Suburb of the week: Brentwood (Pittsburgh, Whitehall: house, neighborhood, high school)

[eschaton]

Brentwood is a first-ring suburb in Pittsburgh's South Hills, found immediately to the south of the City neighborhood of Carrick. PreservationPioneer has called Brentwood "the poor Man's Squirrel Hill" and indeed there are some similarities, insofar as both were built out just as the streetcar suburb era was giving way to automotive suburbia. Brentwood is thus clearly very suburban, but it's not suburban in the classic, postwar sense, as by 1950 it was almost totally built out.

Brentwood is a semi-walkable community. It's Clairton Boulevard business district is a typical autocentric corridor. However, portions of Brownsville Road are fairly commercial and walkable - particularly around the 2800 block (which is shared with Carrick on the west side of the street), the 3600 block, and the 4100 block. Unlike a lot of South Hills areas, Brentwood lacks any T access, but it does have access to surface buses along both its major commercial corridors.

Brentwood is perhaps most notorious in the Pittsburgh area for its racism. As recently as 2000, Brentwood was only 0.5% black. While it's arguable whether the localized racism is any worse than elsewhere in the South Hills, the reputation was crystallized first in 1995, when Brentwood police began following Johnny Gammage's car when he was passing through Brentwood, ultimately stopping him in Pittsburgh and "subduing him" in concert with Whitehall police by beating him with flashlights, with Gammage ultimately dying via asphyxiation, and the officers being acquitted of all charges. There were other cases in the area as well, such as a KKK rally in Brentwood during the 1990s. More recently, in 2012, there was the case of three local high school students, as part of some odd sports rivalry with a mostly black team, dressing up in banana costumes and taunting the opposing side with racial slurs.

Ironically enough, Brentwood appears to be diversifying now. Although the Bhutanese population in the Pittsburgh area initially settled in Carrick, much of it appears to be migrating into Brentwood in more recent years. Brentwood now has several hundred Asian residents, comprising around 2%-3% of its population. Several stores catering to the Bhutanese population have also located in Brentwood. Perhaps in time similar to Dearborn outside of Detroit Brentwood will shift to a mostly nonwhite population comprised of immigrants. Time will tell.

[Katarina Witt]

You know, I have a suggestion, eschaton. Maybe you could do a suburb and neighborhood of the half-week; post a different one every Monday and say Thursday. Otherwise, it is going to take forever to cover all of them. Other than that, I think it's a good idea.

[grep]

I know someone who lives in Brentwood and commutes by bike down Brownsville Rd every morning. He says that street is unusually full of crazed drivers.

I'm amazed that Wanley Road is 2-way. I wonder what it's like to live in the only house on that street?

[sky329]

#jonnygammage

[guy2073]

I don't think the Brentwood police were racist, they treated and acted horribly to everyone.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by grep

I'm amazed that Wanley Road is 2-way. I wonder what it's like to live in the only house on that street?

I'd say no worse than driving on tiny nominally two-way alleys in the city, but I guess people could decide to drive at speed in the night down Wanly Road and end up in a head on collision. Presuming of course that people bother to use it as a cut through.

[bradjl2009]

Originally Posted by grep

I know someone who lives in Brentwood and commutes by bike down Brownsville Rd every morning. He says that street is unusually full of crazed drivers.

I'm amazed that Wanley Road is 2-way. I wonder what it's like to live in the only house on that street?

Whoa! That feels like a road you'd see in the Laurel Highlands, not a county with over 1.2 million people.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I'd say no worse than driving on tiny nominally two-way alleys in the city, but I guess people could decide to drive at speed in the night down Wanly Road and end up in a head on collision. Presuming of course that people bother to use it as a cut through.

Apparently the Google Streetview car was able to squeeze past another car

[guy2073]

Where is their inspection sticker?