Hill District pics (Pittsburgh: how much, houses, neighborhoods)

[PPG]

Pittsburgh slums-The Hill

Slum pics from Pittsburgh - SkyscraperPage Forum

[tmorrisn]

Thanks for the links of the pictures! I've never been there before, but my parents lived there in the early 70s. They talked about living in the Hill but now I have some images to go with their stories.

[pghlibrarian]

Thanks for the pics PPG. I would concur with a poster on the site that the pics were posted on -- the Hill District has a lot of potential, and it is a shame that this area with such a rich history has been allowed to deteriorate in the ways that it has. I know that the Hill District is infamous for being one of the worse neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, but I am struck with how much "reuseable" housing and building stock there is there.

There are some excellent examples of brick and stone buildings and houses that you just don't see in other cities with similar issues, demographics, etc. The reason that most of Detroit or Buffalo is empty lots in the "slum" areas is due to the fact that most of the construction was wood frame which was much easier to burn or demolish than brick or stone.

I would love to see the Hill District resurrected in part as an African-American Cultural District, with human-scale, affordable residences built for those who presently live there (or money to rehabilitate existing structures). I'm not sure if it will happen in my lifetime, but it's a nice dream...

[subdivisions]

Wow, those pics are sad. So much wasted potential.

[bboy36win]

Thanks for posting, PPG. Good pics. I didn't realize how many homes there were - in their day - quite pretty.

[Katiana]

I agree with bboy! LOL! I do wonder when their hey-day was? The hill was sketch when I was a student at Pitt in the late 60s-early 70s.

[Drover]

Never spent much time in the Hill District, so one of the things I missed that these pictures capture is that there are these tiny little pockets of hope and vitality in an otherwise desolate hell. One or two of those pictures appear to capture a business district that may not exactly be up-market but are nonetheless humming and at least providing some income for somebody. Whenever I drove through the Hill, I must have missed that part because all I ever saw was the "desolate hell" parts...

I know this is a little OT, but.... I also saw an awful lot of satellite dishes and decent-looking contemporary-model cars in those pictures, and it got me to thinking -- I wonder if we never cure poverty because we keep defining poverty upward. I look at those pictures and wonder to myself, "what would someone who endured poverty by 1900 standards say if you took him out of a cryogenic freeze, showed him these pictures and told him this was an impoverished neighborhood? Then what if he saw the people who lived in these homes with running water and electricity who are bathed, have clean clothes, clean hair, white teeth (all of them), very few are skinny from malnourishment, and none of them are in danger of dying from polio, measles, cholera, or diarrhea. Would he agree that poverty still exists?"

[Katiana]

I noticed the late-model cars, too.

[bboy36win]

Originally Posted by Drover

Never spent much time in the Hill District, so one of the things I missed that these pictures capture is that there are these tiny little pockets of hope and vitality in an otherwise desolate hell. One or two of those pictures appear to capture a business district that may not exactly be up-market but are nonetheless humming and at least providing some income for somebody. Whenever I drove through the Hill, I must have missed that part because all I ever saw was the "desolate hell" parts...

I know this is a little OT, but.... I also saw an awful lot of satellite dishes and decent-looking contemporary-model cars in those pictures, and it got me to thinking -- I wonder if we never cure poverty because we keep defining poverty upward. I look at those pictures and wonder to myself, "what would someone who endured poverty by 1900 standards say if you took him out of a cryogenic freeze, showed him these pictures and told him this was an impoverished neighborhood? Then what if he saw the people who lived in these homes with running water and electricity who are bathed, have clean clothes, clean hair, white teeth (all of them), very few are skinny from malnourishment, and none of them are in danger of dying from polio, measles, cholera, or diarrhea. Would he agree that poverty still exists?"

I suppose "poverty" is a relative term, and changing standards of living over time create different standards of "poverty".

You know, I missed the satellite dishes the first time through the pics, but there were several pics - more than I expected, at least - that pleasantly surprised me. I assume these are the same "pockets of hope and vitality" that you noted.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by bboy36win

I suppose "poverty" is a relative term, and changing standards of living over time create different standards of "poverty".

You know, I missed the satellite dishes the first time through the pics, but there were several pics - more than I expected, at least - that pleasantly surprised me. I assume these are the same "pockets of hope and vitality" that you noted.

Possibly so -- but don't get me wrong, I still wouldn't want to live anywhere near those pockets. Hope and vitality by Hill District standards is still more than I'm willing to deal with.