East Liberty is a neighborhood in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

's East End. It is bordered by Highland Park, Morningside, Stanton Heights,

Garfield ''Garfield'' is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis (cartoonist), Jim Davis. Originally published locally as ''Jon'' in 1976 (later changed to ''Garfield'' in 1977), then in nationwide Print syndication, syndication from 1978, it chro ...

Friendship Friendship is a Interpersonal relationship, relationship of mutual affection between people. It is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an "acquaintance" or an "association", such as a classmate, neighbor, coworker, or colleague. Althoug ...

, Shadyside and Larimer, and falls largely within Pittsburgh City Council District 9, with a few areas in District 8. One of the most notable features in the East Liberty skyline is the

East Liberty Presbyterian Church East Liberty Presbyterian Church, sometimes referred to as the Cathedral of Hope, is in the East Liberty neighborhood of the East End of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The current building is the fifth church building to occupy the si ...

, which is an area landmark.

Beginnings

Around the time of the

American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...

, East Liberty was a free grazing area in

Allegheny County Allegheny County ( ) is a county in Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,250,578, making it the state's second-most populous county, after Philadelphia County. Its county seat and most populous city is Pit ...

located a few miles east of the young, growing town called Pittsburgh. (In older English usage, a "liberty" was a plot of common land on the outskirts of a town.) Two farming patriarchs owned much of the nearby land, and their descendants' names grace streets in and around East Liberty today. John Conrad Winebiddle owned land west of present-day East Liberty, in what are now Bloomfield,

, and

, and his daughter Barbara inherited a portion close to what is now East Liberty. Alexander Negley owned a farm called "Fertile Bottom" north of present-day East Liberty along the southern bank of the

Allegheny River The Allegheny River ( ; ; ) is a tributary of the Ohio River that is located in western Pennsylvania and New York (state), New York in the United States. It runs from its headwaters just below the middle of Pennsylvania's northern border, nor ...

. Negley's land included some of present-day East Liberty and much of nearby Highland Park, Morningside, Larimer, and Stanton Heights. Alexander Negley's son Jacob married Barbara Winebiddle, built a manor house, and developed a village that he called East Liberty after the old grazing commons. In 1816, Negley saw to it that the

- Greensburg turnpike was built through East Liberty, which made the area a trading center and ensured its future growth.

Growth

East Liberty truly began to develop as a commercial area in 1843, when Jacob's daughter Sarah Jane Negley married the ambitious lawyer

Thomas Mellon Thomas Mellon (February 3, 1813 – February 3, 1908) was a businessman, judge, and lawyer who was best known as the founder of Mellon Bank and patriarch of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh. Early life and education Mellon was born to farmers An ...

. Mellon had first visited the area of modern-day East Liberty in 1823, when as a 10-year-old he saw the Negley mansion for the first time and decided he wanted something like it. He achieved this goal and much more: after first becoming a prosperous lawyer, he made his true fortune by marrying Sarah Jane Negley, selling or renting the land near East Liberty that she inherited, and using the proceeds to finance Pittsburgh's nascent industries. Like Jacob Negley before him, Thomas Mellon worked to make East Liberty a transportation hub: Mellon convinced some of Pittsburgh's first trolley lines to pass through East Liberty. East Liberty developed more or less independently of Pittsburgh until the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its ...

opened the East Liberty station in the 1850s. This passenger depot served to connect East Liberty to the city; twenty-six trains transported people to and from downtown on a daily basis. The rail connection was of crucial importance for the area's future development, because Pittsburgh was just about to enter its industrial boom period that would last between the end of the Civil War and World War I. As the city's population swelled to fuel the burgeoning iron and steel industry, East Liberty grew too. The neighborhood's population increased from under 1,000 in 1850 to over 46,000 by 1910. East Liberty acted as a first-ring residential suburb for elite families looking to escape the industrial smoke and soot of the city. By the turn of the century, it was one of the richest suburbs in America, containing many of the wealthy industrialists’ mansions. However, East Liberty was not exclusively an elite, Anglo-American neighborhood. The East Liberty Station brought floods of European immigrants and African American migrants from the South, who were drawn by Pittsburgh's manufacturing and industrial jobs. The neighborhood became home to an impressive number of churches for various religions and ethnicities by the late nineteenth century. There were separate places of worship for German and Italian Protestants, Irish, Italian and German Catholics, as well as a Presbyterian church for Anglo-Americans and an AME church for African Americans. East Liberty's diverse mix of Italian, Anglo-American, German, African-American, Jewish, Polish, Greek, and Irish residents stayed intact until after World War II. On June 30, 1868, the City of

