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Location: Pittsburgh (via Chicago, via Pittsburgh)
3,887 posts, read 5,523,609 times
Reputation: 3107
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
I never said that there were none in the Midwest. I only said Galena is an outlier for the area it's in. AFAIK for example, it's the only place in Illinois besides Chicago that still has rowhouses.
Pittsburgh definitely has more than Cinci I think. Cincinnati is a slightly smaller city than Pittsburgh, and was hit much harder by urban renewal. Plus while Newport and Covington are great little walkable cities, they are across the state line in Kentucky. I don't know enough about Saint Louis to comment in that case.
I'm not saying it's not pretty. But once you get off the main drag of the business district, it's dominated by wood-frame detached single-family houses with scattered small apartment buildings.
To be clear, I wasn't implying that by someplace lacking a "sense of place" that it wasn't charming or urban. I meant that it was interchangeable in terms of its built form with a number of other cities, not to mention neighborhoods within its own city. Hell, I feel the same way about the "grand house belt" in the East End. Shadyside/Friendship/Highland Park are very generic parts of Pittsburgh which look pretty similar to lots of other cities. In contrast, there's nowhere else I could imagine Polish Hill.
Its a mix of victorian/stone single family homes, apartment buildings, wood framed homes, and 3 flats. Sounds a lot like many Pittsburgh neighborhoods that I consider to have a sense of place, despite not being Polish Hill. I would hardly call Highland Park, Shadyside or Friendship "generic". By that logic you could call row homes generic due to the continuous vast swaths of them being built in places like Baltimore. I wouldn't call them generic though, either. Really having trouble figuring out what you are looking for. Run down pieced up/non-continuous rowhomes updated in the 70s covered in siding?
Polish Hill is littered with poorly renovated row homes that aren't continuous, with many wooden single family homes plopped in between them breaking up the fabric. Nothing against Polish Hill, I don't mind it, but just stating facts here.
Last edited by ForYourLungsOnly; 09-07-2016 at 07:16 AM..
I never said that there were none in the Midwest. I only said Galena is an outlier for the area it's in. AFAIK for example, it's the only place in Illinois besides Chicago that still has rowhouses.
Pittsburgh definitely has more than Cinci I think. Cincinnati is a slightly smaller city than Pittsburgh, and was hit much harder by urban renewal. Plus while Newport and Covington are great little walkable cities, they are across the state line in Kentucky. I don't know enough about Saint Louis to comment in that case.
I'm not saying it's not pretty. But once you get off the main drag of the business district, it's dominated by wood-frame detached single-family houses with scattered small apartment buildings.
To be clear, I wasn't implying that by someplace lacking a "sense of place" that it wasn't charming or urban. I meant that it was interchangeable in terms of its built form with a number of other cities, not to mention neighborhoods within its own city. Hell, I feel the same way about the "grand house belt" in the East End. Shadyside/Friendship/Highland Park are very generic parts of Pittsburgh which look pretty similar to lots of other cities. In contrast, there's nowhere else I could imagine Polish Hill.
Cincy is extremely strong in it's core. OTR is as good as it gets. Mt Adams, Mt Auburn, and the Northside are all very good, and they did a very good job of rebuilding the West End. Much better than any of the infill in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is stronger away from it's core than Cincy is. Cleveland doesn't come close to Cincy. St. Louis is fantastic. It's core is very good. Cincy's has more heft to me, but Lafayette Square is prettier than anything in Cincy. St. Louis remains consistently dense quite a distance from it's core, much more than Cincy, which basically becomes Cleveland when you move away from the Basin.
I haven't been to the Twin Cities, but from what I've seen, St. Paul seems to have more of what I like than Minneapolis does.
St. Louis.
Cincy!
Cincy Infill.
Last edited by Herodotus; 09-07-2016 at 07:27 AM..
Again, "sense of place" doesn't mean gentrified. It doesn't mean urban. It doesn't mean charming. It means distinct. Polish Hill is a very distinct neighborhood in terms of topography and built form. There is nowhere else in the country besides Pittsburgh where you could find a neighborhood like it.
Location: Pittsburgh (via Chicago, via Pittsburgh)
3,887 posts, read 5,523,609 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Herodotus
Cincy is extremely strong in it's core. OTR is as good as it gets. Mt Adams, Mt Auburn, and the Northside are all very good, and they did a very good job of rebuilding the West End. Much better than any of the infill in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is stronger away from it's core than Cincy is. Cleveland doesn't come close to Cincy. St. Louis is fantastic. It's core is very good. Cincy's has more heft to me, but Lafayette Square is prettier than anything in Cincy. St. Louis remains consistently dense quite a distance from it's core, much more than Cincy, which basically becomes Cleveland when you move away from the Basin.
I haven't been to the Twin Cities, but from what I've seen, St. Paul seems to have more of what I like than Minneapolis does.
Agreed. I'd consider Mt. Adams more intact/charming and just as "distinct" than many Pittsburgh neighborhoods. https://goo.gl/maps/Cn3BJrAepgn
Location: Pittsburgh (via Chicago, via Pittsburgh)
3,887 posts, read 5,523,609 times
Reputation: 3107
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
Again, "sense of place" doesn't mean gentrified. It doesn't mean urban. It doesn't mean charming. It means distinct. Polish Hill is a very distinct neighborhood in terms of topography and built form. There is nowhere else in the country besides Pittsburgh where you could find a neighborhood like it.
Ok...you're saying there is nowhere else in the country where you can find a very hilly neighborhood with run down scattered row homes with wooden single family homes scattered throughout?
Again, how about Mt. Adams? Scattered row homes with single families mixed in (just as many brick flats as wooden, though). except it is in better condition and has a nice little business district. https://goo.gl/maps/LXqx7Bs46jx
Ok...you're saying there is nowhere else in the country where you can find a very hilly neighborhood with run down scattered row homes with wooden single family homes scattered throughout?
