Neighborhood of the week: Garfield (Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg: real estate, loft, crime)

[eschaton]

Garfield is a neighborhood in the upper East End of Pittsburgh. It's boundaries are pretty well established to the west and north by Allegheny Cemetery, Mossfield Street, and Black Street. To the east the official boundary by the city is generally defined as N Negley Avenue, although some streets (like Rippey Place and Margaretta Street) have no road connections to the rest of Garfield, and are more properly considered parts of East Liberty. The southern boundary of the neighborhood is the Penn Avenue business district, which is shared with Bloomfield and Friendship. However, the Penn Avenue business district has always been considered to be more wholly owned by Garfield, perhaps because Bloomfield has a very prominent business district on Liberty all to itself.

Garfield was still farmland owned by the Winbiddle family through most of the 19th century. The first lot sold for residential purposes was bought on the day that President James Garfield was buried in 1881, which is where its name came from. The neighborhood developed into a blue collar Irish neighborhood - probably the most easily identifiable Irish neighborhood in the city during its time. The neighborhood was built out over a long period between the late 19th and early 20th century, which lead to a diversity of housing styles. The areas in the southwestern corner of the neighborhood, like Dearborn Street, were built out earliest, and aren't that different in built form from Bloomfield and Garfield. But as you ascend the hill (where historic houses are still standing) Garfield's built fabric becomes more similar to a modest streetcar suburb. The neighborhood even has a few grand houses on streets like N Fairmount which are much more reminiscent of Friendship or East Liberty.

Like much of the city, Garfield took a turn for the worse in the mid 20th century. In the 1960s, much of the Irish-American population began moving to nearby suburbs like Shaler, and nearby East Liberty began its period of troubles, and Garfield Heights, a public housing complex, was built on the northern fringes of the neighborhood. White flight didn't begin in earnest in the neighborhood until the 1970s however. It was during this decade that the Bloomfield-Garfield corporation was formed in order to help stave off the neighborhood's decline and eventually (it was hoped) pave the way for a resurgence.

I do not know the exact inflection point for Garfield, but when I moved to Pittsburgh in 2005 it was already a neighborhood showing activity along Penn Avenue. At that time I lived within walking distance in Bloomfield and Friendship. I went to shows at Garfield Artworks (and once ModernFormations). I ate at Pho Minh and People's. If you want to include things technically not in Garfield, I spent a lot of time at the Quiet Storm as well. Over the last 12 years the number of active businesses along Penn Avenue in (or near) Garfield has increased dramatically from that base - particularly in the western part of the neighborhood where there more of a traditional business district. Crime in the neighborhood is still above city averages, but has gone down for five straight years in a row (the only city neighborhood that this is true for). The Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation has continued to build affordable infill housing in the neighborhood. I honestly think a lot of it is so ugly that it might be intended to block gentrification by design, but it's coming close to eliminating vacant lots in the lower portions of the neighborhood which were formerly blighted. Real estate prices are steadily rising in the neighborhood as well - houses selling for over $200,000 in the lower portions of the neighborhood close to Penn Avenue are not unusual at all any longer.

Garfield is clearly gentrifying now - what will happen in its future? Honestly, I think similar to its trajectory over the last 15 years, it will be more of a slow burn than anything. The transformation of Penn Avenue through the neighborhood has seemed rapid (I'm always shocked at how few black people I see walking along Penn Avenue in Garfield these days, when there are still so many on the street in East Liberty), but to a large degree it's been "annexed" by nearby Bloomfield and Friendship. Large portions of Garfield are up a very steep hill from Penn Avenue - not very walkable, and still the sort of places where you can find pretty run down houses in the range of $50,000-$100,000. And of course a lot of the vacant lots are being filled in with affordable housing by Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation - so that by the time gentrification could potentially reach those blocks, there won't be much available land for Lawrenceville-style $500,000+ infill houses. Thus I'd say the future of Garfield - for the foreseeable period - will be a transformation into a largely safe neighborhood which provides a home for people of varied income levels and origins.

