Originally Posted by George Woods
God. The reason I so rarely bother to say anything on this forum is because of the snarky, bitchy retorts that have become so common of late. I wasn't advocating demolition. I've lived in Pittsburgh all my life and I've always been concerned about preservation. I've spent my adult-life finding pictures of now-gone buildings and getting pissed about it. But I'm burnt-out. At the end of the day, the buildings are not coming back. And what's much more enjoyable to dwell on is the fact that Pittsburgh still has such an amazing stock of old buildings. The important thing now is to participate in the opposition to further, needless demolition nowadays. It was very heartening to hear so many people getting so upset by the idea of losing three buildings on Forbes which, not long ago, would've been considered insignificant by almost everyone. My mentioning the dilapidation in the center of the Northside wasn't an attempt to justify its destruction—I was pointing out that it wasn't a conspiracy. All over the country, governments used eminent domain to take neighborhoods, and when they were thriving, there was vociferous opposition. Look no farther than The Hill, or Manchester. Northsiders in the Fifties and Sixties thought of it as run-down and deserted enough to mount virtually no opposition to its removal. The market-house's destruction was an abomination, and it galvanized the guys who started PHLF, but people didn't get too bent outta shape about most of the rest—they were too busy moving to brand-new suburbs, suburbs that DIDN'T YET EXIST when the pictures Evergrey so snidely responded with were taken. I don't need to be shown that the center of the former Allegheny City was thriving in the fucking THIRTIES. So was the rest of Pittsburgh. There were only a few streetcar-suburbs at that point. In the ensuing 20–30 years, a fuck-ton of car-oriented suburbs sprouted, and the rapid exodus of Northsiders (exacerbated by their desperation to get away from the Blacks displaced by the Civic Arena) meant very rapid deterioration of the core of the Northside.
I love Allegheny City—far more than the rest of Pittsburgh. It's incredible. As was said by another commenter, it's amazing anywhere around here has such a "feel." Consequently, I'm very interested in its history—enough that I've gone out of my way to ask older residents to tell me what they remember. And all I was pointing out was that, according to them, the general concensus back then was that it was dilapidated. I've also seen street-level photos from the Fifties, and they don't look like the photos from the Thirties. None of this is to say it was excusable—it was awful. But it isn't a video-game—each property in the city is owned by someone, and they have the right to let it go to shit. And even when the city decides to act, they have to go through a LOT of red tape to do their due diligence before they do anything, and all they typically do anyway is demolish. To suggest that "they should've stopped that,"—who is "they"?! It's still happening. People die and leave their houses to relatives who don't give a fuck. Other people would love the houses, and, indeed, some just go ahead and squat them. Some even pursue ownership through adverse possession. But even after the taxes are delinquent, and the house becomes dangerous, the city takes forever trying to notify next-of-kin. And they don't have the resources (money or man-power) to keep track of the thousands of abandoned properties anyway. And when people say, "they should tear down all of Allegheny Center and start over." How? It's privately owned. It's maintained. People occupy it and pay rent. And tearing it down because the architecture sucks is exactly what people in the Fifties wanted to do to buildings the same age as these are now! Get real, people.
All we can do is be glad that Pittsburgh is attracting new residents, that the fad of living a million fucking miles from the city is coming to an end, that people, therefore, want to save old buildings in Pittsburgh. We need to advocate for preservation of all that's left. And we need to lobby for modernization of the process by which the city addresses the issue of houses that nobody with a deed wants to keep.
And we also have to accept the fact that comparing Pittsburgh's building-stock of today with what was here sixty years ago is stupid. There were almost 700,000 inhabitants. It's a different place now. And it's for the better. There's breathing-room. There are trails. The rivers are accessible. There's green-space. And, most importantly, there are a lot of awesome buildings left, and hopefully, the best of them will not just be saved from demolition, but used again by people who've discovered what a neat place it is.
As for Allegheny Center, we should just hope for a cool, modern neighborhood with a few landmarks in it. That's realistic. Hopefully, market-forces will lead to improvement of the place in an effort to command higher rents. Maybe businesses will follow, etc. It'll have to adapt to the changing Northside organically. It really is akin to a bombed-out portion of a German city after the war. If we end up with something nice and modern, surrounded by a park and amazing, old neighborhoods, great. But aside from maybe rebuilding the market house (à la some of the brick-for-brick rebuilds of landmarks in Europe), which would be fantastic, we're not gonna see anything that approximates what was there. And it's just an exercise in massochism to keep dwelling on what could've been.
This thread is an awesome resource for finding information about development in Pittsburgh that any one of us wouldn't have the time to search for alone. There's also the added benefit of constructive dialogue on the subject among like-minded fans of urbanity. Can we make an effort to be more civil so that it doesn't devolve into a fucking venue for stupid arguments? For instance, if someone off-handedly mentions something, without elaboration, and your knee-jerk reaction is to feel like you probably disagree, how about asking, "Can you elaborate? To my knowledge, that isn't/wasn't the case"? And then, maybe a mature conversation could follow.
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