Neighborhood of the week: Morningside (Pittsburgh, Butler: hair salon, apartments, day care)

[eschaton]

Morningside is a neighborhood in the Upper East End of Pittsburgh, and happens to be my home of three years. A long and narrow neighborhood mostly oriented north to south, Morningside is sandwiched between Highland Park and Stanton Heights, also having small land borders with East Liberty and Upper Lawrenceville.

Like all of the East End, Morningside was annexed by the city in 1868. For the remainder of the 19th century, it remained mostly undeveloped farmland. In the far north of the neighborhood, there were around eighty homes by the turn of the 20th century - small frame homes concentrated in the extreme north of the neighborhood around Baker and Greenwood Streets. Sort of like a backwoods extension of Lawrenceville. Another four families owned large parcels of farmland within the central portions of the Morningside valley. There was also by this time a tiny amount of development which was moving into the far south of the neighborhood from what is now East Liberty and Highland Park, as this area was within walking distance of the North Negley Avenenue streetcar line.

Regardless, this trickle of growth turned into a flood beginning in 1906, when the Pittsburgh Railway Company decided to extent a streetcar line from Stanton Avenue up Chislett Street into the heart of Morningside. Aaround the same time, a bridge was built across the Allegheny, connecting the Aspinwall/Sharpsburg area to Morningside via streetcar as well. This triggered a building boom in the area, with it being marketed as a "garden retreat" from the city, far away from polluting mills, overcrowded East End neighborhoods, and with Heths Run ready to be easily converted into a sewer for indoor plumbing service. The first wave of residents came into the neighborhood from Lawrenceville and Millvale (mostly Germans, Irish, and Scottish). Although there was a bit of a lull in construction during the first world war, construction once again picked up in the 1920s, with the neighborhood all but built out (minus a few streets) by the onset of the Great Depression. After World War II, the former residents of Lawrenceville began to filter out, and were replaced by Italians looking to "move on up" from Bloomfield. Indeed, on a per-capita basis, Morningside is now not only more Italian than Bloomfield, but the most Italian neighborhood in the city. During the mid to late 20th century the neighborhood experienced population decline due to falling household size, but remained essentially 100% occupied.

Today there are essentially four different "sub neighborhoods" of Morningside, all of which have their own distinct vibe:

South Morningside - my own area - is roughly everything south of Hampton Street.
It's basically an extension of East Liberty/Highland Park in terms of built form, dominated by "grand" brick foursquare style houses mostly built before 1910, along with a smattering of rowhouse, twoflats, and two small apartment buildings. A few blocks of South Morningside did go through a late 20th century decline, with many houses chopped up into apartments and rented to lower-income people. I live not far from this area, and I don't really find it dangerous at all. In the recent period this has flipped from being the least desirable area of Morningside to the most desirable, due to the housing stock and relative closeness to the rest of the East End.

Central Morningside was the last large portion of Morningside to be built out in the 1920s. It is basically the neighborhoods bungalow belt with many blocks dominated by variations on the "Pittsburgh bungalow". Virtually everything in this part of the neighborhood is a detached single-family house, albeit with small yards. It's very quiet and quasi-suburban.

North Morningside is the area around the business district (which I will discuss in more detail below). The built form more similar to Central Morningside, but with two notable differences. First, as the historical section noted, there are a fair amount of 19th century homes here - mostly detached frame houses of the sort you'd see in Sharpsburg or Millvale. Secondly, this area has a surprising number of early 20th century rowhouses. As a result of this, along with the quick walk to the business district, the area feels much more "urban" than the other portions of Morningside.

North even of this area, there's the weird zone along Baker Street, and even the upper part of Butler Street, as the city technically defines everything along the Allegheny between the 62nd Street Bridge and the Highland Park Bridge as part of Morningside. This area is much older than Morningside proper and very cut off (sidewalks don't even go the whole way up Baker Street) so I tend to think of it as more an extension of Lawrenceville than part of Morningside personally.

Morningside does have a business district, which is much larger than it immediately seems. Rather than form as a "main street" up and down a single road, it spilled down several side streets around Greenwood Street - in part I believe due to the orientation of the old streetcar lines. Regardless, while there is a lot of business, there's not a lot of attractions. Personally speaking, we only really use a few businesses in the business district. One is the coffeeshop (Bookshelf Cafe), which closed several months back for to rebuild the kitchen for full table service, but is way behind schedule in reopening. Another is the local bar (Bulldog Pub) which isn't horrible as a local watering hole (I wish they had something I could eat though). My wife likes going to Firecracker Fabrics to shop, and at some point we'd like to enroll our daughter at a sewing class at neighboring Cut and Sew Studios. After that, the thing we're most likely to use, sadly is the neighborhood Rite Aid. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of other commerce, including four hair salons, two dentists, random offices, a VFW, a doctor's office, a day care, a barbershop, a private Italian club, a tanning salon, a pizza place, an independent convenience store, and a photography studio, but we don't have any real reason to go there. There's a micro-business district near my house which includes a now-closed convenience store (which I'm trying to get reopened) and another hair salon. The neighborhood has two parks, one at Heths it shares with Highland Park, and another to the north around Natoli Field.

