Yeah..That area of the city is Awful,so what it was in the 70's (Pittsburgh: apartment, townhouses)

[Augie6]

Tonight, I mentioned that I am looking for housing in the E. Lib area and planned on taking friends and family to a restaurant in Lawrencville. The group I was addressing had the MOST horrid look on their faces and basically SHREEKED at my offerings.

My aunt replied.. Honey those areas are really run down and there is NO WHere good to eat down that way.. Please you will get shot or mugged. Two others agreed without hesitation.

I quickly said, Listen that area is host to some of the best places to eat in the entire city and offers more culture and unique shops. Now she LITERALY she said "I doubt it" I was there in about 1973 and what could really of changed... One moron is "ok" but EVERYONE agreed!!

What is it with Western PA and change or hope?? Was the city that bleak in the 70-90s to a point where natives will not accept that the city is now improving daily? When out of town guests show more love to the city than some natives it really hurts... Any thoughts or additional ramblings?

(I apologize for the sloppiness of this post -- I was caught in the moment and on my mobile device please excuse this one guys)

[UKyank]

To be fair it wasnt just the 70s-90s that East Liberty was bad, you have to add in the early 2000s to that too; its a very recent change for the better in that area, and even currently it gets near weekly news for someone being shot in the vicinity which doesnt do much to change the perception of east liberty for those that never visit it.

[bradjl2009]

As someone who lives in Lawrenceville I will outright call them morons if they try to tell me (someone who has lived there since birth) how it is there. Though I will see these types who are afraid of city neighborhoods exist all over the country.

[Goodjules]

Years ago when I lived in Redwood City one of my older co-workers mentioned that she had grown up there. I asked her where. She told me I wouldn't know because she had heard the neighborhood had gone downhill and wasn't safe anymore. I pushed her to tell me. Turns out she grew up a few blocks from where I was living. The neighborhood wasn't bad at all except for one year when drug dealers essentially took over an apartment building. There was so much public outcry - the neighborhood association was very active - that the city eminent domained the apartment buildings in question and Habitat for Humanity came in and built blocks of nice townhouses. Other than that bad year, I always felt safe in my so-called "bad" neighborhood.

[LIRefugee]

Did you manage to get them to the restaurant in Lawrenceville? It's one thing to cling to an outdated image of a city but it's another to refuse to actually see for yourself if it's changed when someone tells you it has.

[Hopes]

East Liberty wasn't that bad in the 1970s. There was a shopping mall. I remember my father taking me there to buy back-to-school clothes one year.

[selltheburgh]

Lawrenceville was kind of empty with a lot of heroin 10-15 years ago.

East Liberty was scary and lots of crack heads and dealers walking the streets at all hours just 5 years ago.

Neither of them are perfect still, but both are much much better these days than 10 years ago. I see all types of people walking around both neighborhoods. Lawrenceville has more of a hipster contingent mixed with some yinzers and old ladies while East Lib has pretty much every walk of life these days. There are still some thugs but they'll likely become more low key or move to another neighborhood in the next few years as development continues all throughout the area. There used to be a fair number of gangsta drug dealers in Lawrenceville but as it gentrified, they moved to other areas or went under the radar.

Both neighoborhoods have new businesses opening and roll off dumpsters on the residential streets meaning lots of renovating going on.

[Hopes]

This article says the shopping mall development contributed to the decline of East Liberty because the creation of Penn Circle was too confusing.

The Ellis School ~ THE EFFECTS OF PUBLIC HOUSING ON PITTSBURGH'S EAST LIBERTY

[selltheburgh]

Originally Posted by Hopes

This article says the shopping mall development contributed to the decline of East Liberty because the creation of Penn Circle was too confusing.

It was also written by a high school student.

That's part of it, but it also had to do with:
-The decline of the steel industry
-The automobile being more common for most middle class people
-The birth of the suburbs (Penn Hills)
-The GI Bill (allowing vets to buy a modest home)
-The razing of the Hill District
-Legal racial discrimination which also led to white flight and redlining

[PreservationPioneer]

East Liberty and Lawrenceville were probably more vibrant in 1973 than they are today, even with the recent gentrification. You have to remember that was before a lot of population decline, deterioration, and sprawl that has happened in the last 40 years. If someone didn't like the area in better times, it's unlikely that they would think much of it today.