Regent Square (Pittsburgh)

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The Regent Square Theatre

Regent Square is a distinct neighborhood in the East End area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and including parts of the Boroughs of Edgewood, Swissvale and Wilkinsburg. Much of the neighborhood is included in zip code 15218, and the part of the neighborhood within the City of Pittsburgh is represented on the City Council by the council member for District 5 (Southeast Neighborhoods). However, despite an active community association and a strong local identity, the neighborhood is divided among four municipal governments and three school districts.

The tree-lined neighborhood is situated along both sides of Braddock Avenue between the Parkway East (i.e. Interstate 376) and Forbes Avenue. While the area of the present neighborhood was owned by a series of local landowners, including Col. Dunning McNair in the late 18th and Judge William Wilkins in the late 19th century, the name "Regent Square" was apparently bestowed by William E. Harmon of Harmon Realty, who in 1919 acquired most of the present neighborhood, then known as the Devon Plan. First calling it Regent Place, he later changed the name to Regent Square. By the mid-20th century, Regent Square was a quietly prosperous garden suburb characterized by middle and upper-middle income residents, a significant number of whom were managerial or professional employees of the Westinghouse Corporation. The neighborhood at that time had a distinctly Irish ethnic character, still evident in the names of several businesses along Braddock Avenue.

At the turn of the 21st century Regent Square, like much of Pittsburgh's East End, had come to be characterized by a large proportion of upper-middle class professionals associated with the city's medical and educational institutions. These residents share the neighborhood with a significant number of students and younger singles attracted to its proximity to Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the 550-acre Frick Park, and readily available mass transit to downtown Pittsburgh.

Regent Square's grid street plan and Victorian and 'Tween-Wars architecture, with houses built close to each other and porches close to the tree-lined sidewalks, tend to promote a sense of community rare in less densely-built modern suburban neighborhoods. As a result, both residents and visitors often remark on the sense of living in a "village", a sense which is accentuated by the geographical isolation of the neighborhood, cut off as it is from surrounding districts by Frick Park to the west and north and the valley of Nine Mile Run to the south. However, in common with other parts of the greater Pittsburgh region, Regent Square faces challenges created by an aging population, a superabundance of municipal governments, and relatively high levels of property and other taxes.