Brighton Heights is in Pittsburgh’s North Side.  The neighborhood of Perry North sits to the East and Marshall-Shadeland to the South.  Bellevue Borough and Ross Township are on the North and Stowe Township and McKees Rocks Borough are to the West.  The McKees Rocks Bridge serves as one entryway into the neighborhood at Ohio River Blvd.  Brighton Heights has an active neighborhood association, a lot of family-friendly neighborhood activity, and is sometimes referred to as an “urban suburb.”

Brighton Heights was once a predominantly German area.  Previously known as Davisville, the area became part of Allegheny City, annexed by the City of Pittsburgh in 1907.

Right next door, in Perry North, Brighton Heights residents have easy access to Riverview Park, known for its winding roads, hiking and equestrian trails.  The neighborhood is home to Brighton Heights Park (with baseball fields and a swimming pool), Marmaduke Park (home to Brighton Heights Dekhockey and and a fountain), and Legion Park (hosting several war memorials).  The business district on California Avenue is home to the Vault, former bank building, current coffee & tea shop.  The Vault is currently closed, but may possibly be reopening.

Over the last few years, Brighton Heights has received some media attention for being somewhat of an up-and-coming neighborhood.  Young families are moving in to take advantage of the reasonably priced housing, proximity to Downtown, and nearby amenities.  Property values are slowly but steadily rising as older housing is being redeveloped and the business district continues to grow.

We began our tour of Bon Air having recently walked its geographic and alphabetical neighbor, Beltzhoover.  This tour was a study in contrasts.  The neighborhood of Bon Air is a pocket of land in the south end, with few entrances or exits by road, and consequently, there is a very apparent distinction at the threshhold of the neighborhood, rather than the usual gradual change that we’ve seen at the borders of other neighborhoods.

We started at the intersection of Camfield Street and Bon Air Avenue, heading south down Camfield.

While we’ve already criss-crossed the span of this city, we’ve yet to venture outside the amorphous boundaries of the vast Steelers nation.

The day was sunny, and the lawns were green.  Most of the homes along these roads had sizeable yards and individual driveways.  We were on the lookout for white picket fences.

The slight hills provided a view of St. Joseph’s cemetery in Carrick.

There were a lot of children out enjoying the nice weather, including some kids playing hockey in the driveway.  Making a right on Drycove Street, we thought that if you lived here, you might forget that you lived in the borders of a mid-sized city.

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones picking up on Bon Air’s picket fence vibe.  Next, we came upon this manifestation of Tom Murphy’s Project Picket Fence.

This led to a paved trail that traversed the wooded hillside at the south end of the neighborhood.

Saw Mill Run Boulevard was visible from the trail, along with the T tracks that run through the neighborhood.

We backtracked along the trail and continued onto Conniston Street, where we came upon the Bon Air Parklet.

     
We continued through the parklet, past a war memorial, and came upon the now-closed Bon Air Elementary School on Fordyce Street.  The school evaded closure several times, with strong neighborhood support, but was finally closed in 2006.  The school had been a poster child for under-utilized facilities with under 100 students, but walking through the neighborhood, it was apparent why it would be so important to the people in this community.  With no other businesses or public meeting spaces, the school served as perhaps the only public building in the neighborhood.  The Bon Air Early Childhood Center, housed in the same building, remains open.

Fordyce Street was home to these two love birds.

Bon Air showed a lot of Penguin Pride, with the team about to start making its way through the playoffs.

To our right, at Caperton and  Fordyce, a set of sidewalk stairs ran up a residential street.  One teenaged Bon Air rebel, clad in fishnets, sat on her roof and took pictures of the neighborhood.

We turned left on Caperton Street and continued to loop around Roseton Avenue, onto Bon Air Avenue.  At the wood’s edge, we looked out into McKinley Park, with Beltzhoover in the distance.

On this view, we ended our tour of Bon Air.

