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Mexican War Streets are cool too. The surrounding neighborhood is a bit iffy, but not too bad. The residents of these streets take great pride in their historic homes. Check out Sampsonia way on Google Street View. The area is also home to artists and other younger home owners. There is not much of a business district there that In know of, but there is a one over on Federal and on East Ohio Street a few blocks away from Mexican Wasr Streets. I am not LGBT either, but this area would be open minded also.
I am sorry, but after reading the OP the post makes no sense as in you have no idea about Shadyside or Squirrel HIll. Suburban???????? Having a target down the street is the selling point????????????? Look, they may be the more higher up neighborhoods, but suburban and having a target is not the selling point. This is the east, not the west. There is a big difference between cities. Don't come in and claim my hood as a suburban, yuppie, target shopping hood when it is the polar opposite.
Second do lawerenceville, bloomfield, or the southside flats. Some of us use to live in hoods like this, and we got older and wake up everyday at 6 in the morning and want quiet but still urban hoods like Squirrel Hill. We are not suburban, and I shop at target like once a year.
I don't think the OP has even been to Pittsburgh yet. This isn't the west (although I never been to Vancouver) where there are suburban neighborhoods with targets still in the city. Shadyside and Squirrel Hill are very urban neighborhoods. I bet on your second semester you will be searching for apartments in S. Hill.............................................. ..........
Last edited by Awesomo.2000; 04-06-2009 at 05:59 AM..
Other than some of the stores on Walnut Street, there aren't really any "chain" stores in Shadyside or Squirrel Hill and no chain restaurants either. I can understand wanting to avoid the higher rents of either neighborhood though. These are both neighborhoods that are more residential, but most neighborhoods in Pittsburgh feel pretty residential. You don't really have huge apartment buildings unless you're downtown. I've never been to Vancouver, but Pittsburgh doesn't really have midtowns or uptowns like other cities. When you're outside of downtown, it all feels really residential. Oakland might be the only exception that I can think of.
If you're looking for something were you have a better mix of income levels, Lawrenceville is probably better. I'd also recommend East Liberty, which has some great restaurants. I don't really know what is considered yuppy though. Is shopping at Whole Foods or the East End Co-op yuppy? I love living close to a food coop. Or is it the suburban sprawl that you're looking to avoid? I do not shop at Walmart or live near one. Chain restaurants? Very few if any in the east end.
Will you get a chance to visit before deciding on a place to live? I think seeing these neighborhoods will help you.
Also you mean a 45 min commute by bus, right? Or by bike? I wouldn't recommend commuting by car as parking is very expensive and/or may not be available to students. Lawrenceville was not as convenient by bus to my school which is why we didn't consider living there (we also wanted a neighborhood close to Frick park for mountain biking and dog walking). If you're going to Duquesne, the commute will be fine. Otherwise, it might be difficult. Check out bus schedules on the port authority website. If you'll be biking, you'll be fine.
Good luck with your move and your grad program.
I join the chorus of voices who think you would like Lawrenceville a lot.
I'm also posting to suggest that you wouldn't like the Mexican War Streets all that much. It is a gentrified island (about four blocks long and four wide) surrounded by a sea of African-American poverty. You don't sound like you'd like the island much - gentrification is gentrification, and while you should credit MWS residents for bravery, in essence they are trying to create a little Shadyside a block at a time. Nor do I think you'd like the sea much either - African-American poverty doesn't have the cachet that drug-induced crazy hippie poverty has. Finally, the business district near the MSW is a shell - it has potential, but it can't compete with Butler Street in Lawrenceville.
Finally, I'd like to echo Awesomo's defense of Squirrel Hill and Shadyside. Both are urban; you'd be more likely to get mugged in either than in Lawrenceville. I don't live in either and never wanted to, but both are fine neighborhoods full of cool people. Don't let your hatred of Target blind you to their charms.
I agree, re: Squirrel Hill. Squirrel Hill is very much an urban neighborhood, just not in the sense that the word "urban" has come to be conflated with poverty or violence. It's basically got two fairly substantial business districts (Forbes and Murray) and a lot to do. There is a reasonably significant mix of incomes -- I know people who have rented there for $300-400/mo, but then there are $750k houses (incredibly, that's a ton of money in Pittsburgh). The farther from Forbes and Murray you get, the quieter and more "suburb-style" serene it gets...but then you're still 10 feet away from your neighbor, people live in gigantic apartment complexes, and there are virtually no chain stores to speak of unless you drive all the way through Greenfield/Hazelwood to the Waterfront.
Shadyside is different to me. It's not exactly suburban either -- not at all, physically. The houses are, once again, very close to one another (my girlfriend referred to them as "rowhouse mansions" when she first moved here)...There is a LOT of street activity on Walnut, Ellsworth, Negley, Highland, and even most of the back streets.
And yet, at the same time...it's distinct from Squirrel Hill because the rents are uniformly high and thus it almost exclusively draws people who have money. In contrast to Squirrel Hill, which has reasonably-priced eateries or hardware stores mixed in with its high-end, Shadyside is almost entirely composed of stores catering to the wealthy. I can potentially stand Ellsworth, but I honestly hate walking down Walnut Street because I invariably feel under-dressed and sloppy!
This is not to mention the plainly suburb-style developments that Shadyside is driving forth in the burgeoning "East Side" area (aka East Liberty). There is literally going to be a Target there -- that's not hyperbole. The whole "East Side" complex (and its Penn Ave satellite with Trader Joe's, Petland, Office Depot, etc) looks exactly like and is modelled after any stereotypical suburban retail megaplex. It has very little distinctive architectural character and even less distinctive brands filling it.
