Allentown is a neighborhood located in the southern portion of the city of
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 ...
. The ZIP code used by residents is 15210, and has representation on the Pittsburgh City Council by the council member for District 3 (Central South Neighborhoods).
History
Beltzhoover Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare that separates Allentown and
Knoxville
Knoxville is a city in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located on the Tennessee River and had a population of 190,740 at the 2020 United States census. It is the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division ...
(to the east) from
Beltzhoover and
Mt. Washington (to the west). The city of Pittsburgh expanded and absorbed these areas lying southward of the original city of Pittsburgh.
Allentown was carved out of
St. Clair Township, which was one of the original townships of
Allegheny County. On April 26, 1827, Joseph Allen, an Englishman, purchased the land that would eventually be known as Allentown from Jeremiah Warder. Incorporated on March 2, 1870, and annexed by the City of Pittsburgh on April 2, 1872, Allentown was settled by many skilled German immigrants who established businesses. Welsh, Irish, and English settlers made up the second largest immigrant population.
Allentown developed quickly due to its convenient location to
downtown Pittsburgh
Downtown Pittsburgh, colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle, and officially the Central Business District, is the urban downtown center of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River an ...
as well as due to the available transportation. Two main roads south from Pittsburgh merged on the hilltop in Allentown: Washington Road (today’s Warrington Avenue) and Brownsville Turnpike Road (today’s Arlington Avenue). The neighborhoods were connected at first by
horse-drawn streetcars and later by the electric
streetcar
A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some include s ...
. In 1888 Allentown became the first site west of the
Allegheny Mountains
The Allegheny Mountain Range ( ) — also spelled Alleghany or Allegany, less formally the Alleghenies — is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada. Historically it represented a significant barr ...
to operate an electric streetcar. Ever since then
the trolley, or ‘T’, has run up Warrington Avenue, Allentown's main thoroughfare, keeping hilltop residents connected to downtown Pittsburgh. Today, though, the T does not make any stops in the neighborhood, and the line (most recently known as the Port Authority's Brown Line) is used as an emergency route when the
South Hills Transit Tunnel is closed. In the past, there were also five inclines that served Allentown, the most famous of which was the curved
Knoxville Incline
The Knoxville Incline was a broad gauge inclined railway that ran between Pittsburgh's South Side and Allentown neighborhoods. The incline was built in 1890 and had a track gauge of .
History
The charter for this railway entered the plannin ...
with a station at the intersection of Warrington and Arlington Avenues. Several bus routes, and many more roads connect the neighborhood with the downtown, South Side, and beyond.
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 neighb ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
Interactive Pittsburgh Neighborhoods Map
{{Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh
Populated places established in 1870
1872 disestablishments in Pennsylvania
1870 establishments in Pennsylvania