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Highland Park will always have plenty of run-down houses due to the nature of its housing stock; there just aren't that many people who want to live in a mansion that is that close to East Lib and Larimer. So the big houses get cut up into apartments.
I think there was a major influx of gay men into Highland Park a few decades back who began restoring some of the grand houses, similar to what happened a bit earlier in the Mexican War Streets. I don't think a neighborhood has to fall into ghetto, or even working-class, to gentrify though. If lower-middle class is replaced by upper-middle class the same transformation is happening.
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Originally Posted by fat lou
Shadyside is a major student neighborhood, and likely always will be, so it will always have some slummy-looking housing.
Shadyside has not only gentrified, but is the the only neighborhood which has neared complete gentrification. As Hopes noted, it was a hippie neighborhood originally. My wife still went to punk shows there in the 1990s. Now Walnut Street is clearly the most yuppie-oriented, chain-dominated commercial thoroughfare in the city. Many of the students are CMUers whose parents are independently wealthy, and buy them condos, which means it's less dumpy then you would think. Given so many other places have now become student areas in Pittsburgh (back in the 90s, everyone who didn't live at home lived in Oakland or Shadyside), the student component will probably only weaken with time.
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Originally Posted by fat lou
I'm not sure that people priced out of Lawrenceville will spur serious gentrification elsewhere. Prices in Lawrenceville may have gone up, but it still isn't that expensive, generally speaking (some 4-5 bedroom houses on Fisk, Main etc. and new-construction yuppie condos notwithstanding). The people who are looking for a house for like 80k and who complain that they can't find that in Lawrenceville...well, when they buy their house in Troy Hill or Millvale or whatever, will they really be gentrifiers? Or will they be poor folks looking for a cheap place to live?
The asking price for the average house in Lawrenceville (meaning, something which isn't a gut job or in an alley) seems to be around $200,000 to $300,000. Sellers might not net that much however.
First wave gentrifiers are typically lower income regardless, which is why they are the first wave and get gentrified out.
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Originally Posted by fat lou
I don't know. My main point is, with the whole school district/taxes situation, there just aren't that many middle-class-or-above people who have any intention of living within the city limits, and this city will never be a major draw for young professionals or wealthy people like NYC, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, etc. I think the people who claim that "some day East Liberty, Garfield, Larimer (really? I mean, really?), Hazlewood, Troy Hill, Spring Hill, Fineview, the Hill District, Central Northside, and Manchester will all be gentrified" are engaging in some serious wishful thinking. This is Pittsburgh, not San Francisco.
Every area might not be gentrified. But we're already at the point where basically all non-ghetto parts of the East End have higher real estate prices than the county-wide average. When you factor in South Side Flats, and the Lower Northside, you nearly have the entire "core" of the city, at least in terms of walkable areas near downtown or Oakland that aren't in the ghetto, already gentrified to some degree.
Gentrification means, literally, a takeover by members of the "gentry," or people of gentle birth (i.e., good families, good education, good place in society). By that definition, Shadyside has always been gentrified. It was built by the Scots-Irish bankers and millowners who ran Pittsburgh in its earliest days, and even in the 1950s their descendants considered it a Scots-Irish Presbyterian enclave (Annie Dilliard talks about this at length in "An American Childhood"). By the 1970s and 1980s, the sorts of gentry living there had changed - it had switched from bourgeois Scots-Irish Presbyterian homeowners to hippy-ish artist and student renters - but artists and students are members of the gentry, too. In a world where fewer than half of college-age kids attend college (that's now; in the 1970s it was 25% or less), even poor college students are not that poor.
There's some pretty modest ranches which were built as infill right next to stunning Victorian mansions in West Shadyside, which says to me the neighborhood did go through a comparably unfashionable period in the mid-20th century.
SCR, I think you're being more broad with the term "gentrification" than I am, but by your standards I would include Beechview & Brookline as neighborhoods with the right "bones." You could also include the Stip District and Downtown as already gentrified.
