Eastside vs East Liberty

[Drover]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

Well the name "East Liberty" still has a negative reputation with many older white people that know nothing about the area. Since older white people have money, it's probably a marketing tactic to cover up the fact that these businesses are in East Liberty.

I was talking to a co-worker about going to places to eat in East Liberty and he said, "whoa boy, you'll never catch me in that area!" People just don't have much of a clue on what the area consists of these days. We are talking about Pittsburghers here keep in mind.

Somehow I doubt your average gray-haired, fist-shaking "hey you kids get offa my lawn!" Yinzer is their target demographic.

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Interestingly, it is actually in Larimer. I'm probably reading too much into this, but I wonder if the fact that people usually describe it as being in East Liberty is a sign that East Liberty is starting to become a positive brand of its own.

Whatever the case, it's clear from numerous press releases that the developers are not trying to disassociate the development from East Liberty.

We've discussed this before, and I don't mind if people want to say it is in East Liberty based on the official neighborhood boundaries. But I want to make clear that the reason that I and other people I know call that area "Friendship" has nothing to do with trying to avoid calling it East Liberty. It is because we define Friendship as the grid of streets on either side of Friendship Avenue from Baum to Gross, which was all part of one residential development back in the day, and has similar houses throughout. It is true there isn't much of a commercial district actually in Friendship, but that is precisely because Friendship was a residential development, and the Sharp Edge is a typical corner bar in such an area.

Again, I don't mind if people want to differ on their definitions. But I really don't think this is a case of people having something against East Liberty, and in fact I would say the exact same things if we were talking about a house in that area. To me, and others I know, that is Friendship.

The "colloquial" border on the west side of Friendship is subject to some interpretation but is regarded by most everyone as several blocks west of the actual border (typically Gross Street). But when I lived there it was basically a settled matter that the eastern border was Negley. To move the border all the way to the circle is a relatively new development -- probably by people who wanted to disassociate themselves from East Liberty.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Drover

To move the border all the way to the circle is a relatively new development -- probably by people who wanted to disassociate themselves from East Liberty.

I arrived in Pittsburgh in 1993. Some of my friends who ended up living in Friendship did as well (as part of the same entering grad school class), or came a bit before or after.

We always included that area in Friendship. We never had a conversation about whether it should be considered East Liberty instead, let alone made a decision to try to disassociate it from East Liberty. There were no red flags, because it makes intuitive sense to include that area along with the similar blocks to the west, and to see the neighborhood of Friendship as beginning with the street of the same name.

I really have no idea when or why our definition of Friendship arose. I do know that the concept of Friendship as a distinct neighborhood appears to be a relatively recent invention. The streets in question were laid out in the mid-late 19th Century, but in the early decades you will see East Liberty, Bloomfield, Garfield, and Shadyside on the maps, but no Friendship (there was, however, a Roup Station on the PARR). I've seen this on maps as late as 1960 (the other surrounding neighborhoods being marked, but not Friendship).

Then in a 1974 profile of Pittsburgh communities published by the Department of City Planning, Friendship was included, and it was already being defined by the relevant census tract (which everyone seems to agree is not quite right). In between 1960 and 1974, East Liberty had been transformed by the URA, and what once was Euclid Street was now Penn Circle. In that 1974 publication, Friendship was described as "a small residential neighborhood, part of Greater East Liberty."

Again, none of this answers the question of when or why our usage arose. We never discussed it, and as far as I can tell "Friendship" was historically ill-defined, and perhaps mostly considered a subsection of one or more surrounding neighborhoods until fairly recently.

But my point is that at least as far as we were concerned, it never had anything to do with a conscious effort to disassociate from East Liberty.