annexed Collins and

Liberty Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views. The concept of liberty can vary depending on perspective and context. In the Constitutional ...

townships, which together included East Liberty. Thanks to its favorable location and Mellon's guiding hand, East Liberty became a thriving commercial center in the following years. East Liberty's merchants served many of Pittsburgh's industrial millionaires, who settled in nearby Shadyside and Point Breeze. Professionals in Highland Park and

and laborers in Bloomfield and

also shopped in East Liberty. There were four movie theaters. Actor-singer Dick Powell got his start singing at the Enright Theater. By 1950, the area was a bustling and fully urban marketplace, anchored by Sears-Roebuck store on Highland Avenue and (Albert J )Mansmann's Department Store on Penn Avenue. It had become the largest, in terms of sales dollars, non-center-city business district in the country.

Decline

East Liberty's decline was precipitated by a series of government policies relating to the underwriting of mortgages for homes commonly referred to as

redlining Redlining is a Discrimination, discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of Race (human categorization), racial and Ethnic group, ethnic minorities. Redlining has been mos ...

. The residential areas immediately surrounding East Liberty's main business distric
consisted primarily of tightly packed wood frame homes built in the mid-to-late 1800s.
In 1937, The George F Cram Company undertook the creation of federally sponsored surveys and maps which ultimately became the 'redlined' maps used by banks for underwriting. The Cram Map
listed this housing stock as "obsolete," noted the "infiltration of Jews... and Negroes"
and the large number of people on relief (the New Deal version of Welfare) as justification for redlining the area. The result of this redlining was two-fold; first, it made accessing conventional forms of credit for home purchases and renovations difficult; and second, it fostered segregation of low income minorities in a neighborhood that was clearly racially diverse in 1937. Because most real estate is purchased with a mortgage, and banks would not lend against properties in redlined areas, most prospective buyers could not buy homes in the area at competitive prices, causing an artificial collapse of demand and property value. Without capital to fund repairs and renovations, homes in poor repair deteriorated over time. Indeed, when urban renewal's blight remediation via demolition was undertaken in the 1960s, the areas redlined in 1937 were those designated as blighted, and razed. The residential neighborhoods north of the redlined areas were not immune to the impact of redlining. The larger brick four-square homes built in the first 20 years of the 20th Century were interspersed with the estates of Pittsburgh's wealthy. However, the George F. Cram surveys noted "...negro encroachment threatening], calling it an obsolete, "...mediocre section of East Liberty."], and designated it as a higher risk for lenders. Though this area of the neighborhood declined in tandem with the greater East Liberty neighborhood, it was spared the greater destruction of Urban Renewal. Two decisions in the 1960s exacerbated the trends begun with redlining. The first was an attempt to halt a slow trickle of businesses from the City to the suburbs. In the early 1960s, a few of East Liberty's larger merchants saw that some residents of Pittsburgh's East End were moving to the suburbs, and that suburban shopping malls were consequently growing and expanding. These merchants feared that suburban development would harm East Liberty's status as a market center, and asked the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, City of Pittsburgh's Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) to take action. The URA proposed creating an outdoor pedestrian mall on Penn Avenue, to be surrounded by car-friendly roads on which large stores, surrounded by parking lots, could serve shoppers just as the new suburban stores were doing. This plan required the demolition of roughly half of the 254 ac (103 ha) that comprised East Liberty. As noted previously, the area targeted for demolition roughly aligned with those parts of the neighborhood redlined in 1937. After some contentious debate, the plan was approved, and the URA stopped traffic on the busiest part of Penn Avenue (the old Greensburg-Pittsburgh turnpike of Jacob Negley's day) and routed it onto a series of new, one-way thoroughfares (called Penn Circle) that formed a ring around the central business district. Many small shops were destroyed—a million square feet of retail space in all. These demolitions destroyed the dense, walkable commercial district and replaced much of it with unattractive parking lots and vacant properties, hastening the decline of the businesses that remained. While the URA was remaking the street plan of East Liberty, the City of Pittsburgh's