Mostly gentrified neighborhoods that will continue to see infill wherever possible in the coming years to help ease current housing shortages:
Bloomfield
Central Lawrenceville
Central North Side
Lower Lawrenceville
Lower Manchester
Polish Hill South Side Flats
South Side Slopes
I disagree with you big time regarding South Side Flats. Some younger renters are moving there, but outside of Pius street, it's not that expensive at all (majority of houses still put on the market for under $150,000, many for under $100,000). Most of the houses which go on the market are junk quality as well. I'm actually not sure it's going to gentrify any time soon as well - all the new construction in South Side flats is creating premium rentals, which is depressing the prices of the lower-quality rentals, which in turn is making the Slopes less desirable.
Shadyside has not only gentrified, but is the the only neighborhood which has neared complete gentrification. As Hopes noted, it was a hippie neighborhood originally. My wife still went to punk shows there in the 1990s. Now Walnut Street is clearly the most yuppie-oriented, chain-dominated commercial thoroughfare in the city. Many of the students are CMUers whose parents are independently wealthy, and buy them condos, which means it's less dumpy then you would think. Given so many other places have now become student areas in Pittsburgh (back in the 90s, everyone who didn't live at home lived in Oakland or Shadyside), the student component will probably only weaken with time. .
Not originally it wasn't a hippie neighborhood. It was middle and upper middle class people in the 1800's through mid-1900s. It was hippies in the 1960's and through the 80s lots of renovations and development made it a yuppie neighborhood. It was pretty yuppie in the 90s. It is also mostly rentals, which are students and grad students. There are a lot of really dumpy houses in Shadyside.
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Originally Posted by eschaton
The asking price for the average house in Lawrenceville (meaning, something which isn't a gut job or in an alley) seems to be around $200,000 to $300,000. Sellers might not net that much however.
This is only true because of all of the new construction at Home and Hatfield. Otherwise it would be just under 200k.
I think there was a major influx of gay men into Highland Park a few decades back who began restoring some of the grand houses, similar to what happened a bit earlier in the Mexican War Streets. I don't think a neighborhood has to fall into ghetto, or even working-class, to gentrify though. If lower-middle class is replaced by upper-middle class the same transformation is happening.
I think Crafton has the potential for this happen given the amount of big historic homes that are still very reasonably priced when compared to similar homes in Shadyside, etc. Crafton is small and doesn't have a big inventory of homes for sale, but for people like me who can't afford the pricier neighborhoods in Pittsburgh and want a safe area with great old houses, it fits the bill.
I think there was a major influx of gay men into Highland Park a few decades back who began restoring some of the grand houses, similar to what happened a bit earlier in the Mexican War Streets.
I think you might be thinking of Friendship. I know that there was a major influx of gay men into Friendship in the late 1980s - early 1990s who began restoring some of its grand houses. I am not aware of any similar influx in Highland Park. I've lived in both neighborhoods and speak at first hand.
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Originally Posted by eschaton
I don't think a neighborhood has to fall into ghetto, or even working-class, to gentrify though. If lower-middle class is replaced by upper-middle class the same transformation is happening.
Agreed, 100%. Neighborhoods that "go ghetto" or hit rock bottom are in many ways unlikely to gentrify - consider Homewood. It's more common for a lower-middle-class neighborhood to become middle- to upper-middle-class - consider the South Side and Lawrenceville.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
Shadyside has not only gentrified, but is the the only neighborhood which has neared complete gentrification. As Hopes noted, it was a hippie neighborhood originally. My wife still went to punk shows there in the 1990s. Now Walnut Street is clearly the most yuppie-oriented, chain-dominated commercial thoroughfare in the city.
As I noted above in a reply to Hopes, I disagree with the idea that Shadyside has ever been anything other than gentrified at any point in its history. It was built by relatively wealthy people (i.e., the Presbyterians who lived there for 100 years before the 1960s) and has always been inhabited by relatively wealthy people - emphasis on relatively as well as on wealthy.
The fact that Shadyside was a hippie neighborhood from around 1965-1985 (before yuppification set in) does not mean that it wasn't also a gentrified neighborhood during that period. Hippies weren't the sons and daughters of plumbers and steel workers; they were the sons and daughters of doctors and bank presidents. In short, they were the gentry - even if they were doing their best to pretend otherwise.