Distance: 1.7 miles
Time: 1 1/2 hrs, at a leisurely pace

Bon Air is a small neighborhood of just under 900 people in Pittsburgh’s South End.  It borders Beltzhoover on the North, Knoxville on the East, Carrick on the East and South, and Brookline on the West.

Between McKinley Park and the other green space that outlines the neighborhood, Bon Air is a little bit insulated, which contributes to the feel of “Country living in the City.”  The neighborhood is just about entirely residential.

Bon Air was annexed by the City of Pittsburgh (along with West Liberty Borough, of which it was a part) in 1907.  Bon Air’s population boom took place in the 1940s and 1950s, when it grew from 100 to over 1,000.

The neighborhood currently has a T station, with quick access to downtown.  Bon Air Elementary, the only school in the neighborhood, was closed in 2006.

We began walking Bluff (a.k.a. Uptown) at the Birmingham Bridge, which overlooks the tight, narrow neighborhood that stretches from Oakland to Downtown.

Bluff sits along the Monongahela River, just across from the Southside Flats.

We started at Fifth Avenue and made our way toward Downtown, passing a variety of small shops, bars, and residential housing the whole way down.

Along this heavily traveled route, we saw a number of old, painted billboards, harking back to a time before we were fighting over LED billboards in our neighborhoods.

Signs that say “no loitering” are not uncommon, but something about a “no loafing” sign struck us as more of a guideline for the way we might (or might not) live our lives.

Continuing down Fifth, signs of now-fallen buildings butted heads with newer construction.

Residential housing is interspersed throughout this largely commercial district.

We passed a group of children and adults playing cards on the sidewalk, along with many pedestrians, then came upon the Excel Kitchen Center, housed in the former Fifth Avenue High School.  Built in 1894, it was the first fire-proof school in Pennsylvania and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

We continued down Fifth Avenue, passing several little dive bars and markets, which became more closely spaced as we moved nearer to Downtown.

We recommend a trip to Tile City if you ever need to re-tile your bathroom with . . . uh . . . erotic art?

We passed Nego Gato, a center for African-Brazilian arts and capoeira, then came upon this wonderful mural.

As we approached Mellon Arena, the bars and restaurants became more frequent, seemingly catering to crowds straggling in from arena events.

It became very apparent that we had chosen St. Patrick’s Day weekend in Pittsburgh, as a slew of the 200,000 people who attend our parade every year were walking the streets or had drunkenly filled the Irish walls of Shale’s Cafe.  The influence of our coming primary and Hillary Clinton’s jaunt in the parade left the crowd dotted with political buttons and the occasional war protester.

We stopped to indulge in some street food: hot sausage catered by (and made in house at!) Zarra’s restaurant in Oakland, served on bread from Sanchioli Bros., which you might recall from our Bloomfield post!

Uptown gives a shout out to Community in this graffiti mural.

We could now see the Arena sitting up in the Lower Hill.

We turned left at Diamond Street, then passed this obscenely skinny building, along with Robert Morris University’s Bayer Center.

A couple of guys in kilts passed us by, and then we turned left onto Boyd Street.  We turned left on Forbes and passed some drunken Duquesne Students, then ran into city councilman Bruce Kraus, who was on his way back to the Southside to tackle constituent complaints about rowdy revelers on the other side of the river.

We came upon the Armstrong Tunnels, the site of an accident infamous in these parts.

We passed Life’s Work, which provides workforce development for people with disabilities, and could see Mercy Hospital in the distance.

Next, we came to Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship, which provides transitional housing for homeless veterans, and the Uptown Senior Citizen’s Resource Center.

At this point, we discovered that we were in an area formerly known as the “furniture district,” having passed the Belmont Furniture building (which was the last independent furniture store in the district).

Sadly, these famous biscuits are no longer.

We arrived at the Pittsburgh Association for the Deaf, then passed the Arena Health Club (a private, 24-hr men’s club with Russian and Turkish baths , which was the site of a fire in 2002).

