possible or explicitly outlawed by thickets of threatening government signs.

The stupidity of having a "passive" historic park like Point State Park in the middle of a city finally became so obvious to Pittsburgh's movers and shakers that about five years ago they started working up a $35 million public-private master plan to give the park a serious makeover and make it more user-friendly.

Construction of part of the plan has just begun. The park is now completely closed to the public. The park's infamous "no-no" signs already have been uprooted and Lisa Schroeder, the director of the Riverlife Task Force, says they won't be back -- at least most of them.

Schroeder says a major goal of the master plan is to encourage more daily and recreational use of the park and provide easier access to it -- by foot, bike, wheelchair and watercraft. New walkways and pathways will foster pedestrian and bicycle "circulation." The newly designed fountain pool will encourage waders, not threaten them with fines. Kayaks and water taxis will have special places to dock.

These long-overdue moves are encouraging, but mostly just tinkering. The new Point State Park is still going to be an over-planned, over-regulated, semi-passive space.

You'll fish at designated spots and bike on official paths. A single camouflaged concession building with outdoor tables and chairs will sell food and such, but don't expect snow-cone vendors to sully the "natural" landscape with random acts of commerce.

More important, when Point State Park's rehabilitation is complete in 2008, there will still be way too little imagination and way too many no-no's: no re-creation of Fort Pitt, no public sculpture, no ice rink, no skateboard park, no climbing wall, no swing sets, no hoops, no empty baseball diamond waiting for a pickup game. And, obviously, no roller coaster.

Bill Steigerwald is the Trib's associate editor. Call him at (412) 320-7983. E-mail him at: bsteigerwald@tribweb.com.