Friendship (Pittsburgh)
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Friendship is a
neighborhood A neighbourhood (British English, Irish English, Australian English and Canadian English) or neighborhood (American English; see spelling differences) is a geographically localised community within a larger city, town, suburb or rural area, ...
of large Victorian houses in the
East End The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...
of the City of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
, United States, about four miles (6 km) east of Pittsburgh's
Golden Triangle Golden Triangle may refer to: Places Asia * Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia), named for its opium production * Golden Triangle (Yangtze), China, named for its rapid economic development * Golden Triangle (India), comprising the popular tourist ...
. Friendship is bordered on the north by
Garfield ''Garfield'' is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis. Originally published locally as ''Jon'' in 1976, then in nationwide syndication from 1978 as ''Garfield'', it chronicles the life of the title character Garfield the cat, his human ...
(at Penn Avenue), on the east by East Liberty (at Negley Avenue), on the south by Shadyside (at Centre Avenue), and on the west by Bloomfield (at either Graham Street, according to the City of Pittsburgh, or at Gross Street, according to the Friendship Community Group). It is divided into three Pittsburgh City Council districts (7, 8, and 9).


History

Before the American Revolution, settler Casper Taub stole Friendship, along with neighboring Bloomfield and
Garfield ''Garfield'' is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis. Originally published locally as ''Jon'' in 1976, then in nationwide syndication from 1978 as ''Garfield'', it chronicles the life of the title character Garfield the cat, his human ...
, from the native
Delaware tribe The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory inclu ...
. In 1762, British Colonel
Henry Bouquet Henry Bouquet (born Henri Louis Bouquet; 1719 – 2 September 1765) was a Swiss mercenary who rose to prominence in British service during the French and Indian War and Pontiac's War. He is best known for his victory over a Native American ...
recognized Taub's title to the land in exchange for Taub's promise to sell crops to the British garrison at Fort Pitt. Taub's daughter Elizabeth married Joseph Conrad Winebiddle, a German immigrant who moved to Lawrenceville in 1771, founded a tannery, and used the profits to buy Taub's land. Winebiddle's holdings then passed to his four children. One daughter, Kitty Winebiddle, inherited what constitutes Friendship today. Many of the streets in the area take their names from members of the Winebiddle clan, including Winebiddle, Roup (Kitty Winebiddle married a John Roup), Aiken, Negley, and Baum. The City of Pittsburgh annexed the East End in 1868, and the Winebiddle clan began dividing their land into plots and selling them. What is now Bloomfield was developed first and was divided into narrow plots and used for rowhouses. The Roup holdings—today's Friendship—began to be developed later, when trolleys running along Baum Boulevard extended beyond Bloomfield in the 1890s. Friendship was therefore built as a
streetcar suburb A streetcar suburb is a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. Such suburbs developed in the United States in the years before the automobile, when ...
, and its houses are large, square homes designed for professional-class families in the
Victorian period In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian ...
. These homes have elaborate architectural embellishments, and are located on some of the only flat streets in the City of Pittsburgh. As a streetcar suburb, Friendship lacks its own business district, but its residents have access to shopping on Penn Avenue in nearby
Garfield ''Garfield'' is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis. Originally published locally as ''Jon'' in 1976, then in nationwide syndication from 1978 as ''Garfield'', it chronicles the life of the title character Garfield the cat, his human ...
and East Liberty, on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield, and on Walnut Street in Shadyside. From the 1890s through the 1950s, Friendship was inhabited by prosperous families. Beginning around 1960, many of these families moved to the
suburbs A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
: they were attracted by perceived opportunities outside the city, and repulsed by the construction of massive
housing projects Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...
in nearby
Garfield ''Garfield'' is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis. Originally published locally as ''Jon'' in 1976, then in nationwide syndication from 1978 as ''Garfield'', it chronicles the life of the title character Garfield the cat, his human ...
, and by a misguided urban renewal project's wholesale demolition of East Liberty. After a zoning change in the 1950s, landlords broke the massive old Victorian houses up into multi-unit apartments, and ripped out or painted over many of their amenities in the process.The Moving Guide to Friendship
Pop City ''Pop City'' was a weekly online magazine whose content focused on news and features about Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The content focused on talent, innovation, diversity, and environment. The magazine was published between 2006 and 2015. History ...
By the 1980s, over 70% of the housing stock in Friendship was owned by landlords, many absentee. Friendship experienced something of a second birth in the late 1980s. Urban homesteaders began to move into Friendship, looking past the blight to see an opportunity to buy large homes with features—high ceilings, plaster walls, stained-glass windows, and ornate woodwork—that were not available in newer suburban homes. Because these new residents were focused on the housing stock, they saw Friendship as a unique neighborhood in its own right, with homes distinct from those in any of the bordering neighborhoods. By the early 1990s, the newcomers had succeeded in getting the neighborhood known as "Friendship," and had organized a Friendship Preservation Group to advocate for the area, and a subsidiary, the Friendship Development Associates, to buy and rehabilitate the most dilapidated properties. By 2004, a number of artists and architects had gravitated to the neighborhood, and its future seemed bright.


