Homewood is a neighborhood in the Upper East End of Pittsburgh. The earliest settlement in the neighborhood was in 1832 by Judge William Wilkins, but through most of the mid and late 19th century the neighborhood was fairly rural and sparsely settled, with a few small frame-dominated blocks even somewhat built out.
These houses are good examples of Homewood's earliest architectural age, and according to some accounts had a black community even by the 1860s. The name Homewood during this era was used in a broader sense than today, mostly associated with the great estates of the well-to-do of Pittsburgh (including the Carnegie, Frick, Heinz, and Westinghouse families), in what would now be considered to be Point Breeze/Point Breeze North.
Homewood in the modern sense however was almost totally built out in the period between 1890 and 1910 as a dense, but relatively classic, streetcar suburban neighborhood. The neighborhood had a wide variety of affordable housing options for burgeoning middle classes of Pittsburgh, from blocks full of small brick rowhouses to more scaled-down versions of the omnipresent East End foursquare style. The neighborhood during this period attracted Irish, Italian, and German residents, along with a strong middle-class black community, which began relocating from the Hill District. Homewood during the early part of the 20th century was well integrated, and reported good racial relations, with roughly 31,000 people in 1940.
Things began to go downhill for the neighborhood in the 1950s in a rapid fashion. The city's construction of the Civic Arena in the lower hill displaced some 8,000 people. The lower-income black proportion of this displacement ended up moving to many areas of the city which went downhill, including Beltzhoover, parts of the North Side, Garfield, and East Liberty. But it particularly moved to Homewood. Between 1950 and 1960, Homewood went from 22% black to 66% black. The extent to which this initial rise was due to white flight is sometimes exaggerated - modern-day Homewood South grew by 10,000 people that decade, but the white population did start to leave in large numbers, first moving out of the city to Wilkinsburg and Penn Hills, although today many are as far east as Plum and Murrysville. This was hastened by riots in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (which also partially trashed the business district, albeit not to the same degree as in the Hill District). Then in the 1970s there was the rise of gang violence, and in the 1980s the crack epidemic and widespread demolition of historic housing stock. In 2010, the neighborhood population was down to 6,400, and still falling rapidly. Up until very recently, it looked as though the neighborhood might never really "hit bottom" and start to recover.
That's the neighborhood as it was, now let's bring it to the present.
Homewood South was historically the more working class portion of the neighborhood. Before the neighborhood was trashed by riots and blight, it was dominated by a mixture of modest frame housing and industrial-scale rowhouses where a whole block was built out at one time. Many have been lost to blight, but
one intact block (minus missing porches) remains as rental housing on Hamilton Avenue, giving a hint of what the area looked like in its prime. This area fell the hardest out of any part of Homewood in terms of blight, with some of the abandoned rows (like the now-demolished Formosa Way row) notorious drug houses. At the same time, the area has experienced significant reinvestment over the last 5-10 years, due to the combination of lots of available land and convenient access to downtown via the East Busway. New infill houses have been built on
Finance Street,
Susquehanna Street,
and senior apartments on Homewood Avenue (where a coffeeshop has also now been located). There are literally dozens of new homes being constructed right now in the area south of Hamilton between Zenith Way and N Richland. Obviously at this point all of this is subsidized construction, but it's a great sign for a neighborhood that had still been losing 20%-35% of its population every single year. Crime is also slightly down in Homewood South compared to the past, at least relative
Homewood North had historically been the "nice" side of Homewood. The streets north of Frankstown, like Idlewild, Race, Montecello, and Hermitage, were built out for middle-class homeowners. There's not a single intact block left, but
many of the blocks have most of their homes left, which give you a taste of what the neighborhood looked like in the past. Basically a dense, slightly scaled-down version of Friendship or Highland Park. This is only one part Homewood North however - the neighborhood also includes the Housing Authority project of the same name (which is largely isolated on a hillside) and
some very rural/backwoodsy areas to the far east of the neighborhood. The latter look more blighted than they are - they actually began going downhill before they ever got finished getting built out. While up until around a decade ago Homewood North was a nicer area with (relatively) lower crime, crime in Homewood North has now surpassed crime in Homewood South. This area doesn't really have any near-term hope. It needs new homeowner occupants willing to put sweat equity into fixing up the turn-of-the century homes, but the market would need to improve considerably for that to happen.
Homewood West was always a more mixed-use area, and has been heavily affected by blight (
there are totally vacant blocks by Westinghouse Academy). As of 2010 only around 800 people lived there. It really lacks a distinct identity of its own, because segments of it are more contiguous with Larimer and Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar. There actually is a bit of commercial activity along Hamilton, between the Wheel Mill (an indoor cycling place) and the new and relocated Humane Animal Rescue (former Animal Rescue League) campus.
One thing which is likely surprising to people who don't spend much time at least driving through Homewood (which would be the vast majority of white people in Pittsburgh) is considering the levels of blight in the neighborhood it's still fairly walkable with a fair amount of commercial ventures. Homewood South, West, and North respectively are given walkscores of 67, 64, and 58 - meaning they're considered about as walkable as Highland Park, Mount Washington, or Polish Hill. Obviously it's only a shadow of what it once was, but Homewood still has bars, convenience stores, barbershops, hair salons, at least two BBQ places, salons, a hardware store, a PNC bank, a record shop, a dry cleaner, a bakery, etc. No one would call it vibrant, but it's far from the perceived blighted empty hellscape that it is sometimes made out to be.
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