[Lost_In_Translation]

Thank you! I feel like I get my own personal Pittsburgh history lesson every Monday morning. :cheers:

[norcider]

Another good one. I think the neighborhood started to rebound when Roboto moved there from Wilkinsburg, around that same time the first art gallery opened. It already had People's and Kraynick's so it was on the radar of younger people in the mid 90's. Quiet Storm was huge in this respect as well.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by norcider

Another good one. I think the neighborhood started to rebound when Roboto moved there from Wilkinsburg, around that same time the first art gallery opened. It already had People's and Kraynick's so it was on the radar of younger people in the mid 90's. Quiet Storm was huge in this respect as well.

Roboto moved from Wilkinsburg pretty recently - in 2011. I remember it pretty well, because I had been getting food from Spak Brothers for several years and the level of activity picked up a lot once it went in across the street.

Unblurred, the monthly gallery crawl in Garfield, has been going on for a decade plus IIRC. I can't find information line for when it actually begun, but Garfield had a strong artist presence even when I first moved here in 2004.

[wpipkins2]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Roboto moved from Wilkinsburg pretty recently - in 2011. I remember it pretty well, because I had been getting food from Spak Brothers for several years and the level of activity picked up a lot once it went in across the street.

Unblurred, the monthly gallery crawl in Garfield, has been going on for a decade plus IIRC. I can't find information line for when it actually begun, but Garfield had a strong artist presence even when I first moved here in 2004.

Unblurred goes back to 1998 or 1999. My brother was one of the first artist to move to Garfield during that time. He lived in the loft spaces above the Dance Alloy for a few years. The first few years was like a bizarre. Prostitutes and drug addicts mixed with young artists and well healed older urban professionals.

[wpipkins2]

Originally Posted by norcider

Another good one. I think the neighborhood started to rebound when Roboto moved there from Wilkinsburg, around that same time the first art gallery opened. It already had People's and Kraynick's so it was on the radar of younger people in the mid 90's. Quiet Storm was huge in this respect as well.

My brother painted the mural on the inside and outside of the Quiet Storm Cafe. The outside mural is still there today.

[wpipkins2]

Garfield has grown on me over the years. I watched Penn Ave blossom into a full blown arts district in less than two decades. I have a friend that lives in Garfield and happens to be an artist. The couple purchased a new construction townhome on Columbo Street. The exterior is bland as ever but the interior spaces are open with high ceilings. I was impressed.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4690...7i13312!8i6656

[norcider]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Roboto moved from Wilkinsburg pretty recently - in 2011. I remember it pretty well, because I had been getting food from Spak Brothers for several years and the level of activity picked up a lot once it went in across the street.

Unblurred, the monthly gallery crawl in Garfield, has been going on for a decade plus IIRC. I can't find information line for when it actually begun, but Garfield had a strong artist presence even when I first moved here in 2004.

Did they have more than one space on Penn then? Because my memory of it moving from Wilkinsburg was a but before 2011. Edit, yeah 2011 was the move!

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by norcider

Did they have more than one space on Penn then? Because my memory of it moving from Wilkinsburg was a but before 2011. Edit, yeah 2011 was the move!

You might be confusing it with Garfield Artworks, which was along that same stretch, and had a lot of shows. Manny seldom got the same band to come twice though, because he had a history of stiffing artists, but he often got some amazing lesser-known acts the first time.

[selltheburgh]

Originally Posted by norcider

Did they have more than one space on Penn then? Because my memory of it moving from Wilkinsburg was a but before 2011. Edit, yeah 2011 was the move!

Roboto moving to Garfield was definitely 2011. There was a second Roboto known as Roboto II that was in a boxing warehouse in Wilkinsburg in 2000 or 2001.

Quiet storm opened in 2001.

People's Indian was in the late 90s if I remember correctly.

Kraynick's in Garfield has been around since the 70s or early 80s. It was in Oakland before that when his father ran the business.