Further down Forbes, we passed the Corinthian Baptist Church and signs of a neighborhood watch.

 
We turned right onto Seneca Street, then right at Tustin Street, passing a playground.

While Fifth seemed to have very few vacant buildings, the Forbes area showed more signs of struggle.  Most of this block was up for sheriff’s sale.

At Jumonville, we discovered an entirely different kind of block watch.

This resident, a self-proclaimed “recluse,” has a near obsession with keeping tabs on neighbors.  He or she keeps a website chronicling the findings and posts the address on the front of the house: http://www.neighbors.pitas.com.

Crossing Gist Street, roosters crowing in the background, we captured the neighborhood art that has popped up around James Simon’s studio.  Simon hosts the Gist Street Reading Series and has spearheaded an effort to introduce more public art into the neighborhood.

We made a left at Marion, then a right at Locust, heading up to Mercy Hospital.  Now part of the UPMC empire, Mercy was Pittsburgh’s first hospital and the first Mercy hospital in the nation.

We made a right at Stevenson Street, a left at Forbes, and a left at Magee, heading up to the Duquesne University campus.  Duquesne is a Catholic university with just over 10,000 students.

It’s a small, walkable campus, which overlooks Downtown and the rest of the Uptown neighborhood.

From the top of the hill, you can also see the county jail, which sits on 2nd Avenue.

At the back of the campus, we stumbled upon the “Lourdes Grotto,” donated by Phi Sigma Kappa.  Apparently, frat boys have really changed since we were in school.

We took McAnulty Drive back down to Forbes Avenue and headed home. 

Bluff provided a great walk and a great introduction to our newest member of the walking team: Mia!

Distance: 5 miles
Time: 4 hrs, at a leisurely pace, including lunch, chat, and a wayward dog

The Bluff neighborhood (more often called Uptown or sometimes Soho) of the City of Pittsburgh sits along the North Bank of the Monongahela River to Fifth Avenue and runs between the Birmingham Bridge and the Liberty Bridge.  It borders Downtown on the West, Crawford-Roberts and West Oakland on the North, and South Oakland on the East.  The South Side Flats are just across the River on the South.

In the early 19th Century, James Tustin bought much of the land in the area and built an estate at Wyandotte (now Jumonville) between Forbes and the Mon.  Tustin named the area after Soho in England.  In 1846, Pittsburgh annexed the area as part of Pitt Township.  Around this time, a number of wealthy Pittsburghers lived in rowhouses in the area.  Starting in the late 1840s and early 1850s, mills began to pop up just to the east, and immigrant workers began to move into the area.  Starting in the 1950s, the neighborhood began to see decline due (in a large part) to urban renewal.

Today, Bluff is home to Duquesne University, Mercy Hospital, and a number residents who are working to revitalize the neighborhood.  The neighborhood has over a dozen bus routes and tens of thousands of commuters who ride through the neighborhood, but there are a few stores and events that are also a draw: the Gist Street reading series features poets and other writers from around the country monthly at James Simon’s studio and Little Earth, a brand that claims to have introduced the word “ecofashion” into the world, has its global headquarters here.

We began our tour of Bloomfield on a cold, but clear day at the corner of Liberty Ave. and Main St., which would later turn into a blustery, snowy day, thus initiating our first official walk in the winter snow.

Travelers coming from Downtown or the Bloomfield Bridge are greeted by this prominent display of neighborhood identity.

The first leg of our walk would be a quick loop through the Lawrenceville side of Bloomfield, heading west along Liberty Avenue.  Bloomfield’s boundaries tend to be a little fuzzy on just about every side, especially where the neighborhood is surrounded by Lawrenceville, Friendship, Shadyside, and Oakland.

We first came upon Iron Eden, Bloomfield’s home for hand-forged iron works, which displayed a number of their intricate fences and sculptures around the studio.

From Liberty and Ewing, we caught a glimpse of the Bloomfield Bridge and the East Busway, which cut through the hillside, then made a right onto 40th Street. 

