Mount Washington (Pittsburgh, Allentown, Shiloh: real estate, apartments, condo)

[jinxd_13]

I am sorry I had to post a new thread but every time I search the threads I get tons of stuff about hot spots in PGH. I need to know how the neighborhood is for living. Is it pretty safe? How about the schools? I have noticed the prices steadily get lower the further away from the river you get. is it worse there or just cheaper? As always , I appreciate all ya'lls help

[barneyg]

Originally Posted by jinxd_13

I am sorry I had to post a new thread but every time I search the threads I get tons of stuff about hot spots in PGH. I need to know how the neighborhood is for living. Is it pretty safe? How about the schools? I have noticed the prices steadily get lower the further away from the river you get. is it worse there or just cheaper? As always , I appreciate all ya'lls help

Safety = OK for a city neighborhood. It's definitely much better than other neighborhoods around it such as Allentown and Knoxville. Still, my feeling (no stats to prove this) is that it isn't as safe as Bloomfield, which I guess would be a comparable working-class neighborhood.

Schools = Pittsburgh Public School District. Rather average I would guess.

Worse or just cheaper = probably both. If you haven't been there, you have to know that only Grandview Ave (right by the cliff that overlooks the Monongahela) has large, renovated houses. The rest of the neighborhood is rather hilly, but is mostly (but not all) going downhill as you go further away from the river, so you don't get views, and the houses are likely to be smaller, although there's a lot of variety in the neighborhood and you can still find gems.

[jinxd_13]

Thanx and I ahven't been there though I am dying to. Is Grandview where most of the shops and restaurants are?

[guylocke]

Is Grandview where most of the shops and restaurants are?

Yep, most.

[Drover]

Yeh, there's nothing particularly special about the back side of Mt. Washington. Your average dog-eared, tired, old-school blue-collar neighborhood with nothing really to recommend for or against it. It's a place to rest your head and not much else.

[Hopes]

Grandview Avenue seems to only have restaurants, not shopping. My son and I were there a month ago, and I think Grandview Avenue is starting to look run down. The sidewalks and the overlooks are deteriorating, and there are weeds growing between the cracks in the sidewalks.

As Drover said, the only nice homes are right on Grandview Avenue. The rest of Mt. Washington is bla--for lack of a better word---but there are some nice gems. I wouldn't want my children attending the schools that Mt. Washington feeds into though.

Safetywise, I'd say it's probably similar to Bloomfield. Oops, I just looked up the crime statistics and Mt. Washington is safer than Bloomfield. But it's not among the safest neighborhoods in the city either.

Here's the crime stats for city neighborhoods: Part One: Pittsburgh neighborhood crime statistics

[jinxd_13]

Originally Posted by Hopes;1458043
Here's the crime stats for city neighborhoods: [url=http://www.post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20030730crimedatapart1p9.asp

Part One: Pittsburgh neighborhood crime statistics[/url]

Thanks alot that is a great website but the internet can't tell me about cracks on the sidewalk or the feel a neighborhoos has. That is why you guys are invaluable

[la_torquemada]

My mom lives over in Mt Washington now, so I drive through there frequently. There are some nice (and often expensive) houses on Bailey that have views. To the east and south are Allentown, Beltzhoover, and Knoxville, all of which are bad, and in my opinion not getting better any time soon. If you haven't seen this map, it is helpful for getting your bearings w/r/t all these neighborhoods: List of Pittsburgh neighborhoods - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

For the most part, Mt Washington is kind of run down. The real estate on the front with views is very expensive, but there aren't the kind of ammenities in the neighborhood you might expect from a place with that kind of prices. There's a Foodland (one of the smaller, less fancy grocery chains we have) and drugstores and such on Virginia. I'd say it's safe up there, especially in the central and westerly parts of the neighborhood. The further east and south you go, the worse it gets. Public schools up there are not good. It is convenient, though -- you can get on any of the highways by going down either the front or the back of the hill, so most city destinations are 15-20 minutes away, as are a couple of the suburban shopping areas.

[guylocke]

Grandview Avenue seems to only have restaurants, not shopping. My son and I were there a month ago, and I think Grandview Avenue is starting to look run down. The sidewalks and the overlooks are deteriorating, and there are weeds growing between the cracks in the sidewalks.

I'm not sure I ever noticed this, but I believe it. Grandview is the most under-utilized property in all of Western PA. LOL. Grandview and several blocks behind it should be beautiful and premium. People would pay a lot of money to live there if those homes were really nice and great condo's were built with more entertainment.

Jason lives on East Boulevard on the Jersey side of NYC in Weehawken, and it's pretty much their equivalent to Grandview St. You step outside, and NYC is majestically right across the bay. It's almost the same exact view as Mt. Washington, only instead of a river being between you and Pittsburgh being so close you feel like you can reach out and touch it, the bay is between you and NYC is a bit further in the distance. It is really quite spectacular, although, not as spectacular as Pittsburgh with all the rivers, bridges, and mountains, and that's the truth.

Anyway, he pays $1000 a month for one room (his bedroom) on the top floor of a three- story house and it's pretty much a dump (although he claims it's a lot nicer than what he could get for that money in Manhattan).

[fleetiebelle]

I lived in Mt. Washington for the first six years that I lived in Pittsburgh, and I did like it a lot. I never lived anyplace with a view, but there are a fair number of nice apartments and houses up there. It's very convenient to downtown, and every other part of town can be reached fairly easily.

The business district is on Virginia Avenue and Shiloh St. I lived on Sycamore St, and it was very convenient to walk to the post office, bank, drug store, etc., but like people said, the further back you get from Grandview the dicier it gets. Also, Mt. Washington is becoming more of a rental/student neighborhood, so you get your fair share of drunk kids wandering down the streets screaming "Wooooo!" at 3 am on a Wednesday. As far as schools go, I don't have kids, but I had several neighbors who sent theirs to St. Mary's School (on Grandview and Bigham) to avoid the public school situation.