housing authority A housing authority or ministry of housing is generally a governmental body that governs aspects of housing or (called in general " shelter" or "living spaces"), often providing subsidies and low rent or free public housing to qualified people. ...

made a second set of changes to the neighborhood. Housing authority planners noted that the nearby

African-American neighborhood African-American neighborhoods or black neighborhoods are types of ethnic enclaves found in many cities in the United States. Generally, an African American neighborhood is one where the majority of the people who live there are African American ...

of Homewood was overcrowded, largely as a result of the URA's earlier demolition of the lower

Hill District The Hill District is a grouping of historically African American neighborhoods in the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Beginning in the years leading up to World War I, "the Hill" was the cultural center of black life in the city and a major ce ...

to create the Civic Arena, which had forced many of the Hill's African-Americans out and into the North Side and Homewood. The housing authority's solution was to build three large housing complexes, each close to 20 stories tall, in East Liberty along the new Penn Circle roads. These two measures ultimately failed to preserve East Liberty as a market center, and arguably hastened the old neighborhood's demise. By routing cars away from Penn Avenue, the URA's new street plan seemed to send a message that the neighborhood's commercial center was not worth visiting. The housing authority's massive housing complexes quickly developed a reputation as centers for crime, and this reputation likely did as much as the confusing street plan to drive commerce away from East Liberty. Redlining had already driven away middle class homebuyers, and the public housing complexes were exclusively for low-income renters. This created population demographics that were severely poor and unable to support a healthy commercial sector. Urban renewal had devastating consequences for the neighborhood. There were some 575 businesses in East Liberty in 1959 but only 292 in 1970 and just 98 in 1979. The businesses that remained tended not to serve the majority of nearby Pittsburghers, but only the captive audience that remained in what was now an urban ghetto. Steep population decline followed urban renewal. East Liberty became a segregated neighborhood with high poverty rates, low rates of homeownership, and a legacy of disinvestment that continued well after the Community Reinvestment Act eliminated redlining. In the past 20 years, the population fell from 7,973 in 1990 to 6,871 in 2000, and 5,698 in 2016. The reason for this is both the lingering effects of urban renewal and redlining. A 2018 study of demographic changes in East Liberty suggests that abandonment due to poor property condition drove the bulk of population change in East Liberty. Evidence of previous widespread abandonment exists both in the form of vacant lots which once held homes and in the presence of new homes and apartments built on previously vacant lots.

Renewed growth

In the three decades following 1980, East Liberty has slowly regained its status as a market destination for shoppers. In 1979, Mellon Bank, Pittsburgh National Bank, local property owners and other businesses created a nonprofit community development corporation, East Liberty Development, Inc. (ELDI). and hired an executive director, David Feehan. During the 1980s, a number of important developments occurred, spearheaded by ELDI, which acquired and renovated a vacant hotel (now 100 Sheridan Square); purchased the block that included the Regent Theater and Penn Highland Building; and worked with developers to bring the first market rate condo to the community and a new shopping center called East Liberty Station on Penn Avenue, east of Penn Circle. During the 1980s, the collection of small shops on Penn Circle South expanded, more than 200 businesses located in East Liberty, and more than $80 million was invested in real estate development. In the fifteen years following its founding, ELDI focused on rehabilitating some of the East Liberty's historic commercial spaces. These included the Regent Theater (now called th
Kelly-Strayhorn Theater
and Motor Square Garden. ELDI's rehabilitation projects were time-consuming, and they did not make the neighborhood the destination for shoppers that it had formerly been. For example, ELDI and the Massaro Corporation recreated the Motor Square Garden building as an indoor mall in 1988, but consumers did not respond. The American Automobile Association bought the building in bankruptcy court in 1991 and now uses it as office space. In addition to its moderately successful property rehabilitation efforts during the 1980s, ELDI was able to remove the failed pedestrian mall on Penn Avenue and return that thoroughfare to its traditional use as a

two-way street A two-way street is a street that allows vehicles to travel in both directions. On most two-way streets, especially main streets, a line is painted down the middle of the road to remind drivers to stay on their side of the road. Sometimes one por ...