The Woolslair School and adjacent Lutheran church (now refashioned into the Choir Loft Condominiums) reveals the original German heritage of the neighborhood.

We turned right onto Mintwood Street.  The housing in this area is quintessential Bloomfield: compact, multi-colored rows.

We turned left at Fisk Street, then made a right onto Penn Avenue.

We passed Tram’s Kitchen, a perennial winner of Best Southeast Asian Restaurant in the City Paper.

The houses facing Penn Avenue showcase restored Victorian detail.

Next up was the brillobox, home of Starving Artist Sunday Suppers, Youtube happy hour, and the monthly Big Throwback, among other hipster-friendly events.

Making a right onto Main Street, we passed this mysteriously-named bar.

Now in the area branded as the “Penn Main Business District,”  we continued past the Humble Beginnings art and coffee shop and Twisters, home of the best ice cream sandwich in town (for under a buck!).

We crossed Liberty Avenue, making our way through the parking lot of the iconic Bloomfield Bridge Tavern (the Polish Party House!) and its scrumptious pierogies.

We entered into the residential maze that lies behind the parking lot of the BBT and continued south on Ella Street.  The smells of all the restaurants along Liberty Avenue followed us there, and we passed by the Bloomfield pool and recreation center.  We also came upon two patriotic geese at this gloriously ornamented house on Ella Street!

We hope that this forlorn pet-lover found Rupert and all of his, um, parts.

We began to descend the long set of stairs down Ella, to Lorigan Street.  On our way down, we noticed this delightful little surprise attached to one of the stairs.

And further down, this.

It didn’t stop there.  As we made it to the bottom, it became clear that we had wandered into someone’s secret guerilla art garden!

Looking behind us, we found some inspiration on the risers of the stairs, where we had just been.

About this time, it started to snow.  We veered right on Juniper, past this garage.

We followed Edmond back around to Lorigan Street, past Sanchioli Bros. Bakery and the Lorigan Street Bar, and made a right on Pearl.  We passed one of the many tributes to Mary that we encountered in Bloomfield.

At Pearl and Liberty, we passed the Immaculate Conception/St. Joseph Church, and the snow picked up.

This parking meter is a great image of Bloomfield’s Italian pride.

We looped around the church and took a right on Garnet, then a left on Essex, walking by this guy.

We took a left on Edmond, a right on Sciota, a right on Mathilda, and a left on Cypress. 

What are you looking at!?

We walked through the  playground and made a right onto Baum, near Ritters Diner, the 2 a.m. refuge of many a bar-goer.

Continuing down Baum, we entered into the Baum-Center Corridor, the site of new development spurred by the Hillman Cancer Center and guided by a coalition of citizens, community organizations, and developers who created a shared vision for design in the corridor.

We crossed over the tracks and busway.

We made a right on Millvale, right before the (currently closed) Millvale Bridge, and a left on Morewood.  We made a left at Enfield, past the Carnegie Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, and a right at Maripoe.  We turned left at Centre, where we passed a number of large apartment buildings and old mansions.

We walked by the new Mariott hotel on Centre Avenue and another neighborhood war memorial.

We came to the First United Methodist Church at Centre and Aiken, where we turned left.

The housing style in this part of Bloomfield is distinctly different, as the houses are much larger, with individual yards and large porches.

We made a left on Harriet, a right on Atlantic, and a left on Friendship Avenue.  We passed the Greater Pittsburgh Christian Temple and the Evaline Lutheran Church.  We came upon this grouping of houses, which had worked together to create this beautiful display of stars.

We arrived at the now snow-covered Friendship Park.

We strolled through the park and then passed West Penn Hospital and the School of Nursing, the first in the nation to admit male students.  We passed Nico’s Recovery Room at Pearl Street, a Greek restaurant and bar with karaoke fame.

This nameless entity is pretty typical of neighborhood dive bars carved out of old houses around the city.