This is not to say that I don't appreciate a Border's that I can walk to, or that I don't shop at Trader Joe's every two weeks, or that frankly a Target within the city will be a Godsend (would you rather that we as city-dwellers contribute to the city's tax base or some suburb's?)! I'm just saying that this is doubtlessly not what the OP is describing as urban.
Also, re: Observatory Hill, I wouldn't suggest it at all to be honest, based on your criteria. It's 7 miles from Oakland (CMU/Pitt district), there is virtually no business district (the nearest one is Brighton Heights, I guess?), and you very rarely hear about anything at all happening there. In fact in the last 4 years since I've moved back to Pittsburgh, I don't recall ever hearing of anything happening there whatsoever.
Additionally, bus access is fairly limited there (it's an hour and a transfer at least to Oakland) and -- I'm saying this as someone who routinely bikes around East Liberty and Mount Oliver late at night -- biking down Perrysville Ave (pretty much the main point of access to Observatory Hill) is not really suggested at any time. I'm genuinely not the sort of person who posts alarmist BS like this, but I have good friends who have lived in the North Side their entire lives who will roll through a stop light at the Perrysville & Charles intersection just to get out of there.
That said, Riverview Park (which house "The Observatory") is a largely overlooked gem in this city. I love riding my bike up there from Lawrenceville -- it's a challenging ascent and the view is a nice payoff.
I love both Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, but they are not everyone's cup of tea. Both neighborhoods offer a variety of living experiences, but to say that they both aren't yuppified would be misleading. Any area that can support a huge Pottery Barn, for example, has a substantial number of yuppies. Yes, there are lots of students and folks of other means, and yes there are independent, locally-owned stores in both areas, but there is more than a large number of "urban professionals" living in both neighborhoods. Which is a selling point to a lot of folks, but may not be what others are looking for. Urban gritty they are not. It sounds to me like the OP is looking for more of an underground urban scene. Lawrenceville is probably more up their alley. Or at least as close as I can think of in Pittsburgh.
No one area of the city is going to appeal to everyone.
The one bit of advice I would give would be to be careful when looking for a place in Lawrencville. It is pretty big neighborhood and it still has some rough areas. In particular some the "way" streets. I think it is also nicer closer to the 40th Street bridge than it is closer to the 62nd Street Bridge. As a newcomer, it might easier to find a safe apartment in Shadyside or Squirrell Hill because there aren't really any bad parts. The Mexican War Streets are very nice however you want to rent a place in the actual Mexican War Streets and not in the "Mexican War Streets Area". The downside is that there aren't a lot of restaurants in there. Unfortunately, a couple of blocks can be a big difference on the North Side. Good luck finding a place and welcome to Pittsburgh.
steindle, Target is putting in one of its "urban designed" stores in E. Liberty. It has windows, and it actually architecturally nice looking. It is one of the first urban stores they are forced to make. It won't be a huge ugly box like the one in Moronville.
It is nice to actually have a target close by. I am not a target/Walmart suburbinite. I had to go to Target in December for a tea kettle, socks, and a few other apartment items that would have cost me 10 times more if I would have bought them in Squirrel Hill. I have no problem with them opening a store in the city if it is designed responsibly instead of a huge ugly box with an enormous parking lot.
The one they are building is designed responsibly, and it can be re-used by another store when they go out like Kmart. I am sick of the American idea of build a huge cheap piece of crap, use it for 5-10 years, and when your store goes under, destroy it and build another huge ugly piece of boxy crap for another 5-10 years. These stores should be forced to build a quality building that can have a life span longer then 10 years if they want a building permit in my city.
this is exactly what i didn't want to have happen. sorry.
an old friend of mine from vancouver has lived in pittsburgh for about 3 years, in shadyside. she's given me her impression and it reminds me very much of a place i used to live here. a major street running through with nice restaurants, boutiques, and bar-hopping, and the demographic was largely young white families. i know this is for some people. shadyside is popular and expensive for a reason. lots of people like it there. but as i said in my OP, i am trying to avoid people convincing me to live in shadyside and instead to tell me about other parts of the city. there's a lot of info, and a lot of rental listings, about shadyside online. i came here because i wanted some information on what's outside of that.
there actually aren't any targets or walmarts in vancouver proper, but that doesn't matter, really. and i'm not "from" vancouver. i'm from toronto. born and raised. i'm a northeasterner as much as anyone else here. i've lived in vancouver for 5 years only. and i have been to pittsburgh before, but it was back in the mid-1990s, and i know that demographics and neighbourhoods have changed since then. i am going to visit the city in order to find a place to rent. i just want to do my homework first and do my best to find a place i won't feel like i want to move out of in a year.
another colleague of mine is a born and bred pittsburgher. he's lived in vancouver for about two decades but goes back to pittsburgh every year and wishes someone would offer him a job so he could move back there. he's given me some tips on places to live, but as a family man in his late 50s, the things we value in neighbourhoods are a bit different. also, i don't think he's as familiar with how some of the neighbourhoods have changed over the past decade or so, so while he tells me south side is good, maybe he's thinking of the south side of 10-15 years ago.
again, i don't think shadyside is bad. but i've learned enough through research and talking to people that currently live and visit there to know that it's not what i'm looking for. of course i'll still look at apartments in the area, and of course i'll still visit the neighbourhood once i'm there, but since i only plan to be in town for a week or a week and a half while i try to find a place, i don't want to spend 4-5 days looking in a neighbourhood that i'm pretty sure i'd want to move out of in a year or two anyway.
i also didn't mean to suggest that having a huge drug and mental illness problem here makes this city somehow endearing. it's tragic. i've lost count of the number of times someone, made of skin and bones, has banged on the window of my car while i'm sitting at a red light, screaming incoherently while blood runs from their noses and ears, trying to open my car door.
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