. These successes set the stage for a large and somewhat controversial series of developments in the late 1990s and 2000s. Between 1996 and 2006, ELDI and the City of Pittsburgh worked to attract new “big box” retailers to East Liberty and to remove the 20-story housing projects that surrounded the neighborhood. First, ELDI and the City used

tax increment financing Tax increment financing (TIF) is a public financing method that is used as a subsidy for redevelopment, infrastructure, and other community-improvement projects in many countries, including the United States. The original intent of a TIF program i ...

to lure two national retailers to the neighborhood: Home Depot and Whole Foods. Both of these stores thrived, and their success convinced small local merchants and other national retailers to invest in the neighborhood. Second, after a complex and time-consuming set of transactions, two of the three housing projects that visually barricaded the neighborhood were demolished in 2005, and the third was demolished in May 2009. EastSide Pittsburgh

Because these efforts involved resettling the largely African-American population of East Liberty's housing projects and attracting several high-end retailers, ELDI and the City have been criticized for acting as agents of

Gentrification Gentrification is the process whereby the character of a neighborhood changes through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents (the "gentry") and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has ...

. Some of these concerns have been assuaged by new mixed-income residential developments which have begun to replace the demolished housing projects, as the new developments provide arguably nicer and safer accommodations for some of the projects’ former residents - but much fewer of them. By 2009, East Liberty more closely resembled the busy commercial neighborhood of 1959 than the struggling ghetto of 1979. Merchants continue to invest in the neighborhood, and outside observers consider it to be fully rehabilitated. In 2010, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' published an article about the revival of East Liberty, and cited the presence of a

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

office as a sign of the neighborhood's success. In 2011, the ''

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving Greater Pittsburgh, metropolitan Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Descended from the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', established in 1786 as the fi ...

'' published an article entitled "The trend toward shared working areas arrives" which describes the creation of The Beauty Shoppe, East Liberty's first

Coworking Coworking is an arrangement in which workers for different companies share an office space. It allows cost savings and convenience through the use of common infrastructures, such as equipment, utilities and receptionist and custodial services, a ...

space. The space is owned by East Liberty Development Inc and currently houses several start ups and small businesses. The first business tenant was Thinktiv, Inc., a venture accelerator. Thinktiv was part of The Beauty Shoppe redevelopment effort alongside East Liberty Development Inc. and Edile, a real estate development firm. The Highland Building hi-rise, vacant for 20 years, has been converted into luxurious apartments, as has the adjacent Wallace Building, through Walnut Capital, a local real estate company that also owns part of Bakery Square. In April 2014, the streets making up Penn Circle were renamed, removing a highly visible reminder of the failed urban renewal plans of the 1960s. Several historic street names were restored, and Centre Avenue was extended beyond its original (pre-1968) terminus at Penn Avenue to East Liberty Boulevard, affording visitors to the neighborhood a less confusing path toward the business district. In June 2014, USA Today named East Liberty one of the ten best up and coming neighborhoods around the USA.

Transportation

East Liberty is served by the East Liberty station, also called the East Liberty Transit Center, on the

Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway The Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway is a two-lane bus rapid transit, bus-only highway serving the city of Pittsburgh and many of its eastern neighborhoods and suburbs. It was named after Martin Luther King Jr. in recognition of the eastern ...

. This station was redeveloped in 2015. The publicly funded project aimed at

transit-oriented development In urban planning, transit-oriented development (TOD) is a type of Real estate development, urban development that maximizes the amount of Residential area, residential, business and leisure space within Pedestrian, walking distance of public t ...

