Friendship (Pittsburgh)
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Friendship is a neighborhood of large Victorian houses in the East End of the City of Pittsburgh. It was built by upper middle class industrial managers at the dawn of the 20th century, abandoned in the 1960s, and rediscovered by graduate students and professionals in the 1990s.
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[edit] Location
Friendship is located some three miles east of Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle, and takes its name from Friendship Avenue, an east-west street running through the middle of the neighborhood.
The neighborhood is bordered by Bloomfield on the west (at South Graham Street), Garfield on the north (Penn Avenue), East Liberty on the east (Negley Avenue), and Shadyside on the south (Baum Boulevard).
However, the residential area directly west of Friendship, bounded by Liberty Avenue and Penn Avenue is locally referred to as being a part of Friendship, rather than Bloomfield.[citation needed] This is mainly due to the uniform continuation of large Victorian Mansions and wide avenues that distinctively mark Friendship.
[edit] History
Just after the American Revolution, early settler Casper Taub claimed Friendship, along with neighboring Bloomfield and Garfield, from the native Delaware tribe. Taub's son-in-law, Joseph Conrad Winebiddle, owned land and operated a tannery in nearby Lawrenceville, and used the profits to buy Taub's land. Winebiddle's holdings then passed to his four children. One daughter, daughter, Kitty Winebiddle, inherited what constitutes Friendship today. (Another daughter, Barbara, inherited the very eastern portion, and her husband, Jacob Negley, used it and holdings of his own to develop East Liberty).
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. Some residents claim that Friendship Avenue is named after an alleged friendship between Joseph Conrad Winebiddle and William Penn. But this is a myth: the men were not contemporaries, and William Penn never visited Western Pennsylvania.
The City of Pittsburgh annexed the Winebiddle clan's land in 1868, and the family began dividing the 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 early 1900s.
Friendship was therefore built as a streetcar suburb, and its houses are large, square homes designed for professional-class families in the Victorian period. 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 and East Liberty, on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield, and on Walnut Street in Shadyside. This lack of a retail area once meant a lack of identity: prior to the neighborhood's rediscovery in the 1990s, most residents described themselves as living in the closest neighborhood with a business district. Even today, some older residents think of themselves as being in Bloomfield or Shadyside.
Friendship's early history featured explosive growth, followed by a stunning decline. From 1900 through the 1950s, the neighborhood was inhabited by prosperous families who enjoyed the area's many charms. But beginning around 1960, many of these families moved to the suburbs: they were attracted by perceived opportunities outside the City, and repulsed by the construction of massive housing projects in nearby Garfield, and by a misguided urban renewal project's wholesale demolition of East Liberty. For some thirty years, the neighborhood steadily declined; the massive old Victorian houses were broken up into apartments, and many of their amenities were ripped out or painted over. By the 1980s, over 70% of the housing stock in Friendship was owned by landlords, many absentee.
In the 1990s, however, Friendship's fortunes started to improve. 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.
[edit] East End Revitalisation
Friendship is currently involved in the process of East End Revitalisation, a movement of the City of Pittsburgh to improve and develop the neighborhoods of Bloomfield, East Liberty, Garfield, Lawrenceville, and Point Breeze. The movement specifically focuses on reducing crime, attracting businesses to the area, and new construction.
[edit] Work
Friendship is a strictly residential neighborhood, and has few self-contained businesses or job opportunities. However, many of the local population are employed by nearby hospitals, most notably University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Friendship is within walking distance of UPMC - Shadyside, West Penn Hospital, and the new Chilren's Hospital on Penn Avenue, currently under construction. Another major employer is the University of Pittsburgh.
[edit] References
- Toker, Franklin [1986] (1994). Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0-8229-5434-6.
- ² Interactive Pittsburgh Neighborhoods Map.