Morningside is changing. When we bought our house three years ago we might have bought one of the most expensive houses to that date, but since then many houses have sold for over $100,000 more than we paid. There still are plenty of old Italian families and yinzers, along with a small but increasing number of black families, but there's also a lot of younger families with kids who seem to be professional class moving into the neighborhood, slowly turning it into a bit of a "poor man's Highland Park." Given it has such a high rate of homeownership, and virtually no vacant lots for new development, it's not going to see the same sort of rapid change as some other parts of the East End however.

There are a few semi-big developments on the horizon for the neighborhood however. Construction has begun on Morningside Crossing, a project which is converting the old Morningside Elementary school (which has been closed for over a decade) into 46 senior apartments. As part of this project, the 1920s expansion of the school fronting on Greenwood will be demolished, and replaced by new-construction retail space. I am hopeful this will tie in the business district a bit more and maybe attract some new tenants. Another project on the horizon is the city's redevelopment of the Heth's Run Greenspace. Currently it's just a wild mess that's hard to get down into, which eventually peters out into overflow lots for the Pittsburgh Zoo. Plans are to make it into a landscaped area which will include a walking path to the zoo. Hopefully it will be completed while my children are still young enough to like going to the zoo.

[TBonzie]

My grandparents lived in Morningside (and before that my great-grandparents and various relatives) so even though I never lived there (well, I did for half a year in college but that was too short to really count), I loved it and have fond memories - especially of the candy store which was open through the 1970s at least (I moved away from da Burgh in 1980).

Gram lived on Greenwood Street - partway up the steep hill. When I visited, in the 1960s and 1970s, we'd go down to Stumpfs (I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong), to the drugstore, the ballfield, the candy store. Ah, it was a lovely neighborhood.

And as a kid in the 1960s, it was the BEST place to trick-or-treat bar none. Homemade candy apples and popcorn balls, full-sized candy bars and Cracker Jax.

And Christmas - people decorated the outsides of their homes/porches and it looked great.

Gram and Pap are gone now, but my memories remain.

[sky329]

https://www.google.com/maps/place/55...3e07a?hl=en-us


This place had to be a mansion

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by sky329

https://www.google.com/maps/place/55...3e07a?hl=en-us


This place had to be a mansion

That's in Garfield, not Morningside.

The biggest house in Morningside is up the street from me. The front view of the house is blocked by trees, so here's the rear view. It was originally a convent, which expanded over time and merged two houses together. Bill Fuller (head chef of Big Burrito) lives there with his wife and children.

[xdv8]

Originally Posted by eschaton

That's in Garfield, not Morningside.

The biggest house in Morningside is up the street from me. The front view of the house is blocked by trees, so here's the rear view. It was originally a convent, which expanded over time and merged two houses together. Bill Fuller (head chef of Big Burrito) lives there with his wife and children.

That's pretty cool, not sure if I ever noticed that structure before. I really like Morningside, but its distance from greater East End kept us from looking there when buying. We still may have bought there if we had not gotten incredibly lucky with timing.

This home is technically in Morningside and has been on the market for a long time: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/11620644_zpid/

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by xdv8

This home is technically in Morningside and has been on the market for a long time: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/11620644_zpid/

It's very cool, but still overpriced for the area. I think the most expensive houses which have sold so far in the neighborhood have been in the mid 300s.

[slamont61]

Always liked the Morningside neighborhood. Had some friends that lived there back in the day and used to partake in some adult beverage consumption but can't recall the bar's name.

[gg]

Originally Posted by TBonzie

My grandparents lived in Morningside (and before that my great-grandparents and various relatives) so even though I never lived there (well, I did for half a year in college but that was too short to really count), I loved it and have fond memories - especially of the candy store which was open through the 1970s at least (I moved away from da Burgh in 1980).

Gram lived on Greenwood Street - partway up the steep hill. When I visited, in the 1960s and 1970s, we'd go down to Stumpfs (I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong), to the drugstore, the ballfield, the candy store. Ah, it was a lovely neighborhood.

And as a kid in the 1960s, it was the BEST place to trick-or-treat bar none. Homemade candy apples and popcorn balls, full-sized candy bars and Cracker Jax.

And Christmas - people decorated the outsides of their homes/porches and it looked great.

Gram and Pap are gone now, but my memories remain.

The reason it was so great is because it was a yinzerish community back in the day and still has some of that. They Yinzers LOVE to treat kids right and celebrate the holidays in big style. Work hard play hard. It is a great place and I know lots of people there. Very good place to invest IMHO.

[LibertyRutledge]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Another project on the horizon is the city's redevelopment of the Heth's Run Greenspace. Currently it's just a wild mess that's hard to get down into, which eventually peters out into overflow lots for the Pittsburgh Zoo. Plans are to make it into a landscaped area which will include a walking path to the zoo. Hopefully it will be completed while my children are still young enough to like going to the zoo.

By the looks of it this will be completed when your children are old enough to vote

[Tractor Face]

I live across the river from Morningside and go into the East End quite often and go over that way to Children's Hospital when the need arises. I never go through Morningside, however. The last time I was there was about 10 years ago when one of my children had a baseball game. It really seems to be all by itself despite being surrounded by often visited places. I've thought about going through there instead of up around the zoo as sort of a short cut to get to Penn Ave near the Waldorf School but there doesn't seem to be a direct route. I'll have to go over there just because, as I remember it, it's a neat little hamlet.