We made a right on Carroll, past some blaring punk music, a left on Cullen, and a right on Penn Avenue.  We came upon the Graveyard Grill, across from the Allegheny Cemetery, the Metamorphose gallery, this friendly cow, and the Eastside Neighborhood Employment Center.

We found this establishment to be very macabre.

We passed the new building for the Children’s Home of Pittsburgh, which provides adoption services and pediatric specialty care.  Next, we found some great public art along Penn Avenue.

This mural on The Quiet Storm comments on the reinvention of the Penn Avenue Corridor as a link between Bloomfield, Garfield, Friendship, East Liberty, and Shadyside.  At this point, we stopped into the Quiet Storm, a vegetarian/vegan cafe, to grab some hot chocolate and warm our bones.

The sun dropped quickly while we were inside, and we headed out to finish the tour.  We hurried down Graham and made a right on Baum, then a right on Liberty.

This section of Liberty has recently received dedicated bike lanes, and Bloomfield is a hot spot for bike culture in Pittsburgh.

Liberty Avenue is Bloomfield’s business district and host to a large variety of shops, restaurants, and services.

Liberty Avenue offers its eats at Alexander’s, Cafe Roma, Crazy Mocha, Del’s, Grasso Roberto, Lombardozzi’s, Mezzanotte, Paddy Cake Bakery, Pleasure Bar, Pollack’s, Silky’s Pub, Tessaro’s, and others.  Bloomfield also offers two Italian groceries–Groceria Italiana (on Cedarville) and Donatelli’s. 

 
The Big Idea, which sits at Liberty and Millvale, is a 100% volunteer-run bookshop dedicated to promoting radical and alternative cultures through community networks and the distribution of literature.

Dreaming Ant, the rental store housed in the Bloomfield Crazy Mocha, is a great source for all kinds of film, including indie, foreign, documentary, and gay and lesbian genres.

Bloomfield is a diverse neighborhood with a thriving residential and commercial life, and its streets make for a great walk.

Distance: 7.6 miles
Time: 4 hrs (at a very leisurely pace, in the snow) 

Other Bloomfield tours:
Pop City
Tunesmith & Anthony
Visit Pittsburgh

Bloomfield’s name is thought to refer to the blooming fields of wildflowers that filled the area long before any development sprung up.  A journal entry written by George Washington  referred to “the high ground through a field of many blooms”.

Bloomfield is a mixed residential-commercial neighborhood in Pittsburgh’s East End.  It is bordered by Lawrenceville and Garfield on the North (Penn Ave), Friendship on the East (S Graham), Shadyside on the South (East Busway and Centre Ave), and North Oakland on the West (40th Street and Bloomfield Bridge).

Bloomfield today is known mostly for the Italian heritage of many of its residents, but going back, the neighborhood had German roots.  The area was first divided from farmland into residential lots by Joseph Conrad Winebiddle (namesake of one of Bloomfield’s streets).  Many German immigrants–mostly mill workers from Lawrenceville–bought these lots and developed them throughout the 1800s.  Bloomfield was part of Peebles Township, which was annexed by the City of Pittsburgh in 1868.  In the early 1900s, Italians (many coming from the Abruzzi region of Italy) began to move into the neighborhood.

Today, Bloomfield houses many second and third generation Italian-Americans, and the Post-Gazette documents in this article and slideshow how the cultural roots are alive today.  Bloomfield’s heritage is also evident in the Little Italy Days festival, held annually.  Councilman Bill Peduto, who represents part of the neighborhood on Pittsburgh’s City Council, often says that he loves representing Bloomfield because it’s a microcosm of Pittsburgh itself.  Throughout the neighborhood, you have blue-haired elderly ladies living next door to blue-haired mohawked kids.

Bloomfield has not only grown to house a diverse array of residents, but the business district along Liberty Avenue boasts a mod podge of stores and restaurants ranging from Italian eateries to independent video stores to a religious boutique.