Yes.
There's only a few cities in the country which are urban and as hilly as Pittsburgh. I'd include Cincinnati, San Francisco, and maybe Seattle. All of them have distinct built forms from Pittsburgh. Cinci built almost entirely in brick, instead of a brick/frame mix like we did. San Francisco's core is entirely wood-framed attached, and they stubbornly built on a grid even up and down steep grades (instead of irregular streets with the slopes of hills like we did). Seattle's a much newer city, with most of the older built form streetcar suburban. Polish Hill wouldn't fit comfortably into any of those cities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ForYourLungsOnly
Again, how about Mt. Adams? Scattered row homes with single families mixed in (more brick flats than wooden, though). except it is in better condition and has a nice little business district. https://goo.gl/maps/LXqx7Bs46jx
Mt. Adams probably is the closest fit. Cinci has its own built vernacular though, which is probably closer to Pittsburgh than any other city, but still unique. For example, you wouldn't see this in Pittsburgh. And the whole a lot more brick in a hilltop neighborhood thing as you noted.
Location: Pittsburgh (via Chicago, via Pittsburgh)
3,887 posts, read 5,523,609 times
Reputation: 3107
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
Yes.
There's only a few cities in the country which are urban and as hilly as Pittsburgh. I'd include Cincinnati, San Francisco, and maybe Seattle. All of them have distinct built forms from Pittsburgh. Cinci built almost entirely in brick, instead of a brick/frame mix like we did. San Francisco's core is entirely wood-framed attached, and they stubbornly built on a grid even up and down steep grades (instead of irregular streets with the slopes of hills like we did). Seattle's a much newer city, with most of the older built form streetcar suburban. Polish Hill wouldn't fit comfortably into any of those cities.
You are really stretching the Polish Hill issue, aren't you. I bet somebody unfamiliar with both Cinci and Pittsburgh could be dropped on a street in Polish Hill or Mt. Adams and they couldn't tell a difference.
I also never said Pittsburgh wasn't very hilly, but I fail to see how that makes it more distinct (by your definition) than many other cities in the Midwest and beyond. Dozens of cities have features that you don't see elsewhere. Pittsburgh IS distinct due to its topography, but it isn't more distinct than lots of cities you can find in the Midwest JUST BECAUSE of its topography. Cities all have their unique histories that make them distinct. Some more than others.
Last edited by ForYourLungsOnly; 09-07-2016 at 07:45 AM..
I still think you're not giving the Midwest enough credit. I'm no fan of Indy (nor Columbus for that matter), but the Midwest is full of neighborhoods with clear identities. I would say Minneapolis/St. Paul are more interesting than Columbus, for example, and MPS is an all around interesting and enjoyable place to live. Cleveland has its fair share of interesting enclaves, and I wouldn't put it "far behind" St. Louis or Cinci. I would take Madison, WI over Reading any day. I too enjoy the larger number of old, dense intact neighborhoods in the North East when compared to the Midwest, but to say the Midwest is lacking in this department isn't really true. Less than the North East, but not lacking overall. I'd say Cinci and arguably St. Louis are equivalent to Pittsburgh in both historical neighborhood enclaves and "sense of place". Somewhere like Chicago is on another level due to size and scale, and has many excellent neighborhoods with an obvious sense of place. Its not only big cities either.
Can't rep you again. Never been to Galena although I lived in IL for 7 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
In what way are the neighborhoods distinctive from each other exactly? They don't seem that distinctive in terms of topography or built form. Are there still distinct ethnic enclaves? Walkable business districts that community life centers around? I'm all ears.
Galena is so distinctive because it is a really old small city. It was built out due to lead mining (hence the name) beginning in the 1820s, and basically peaked by the Civil War. The long period of decline was important, because it meant the historic downtown survived intact through to the 1980s, when it was reinvented as a tourist location - basically becoming the Jim Thorpe of Illinois. A lot of towns of similar size from the early 19th century had their historic cores heavily altered by later growth, if not totally destroyed.
Galena actually does have some urban housing off of its business district. See here. Or here. It's admittedly not much however.
Oh, heck, eschaton, you look at a Google map and think you've been there! Happy Hollow is the same as North Omaha? I don't think so! HH is where Warren Buffet lives! North Omaha is where Gale Sayers grew up in relative poverty. Dundee is where the hipsters from my husband's high school live. Yes, it has a walkable shopping area. The ethnicities are different there. Lots of Swedes, a big Czech community, some Italians. Do they live in "enclaves"? I don't think so. Not in Pittsburgh any more, either, really. Maybe you should start by reading the Wiki article I linked.
Galena has some Mormon history and was also the home of President US Grant for a while.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 09-07-2016 at 07:47 AM..
Cincy is extremely strong in it's core. OTR is as good as it gets. Mt Adams, Mt Auburn, and the Northside are all very good, and they did a very good job of rebuilding the West End. Much better than any of the infill in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is stronger away from it's core than Cincy is. Cleveland doesn't come close to Cincy. St. Louis is fantastic. It's core is very good. Cincy's has more heft to me, but Lafayette Square is prettier than anything in Cincy. St. Louis remains consistently dense quite a distance from it's core, much more than Cincy, which basically becomes Cleveland when you move away from the Basin.
I haven't been to the Twin Cities, but from what I've seen, St. Paul seems to have more of what I like than Minneapolis does.
St. Louis.
Cincy!
Cincy Infill.
Always love comments like this. "I"ve never been there, but . . . (it's fabulous, etc)."
The problem with MN is that you have to put up with those people telling you how it's the best, best, best, best, BEST all the time. Plus, it's colder than Moscow in winter.
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