To put things another way, the reason why neighborhoods like the South Side and Lawrenceville were able to gentrify had to do in large part with a passing of a large group of people (in both neighborhoods, mill workers) which created vacant spaces - vacant homes, vacant storefronts - for a new group of people to inhabit. East Carson Street had a 60% vacancy rate among storefronts in the first year or two after the J&L mill closed. Shadyside never became vacant or depopulated to anything like that extent, which suggests that it was always relatively popular and thus never needed to gentrify.
To put things yet another way, when a neighborhood is going through gentrification it usually has two disparate groups of people - in the South Side, they used to talk about two kinds of blue hair (belonging to punks and old ladies). In Shadyside circa 1977, those two groups of people would have been the traditional Presbyterian homeowners and their rebellious hippie kids - which implies that Shadyside did not so much gentrify as start expressing its privilege in a different way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
There's some pretty modest ranches which were built as infill right next to stunning Victorian mansions in West Shadyside, which says to me the neighborhood did go through a comparably unfashionable period in the mid-20th century.
I don't think there are all that many such ranches, and the ones that I know about are just functions of the fact that somebody in 1975 had some vacant land in Shadyside, decided to build a house, and - this being 1975 - decided to hell with contextualism and to just throw up something contemporary. In other words, the people who built the ranches probably had some money but no taste.
Last edited by Joe Magarac; 05-01-2013 at 08:32 AM..
most of the ranches in Shadyside, Highland Park, etc are areas where the owner of a mansion decided to subdivide their lot to build or sell to a builder to make money. Most of them are next to mansions - not where other houses were demolished.
I disagree with you big time regarding South Side Flats.
Argh, I meant slopes, which should be obvious.
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Originally Posted by selltheburgh
This is only true because of all of the new construction at Home and Hatfield. Otherwise it would be just under 200k.
I dunno...looking on Zillow, I see the following, discounting new or newish construction
Lower Lawrenceville - North of Penn
1 BR, 1.5 BA Loft - $335,000
3 BR, 2 BA House - $285,000
2 BR, 1 BA House - $80,000 (gut job I'm sure)
Lower Lawrenceville - South of Penn
3 BR. 2 BA - $215,000
3 BR, 1 BA - $115,000
2 BR, 1 BA - $114,000
3 BR, 1 BA - $99,000
Central Lawrenceville - South of Butler
3 BR, 2.5 BA - $265,000
5 BR, 2 BA - $230,000
2 BR, 1 BA - $120,000 (in alley)
Central Lawrenceville - North of Butler
3 BR, 2.5 BA - $299,750
1 BR, 1 BA - $235,000 (condo)
2 BR, 1 BA - $225,000
3 BR, 1 BA - $224,900
2 BR, 1.5 BA - $219,900
1 BR, 1 BA - $209,000 (condo)
2 BR, 1 BA - $137,500 (under 900 square feet)
1 BR, 1 BA - $124,900 (in alley)
Upper Lawrenceville:
3 BR, 1.5 BA - $144,900
3 BR, 1 BA - $95,000 (in alley)
2 BR, 2 BA - $69,900 (in alley)
3 BR, 1 BA - $59,000
2 BR, 1 BA - $17,997 (for sale by owner, gut job, but he must be an idiot)
In general, this fits with what I said. Houses are not put on the market for under $200,000 in Lawrenceville unless.
1. They are in Upper Lawrenceville
2. They're in the "no-man's land" south of Penn close to Bloomfield
3. They are gut jobs
4. They are in an alley
The only exception is the house on 44th, which as I mention, is under 900 square feet. It also has no yard, because alley houses are directly behind it. It's virtually an alley house itself.
Moderator cut: orphaned
I don't think there are all that many such ranches, and the ones that I know about are just functions of the fact that somebody in 1975 had some vacant land in Shadyside, decided to build a house, and - this being 1975 - decided to hell with contextualism and to just throw up something contemporary. In other words, the people who built the ranches probably had some money but no taste.
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