This year–as  part of the City of Pittsburgh’s bike plan–biking in Bloomfield got better with the completion of bike lanes along Liberty Avenue.

With storm clouds having chased us clear out of Beltzhoover for the past two weekends, we swore that on this day, we would do the walk, rain or shine.  It was rain.  We started at the corner of East Warrington and Beltzhoover Avenue, ready for the soggy feet that lay ahead.

We began the trek down East Warrington, following the T tracks that run down the center of the road. 

At Warrington and Estella, we approached the Warrington Recreation Center, a community center that offers after-school programs and sports leagues (in collaboration with YouthPlaces), community meeting space, and a public pool.

Colorful mosaics and graffiti surround the area.

Two monuments honoring the 18th ward veterans of World Wars I and II stand alongside the rec center, which we’ve noted to be a presence in many of the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh.

As we continued down Warrington, we picked up a stray glove, striped and girl-sized, which we’re excited to submit to onecoldhand.com.

We passed the Dari-Delite and Red’s Ringside Cafe.  The Dari-Delite was closed (permanently or seasonally?), and Red’s represented one of the few still-operating businesses we encountered in the neighborhood.

Toys and miniature playground equipment were strewn about the yard of this home-turned-daycare center.

When the rain showed up, the snow departed, but that didn’t stop Beltzhoover from showing us its holiday spirit.

As we walked around, it was apparent that the neighborhood is also struggling with a great deal of blight, as evidenced here (plywood on the door, door on the porch).

We turned left and took the Laverne Street stairs up to Industry Street, where we took a left.

We took a right on Vincent and a left on Climax. 

Ironically, this was just about the only yard in the neighborhood where we didn’t encounter dogs rushing out to greet (eat) us!

We crossed Estella street, walking past some neighborhood graffiti.  Zhoov is a common tag around BeltZHOOVer. 

We came upon this unfinished mural and tribute to Beltzhoover-based record label Greedy Recordz, which houses local artists such as Waxx Netty, Mr. Greedy, and Ruff Bone.

From Climax, we turned right onto Curtin Avenue.

This was one of several houses in this area of the neighborhood where garbage bags and debris were piled waist-high in what seemed to be an occupied property.

We took a right onto Cedarhurst, where we found a view of Mt. Washington in the distance.

On Cedarhurst, we passed the now-closed Beltzhoover Elementary.

We took a right on Delmont.  At the corner of Delmont and Freeland, we spotted a row of newly- constructed houses.

We passed another community center at the intersection of Freeland and Gearing, and then continued onto Lafferty Ave, where we saw what remained of a snowman who’s seen better days.

Lafferty ends at Boggston Avenue, which has an entrance to the T station.

We rounded the corner onto Sylvania Street, where we saw the truck for T’z Hot Spot, “ribz and dibz made hot ta hit ta spot!”  (Probably not going far with that flat tire. . .)

As we continued down Sylvania, this truck entered into competition with T’z for our favorite truck on the street.

Sylvania Avenue was host to a spotty mix of vacant and occupied housing, as well as a corner store.

We made a right onto Delmont Avenue and a left onto Chalfont Street, passing three churches in quick succession: Full Life Deliverance Ministries (housed at St. Paul AME), Beulah Baptist Church, and South Hills Baptist Church.

We turned right on Curtin and right on Michigan, which runs alongside the wooded McKinley Park.  The housing that borders the park, such as these houses along Delmont, is made up of larger units and more well-kempt yards.

We entered the park on Gearing Ave., passing the Elder-ado Senior Center.  This side of the park offers basketball courts and trails that run south and east.

We followed a trail that let us out at the south end, near Bausman Street, where the park opens up to more basketball courts, baseball fields, tennis courts, a playground, and Pittsburgh’s first public skate park.

Leaving the park, we took the sidewalk stairs of Bernd Street and made a right at Zelda Way.

