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Old 09-19-2012, 10:15 AM
 
20,273 posts, read 33,014,869 times
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I'm counting on nanobots keeping me alive for centuries, until I die in an unfortunate drunk-solar-sailing accident:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._futurist_says
Solar sail - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That said, there are already some sparks of reinvestment in Homewood, and I think many will be surprised at how quickly it moves once it really takes off, although I don't know exactly when that will be.
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Old 09-19-2012, 04:01 PM
 
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Originally Posted by Herodotus View Post
Probably been stripped of it's plumbing. The cost of rehabbing it is probably more than what it would be worth.

You're probably right. I've been in some empty/abandoned homes in Wilkinsburg that from the outside looked alright, but the insides of the house were torn to hell and anything architecturally worthy was stripped out. I had heard that many of these homes were stripped out in the 1980's and the 1990's by scavengers/salvagers. They would go into these neighborhoods thinking that the house was doomed anyway, and would take anything of value out of it.

As far as the future of Homewood is concerned, I do think the area is better than it was in the 1990's when it was downright dangerous to drive through there during the day. However half of Homewood has been torn down since then. I'll drive through Homewood during the day and not think twice, but I won't drive through there at night, especially in the summer.

Unlike 99% of Pittsburgh, most of Homewood is FLAT which I think is a great selling feature if the area would be slated for redevelopment. There are some nice old homes still left there, but not many. Oakwood Street (which goes down into Wilkinsburg) does have some beautiful old homes. Some of them have been maintained quite well. Others have not. Bennett Street used to have some really nice big old homes, but most of them are gone now.

I just hate to see these homes get torn down, but in all honesty it is probably better to have the house torn down instead of having it add to the blight and crime of the neighborhood.
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Old 09-19-2012, 04:15 PM
 
141 posts, read 339,637 times
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This was my favorite house in Homewood:

http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/R...25G00093000000

It was a beautiful yellow brick Queen Ann Victorian full of stained glass windows. I remember when people lived in it and took care of it. Then in the late 1980's, it became vacant, and then the front porch collapsed, and then it was boarded up and vandalized. Now it's gone.
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Old 09-19-2012, 05:40 PM
 
1,051 posts, read 2,611,952 times
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Originally Posted by h_curtis View Post
Where are they going to go? In your town? Sometimes it is better if places don't change too fast. Look at what happened to many places in and around East Liberty when the housing was taken down and people on the taxpayer dime needed to move. Penn Hills and many other places really got hit and are now a mess. It isn't like people are going to change just because they move. The drug dealers will just deal in a new area. I am sure there are some great people in Homewood and most likely the percentage of good people far outweigh those that are living in the drug/gang world, but those good people are afraid of them, so they stay quiet and try and keep out of it all. For the most part the residents do keep out of the crime because they are very street wise.
That's probably pretty close to the truth. No need to completely gentrify the neighborhood since like you, I don't want trouble makers in my neighborhood either. But it would be nice if there were a few more safe enclaves within Homewood for the hard-working law-abiding folks (which I'm sure are the overwhelming majority). I drove down Hamilton between N. Braddock and Lang the other day street corner drug dealers, paper bag drinking, smoking various substances... all in the middle of the day... they need to bulldoze those few blocks.
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Old 09-19-2012, 06:51 PM
 
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[quote]Hamilton between N. Braddock and Lang[quote]

Yea Ik what u mean thats one of the worst parts. Though no joke most streets seem totally 100% abandon...
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Old 09-25-2012, 12:52 PM
 
Location: Pennsylvania
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Speaking of Bakery Square, it must be at the very edge of Larimer. I drove down some streets "in the heart" of Larimer today, and it seemed to me to be the most run down part of the City. ...north/westof Larimer Ave., several blocks between Mayflower and Lenora...geez, I've never seen so many abandoned (and trashed but inhabited) homes, two areas with about a dozen angry people lingering on the street...no thanks.
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Old 09-25-2012, 02:25 PM
 
Location: Umbrosa Regio
1,334 posts, read 1,807,051 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Clint. View Post
Speaking of Bakery Square, it must be at the very edge of Larimer. I drove down some streets "in the heart" of Larimer today, and it seemed to me to be the most run down part of the City. ...north/westof Larimer Ave., several blocks between Mayflower and Lenora...geez, I've never seen so many abandoned (and trashed but inhabited) homes, two areas with about a dozen angry people lingering on the street...no thanks.
Although it could have been an optical illusion, I remember seeing a street sign in the middle of what looked like Larimer urban prairie. It's a sad state for what I've read was once a thriving Little Italy. But yes, Bakery Square is in Larimer, in the far southern end. Things change once you go north of the busway.

In the end, I think it's only a matter of time before Larimer and Homewood, but for now they are definitely down in the dumps.
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Old 09-25-2012, 02:36 PM
 
83 posts, read 79,547 times
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If you go to bing.com/maps, and turn on bird's eye view, and then zoom in Larimer, it does a really really good job of showing how much urban prairie there is. I've found that bird's eye view to be most the fascinating way to see how rapidly blocks change from healthy to desolate. (It's also extremely interesting to use in a place like Detroit).
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Old 09-25-2012, 03:01 PM
 
Location: Umbrosa Regio
1,334 posts, read 1,807,051 times
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It also shows you how Larimer has nothing on Detroit or St. Louis in terms of quantity of urban prairie.
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Old 09-25-2012, 04:26 PM
 
Location: About 10 miles north of Pittsburgh International
2,458 posts, read 4,203,610 times
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Speaking of Bakery Square, it must be at the very edge of Larimer.
I grew up in "Shadyside", (or so my parents said, even though we were 1/2 a block into postal 15206, East Liberty), and both my parents grew up only a few blocks east of there, in East Liberty. Bakery Square is a stone's throw (literally) from the location of the former "East Liberty" railroad station, half a block out Penn Avenue from the former "East Liberty" Post Office, which is only a couple hundred yards from the current one, and between Bakery Square and the "rest" of "Larimer" is PAT's "East Liberty" garage.

Whoever moved the Larimer/East Liberty line to put Bakery Square in Larimer was contradicting a hundred years of history. It's in East Liberty, by any historical, or logical, frame of reference. (And for that matter, moving the Shadyside/East Liberty line to Penn Avenue was equally inaccurate.)
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