Name and identity

Friendship takes its name from Friendship Avenue, an east-west thoroughfare that runs from Bloomfield to East Liberty. Some residents claim that Friendship Avenue is named after an alleged friendship between Joseph Conrad Winebiddle and
William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy a ...
. But this is a myth: the men were not contemporaries, and William Penn never visited Western Pennsylvania. Friendship Avenue in fact takes its name from a local farm that stood at the corner of Friendship and Roup and was named "Friendship" by its owner, one of Penn's descendants, who like Penn was a member of the religious
Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
. As a wholly residential neighborhood, Friendship lacked an initial identity: early residents considered themselves to be living, not in Friendship, but in the nearest neighborhood with a business district. Since the 1990s newer residents, who are focused on the housing stock that makes Friendship distinct from its neighbors, and are often involved in organizations like the Friendship Preservation Group, have successfully encouraged the wider Pittsburgh community to call the area "Friendship" and to consider it as a unique neighborhood. Because "Friendship" is a new name for an old neighborhood, Friendship's western border with Bloomfield is to some extent a disputed one. The City of Pittsburgh's mapping department defines neighborhoods to be contiguous with federal census tracts, and as a result considers Friendship to abut Bloomfield at South Graham Street, at the western edge of census tract 807. However, the Friendship Community Group and most current residents consider the border between Bloomfield and Friendship to lie at Gross Street, where Bloomfield's provincial frame rowhouses end and Friendship's stand-alone Victorian brick houses begin. This western boundary includes census tract 806 and parts of tract 809, and corresponds to City of Pittsburgh zoning maps from the 1920s, but were formally defined by neighborhood surveys between 1990 and 1994, in which residents of Friendship, Garfield, Bloomfield, and Lawrenceville were asked to identify their own neighborhood.


Work

Friendship is a strictly residential neighborhood, but many residents are employed by nearby hospitals and universities, including the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is a $23billion integrated global nonprofit health enterprise that has 92,000 employees, 40 hospitals with more than 8,000 licensed beds, 800 clinical locations including outpatient sites and do ...
, the
University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...
and
Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
. Friendship is within easy walking distance of UPMC – Shadyside,
West Penn Hospital The Western Pennsylvania Hospital, commonly referred to as "West Penn Hospital", is located at 4800 Friendship Avenue in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The 317-bed hospital is part of the Allegheny Health Network. It serv ...
, and the new Children's Hospital on Penn Avenue and is about a half-hour on foot from the hospitals and universities in
Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
.


See also

* The Bulletin, a monthly community newspaper serving Friendship and surrounding neighborhoods.


References


Further reading

*


See also

*
List of Pittsburgh neighborhoods This is a list of 90 neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Generally neighborhood development followed ward boundaries, although the City Planning Commission has defined some neighborhood areas. The map of neighbor ...


External links


Interactive Pittsburgh Neighborhoods MapPittsburgh Port Authority Website
{{Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh Streetcar suburbs