, placing residents and retail in close proximity to mass transit in order to encourage urban density and discourage automobile use. The transit center increases accessibility to the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway that runs along the ravine where the Pennsylvania Railroad once ran. The busway connects Downtown with East End neighborhoods and eastern suburbs of Allegheny County. This $150 million project covers a total of 6 acres and added 3000 square feet of mixed-use commercial space. This project has been a catalyst for heated debates in the past three years about the lack of affordable housing in East Liberty. The project's tax abatement program, which is meant to encourage development in the East Liberty

transit district A transit district or transit authority is a government agency or a public-benefit corporation created for the purpose of providing public transportation within a specific region. A transit district may operate bus, rail or other types of ...

, has resulted in public funds being granted to private developers for high-end development, including hundreds of luxury apartments.

Culture

In 2009, the Remnant Choir from East Liberty's Mt. Ararat Baptist Church won second place, and $20,000 in prize money, in a national contest that was sponsored by

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...

, and was designed to find the "Best Church Choir in America."East Liberty church choir places 2nd in national contest
''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', November 10, 2009 Legendary actor and dancer

Gene Kelly Eugene Curran Kelly (August 23, 1912 – February 2, 1996) was an American dancer, actor, singer, director and choreographer. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style and sought to create a new form of American dance accessibl ...

was born in East Liberty in 1912.

David Tepper David Alan Tepper (born September 11, 1957) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager. He is the owner of the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer (MLS). Tepper is the founder and ...

, a business man, owner of the

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The N ...

Carolina Panthers The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South division. The t ...

and the

MLS Major League Soccer (MLS) is a professional soccer league in North America and the highest level of the United States soccer league system. It comprises 30 teams, with 27 in the United States and 3 in Canada, and is sanctioned by the United ...

Charlotte FC Charlotte Football Club is an American professional soccer club based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Eastern Conference. The team is owned by David Tepper, who was awarded the e ...

lived in East Liberty.

Gallery

File:AlphaTerraceHistoricDistrict.jpg, Alpha Terrace Historic District, built circa 1885, located at 716–740 and 721–743 North Beatty Street. File:EastLibertyMarket2.jpg, East Liberty Market (also known as Motor Square Garden), built from 1898 to 1900 by Pittsburgh banker

Andrew Mellon Andrew William Mellon (; March 24, 1855 – August 26, 1937), known also as A. W. Mellon, was an American banker, businessman, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector, and politician. The son of Mellon family patriarch Thomas Mellon ...

, at 5900 Baum Boulevard. File:Highland Building.jpg,

Highland Building The Highland Building is a thirteen-story building which is located in the East Liberty (Pittsburgh), East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. History and architectural features Construction on the building was completed in 1909, w ...

, built in 1909 by Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Frick, with Chicago's famed

Daniel Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the ''Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been "the most successful power broker the American archi ...

as architect, at 121 South Highland Avenue. File:Whitehill-Gleason Motors.jpg, Whitehill-Gleason Motors (built circa 1920s), on the site of the first Drive-In

Filling Station A filling station (also known as a gas station [] or petrol station []) is a facility that sells fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold are gasoline (or petrol) and diesel fuel. Fuel dispensers are used to ...

(191

at Baum and St. Clair Streets (5815 Baum Boulevard). File:DilworthElementarySchool.jpg, Dilworth Elementary School (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Dilworth Elementary School, a historic landmark built in 1915, located at 6200 Stanton Avenue. File:Penn Circle Pittsburgh.JPG, New restaurants near Centre Ave with East Liberty Presbyterian Church in background. File:East Liberty Target Pittsburgh.JPG, A

Target Target may refer to: Warfare and shooting * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artille ...

retail store contrasted by small shops and eateries on Centre Ave.

References

External links

East Liberty's Wall of FameEast Liberty Development, Inc.East Liberty Presbyterian ChurchKelly Strayhorn TheaterNew Transit hub story
* {{Authority control Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh Economy of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania National Register of Historic Places in Pittsburgh