We made a left onto Beltzhoover Avenue, back toward our starting location, and passed a number of new homes, created as part of the Hilltop Housing Initiative, which is a project of Beltzhoover Citizens Community Development Corporation, Southside Local Development Company, and Jaxon Development Company.  These are the first of about 50 houses to be built in Beltzhoover, Knoxville, and Allentown, priced at $125- to $140,000, all of which appear to be currently for sale.

Although Beltzhoover appeared to be the most impoverished and struggling neighborhood we have walked over the course of this project, our walk revealed its assets as well–access to a beautiful park, strong community organizations, and an ongoing effort to bring new interest to the neighborhood.

Distance: 4.5 miles
Time: 1 hr, 45 min (with soggy feet)

Pittsburgh is ranked #9 most walkable city, according to a Brookings Institution study that surveyed the top 30 U.S. metro areas.

In the study, Chris Leinberger identified walkable urban areas, which are dense, mixed-use, compact,  accessible by multiple transportation means, and walkable for nearly every destination once in place.  The urban areas were ranked as the number of “walkable places” per capita.  The study identified three walkable places for Pittsburgh:  Downtown, Oakland, and South Side.  (I suspect that a number of our other neighborhoods ought to qualify as well–Lawrenceville and Central North Side immediately come to mind–but for the sake of the study, we’ll take them at their word.)

In an interview on Marketplace, Leinberger attributed the driving force behind the residential growth of walkable urban communities to Gen-Xers from the suburbs who were raised on “Seinfeld, Friends, and Sex and the City: All showing a safe, lively, hip, walkable urban existance”, and who are willing to shell out up to three times as much for a condo in a walkable downtown area than they would pay to live in a drivable suburb.  I’m not sure that I completely buy this analysis as it relates to Pittsburgh specifically, but the sentiment that New Urbanism is being embraced by the young professional set certainly rings true.

An interesting aspect of the study was that they looked at the prevalence of light rail transit in walkable areas and found that there seems to be a potential for it to play a role in catalyzing walkable urban development.  They noted that of Pittsburgh’s three walkable areas, only one (Downtown) has rail access.  With the exception of Seattle, all of the metro areas that rank ahead of Pittsburgh have rail access to at least 40% of their walkable areas.  In Boston and Portland, that number is 100%.

Pittsburgh ranked behind Washington DC (1), Boston (2), San Francisco (3), Denver (4), Portland (5), Seattle (6), Chicago (7), and Miami (8).  We were ranked just ahead of New York (10), San Diego (11), Los Angeles (12), and Philadelphia (13).  The bottom three were Cincinnati (28), Cleveland (29), and Tampa (30).

(h/t Briem at Null Space)

Beltzhoover is a Hilltop neighborhood in Pittsburgh’s South End.  It is bordered by Mt. Washington on the North and West, Bon Air on the South, and Knoxville and Allentown on the East.

Beltzhoover has a lot in common with Allentown:  Both neighborhoods were settled in the late 1800s, largely by German families moving up the hill from the South Side, and both neighborhoods were laid out by Joseph Allen.  The neighborhood was named for Melchior Beltzhoover, a German landowner and farmer who lived in the area from 1794 to the early 1800s.  The area was annexed by the City of Pittsburgh in 1898.

McKinley Park takes up much of the land in South Beltzhoover.  In the 1800s, the land was known as Butchers’ Grove and was a popular spot for butchers and slaughterhouse employees to have oxen roasts.  Today, the Park is home to the City’s first free public skate park.

The neighborhood is struggling with vacant housing, violent crime, and vandalism.  Neighbors have joined other Hilltop communities in a community planning process to address these issues.  The South Side Local Development Co is building new homes along Beltzhoover Ave as part of a revitalization strategy that also provides grants to low- and moderate-income families for home renovations.  One of Beltzhoover’s long-time community advocates, Sherman Wellons, recently passed away.  Along with his many other accomplishments, Wellons helped put together a group of Beltzhoover men called Big Daddies to keep peace in the neighborhood following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.