A Walking Tour of Penn Avenue - One of America's Finest Streets

[ks2006]

Incredible tour, thanks! I would have thought it was impossible to have a good photo thread of Pittsburgh without a prominent river or bridge ... but you did it.

[dc_denizen]

I love threads like this, taking you down an important thoroughfare to really show off the characteristics of a city. great pics!

[chris08876]

Photo thread of the month. Really like the effort you put into it. Great tour!

[GeneW]

So I'm curious, what transportation method were you using for this shoot?

Driving seems like it would be a pain because you'd have to keep finding places to park along the way and then backtrack to pick up the shots you'd missed. I've walked that far in a day and actually walked Penn from Bakery Square to the Northside once last year but it's still a good long stroll. Biking seems like it would have been the best option.

[AFW523]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

Awesome tour. Focusing on a single street is such a great idea, in a weird way it really gives a complete display of a city's different types of neighborhoods. Pittsburgh is a great city, and this showed me more than I've ever seen, especially with the narrative. Thx so much for sharing!

Sort of a double edge sword. It absolutely affords the ability to illustrate how diverse and exciting a city can be, by forcing you to display those characteristics on just one street. Any city can look great if you pick and choose the areas to highlight. But there were a few other opportunities in which I wanted to stray a few blocks one way or the other to highlight a few hot spots or developments. Notably in the strip.

Originally Posted by texcolo

I followed along with your photos using Google Maps. A photo thread on one streetscape is a great idea.

If you really want to delve into the spirit of it, use the toggle option on Googe Streetview and slide it back to 2007 in almost all of the neighborhoods. Pretty notable transformation in a lot of areas.

Originally Posted by GeneW

So I'm curious, what transportation method were you using for this shoot?

Driving seems like it would be a pain because you'd have to keep finding places to park along the way and then backtrack to pick up the shots you'd missed. I've walked that far in a day and actually walked Penn from Bakery Square to the Northside once last year but it's still a good long stroll. Biking seems like it would have been the best option.

Well...I walked. But to get myself into position to do so, I put my bike in my car, parked it about a third of the way down, biked back to the start and then walked towards my car. Once I got there, I'd go back for my bike and repeat. Might seem unnecessarily convoluted, but I had some time concerns so I didn't want to get caught out there without an option to bail if needed. I also didn't want to start to rush it towards the end and blow through the tail end, just to finish. Biking from one end to the other was an option, but I didn't want to have to hop off my bike for each instance in which I saw something I wanted to capture. Only to have to double back for blocks at a time to go back for my bike.

The one thing I did not properly illustrate is just how much development is under way. Off the top of my head I failed to properly capture at least 3 or 4 pretty large tracts currently going vertical, but because they lack proper massing, they were tough to get a solid representation from street level. I also had higher hopes to capture Arts Fest, but it's really just a bunch of tents with people standing in the way.

I do have a few more that I accidentally left out while sifting through them - I'll post them shortly.

Thanks, everyone. I plan on giving a similar treatment to a few others if I get the chance.

[BrianTH]

Awesome! I live in Wilkinsburg, work Downtown, and spend lots of other time along Penn--definitely an amazing street which you captured wonderfully.

Random comment:

Originally Posted by ks2006

I would have thought it was impossible to have a good photo thread of Pittsburgh without a prominent river or bridge ... but you did it.

Not a coincidence! Penn Avenue is tracing a long-standing major land route into Downtown Pittsburgh (located at the point formed from the confluence of the rivers) from points east. That is also more or less the same route the Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line followed into Pittsburgh (ultimately from Philadelphia) (specifically, the current railroad and East Busway actually follow the Mainline route), and before the railroads it was also a prominent stagecoach route, and even farther back a Native American trail.

REALLY far back--glaciers had dammed, redirected, and combined the ancestors of the Allegheny River, which had once flowed into Lake Erie instead, leading to the creation of the confluence between the Allegheny and Monongahela and the beginning of the mighty Ohio River at the future location of Pittsburgh. As the glaciers came and went, the confluence actually moved around a bit before settling into its current location (note the rivers, swollen by glacial melt and such, were once much larger). In relevant part, the confluence used to be farther east, around East Liberty, and Penn Avenue is tracing the ancient path of the Mon from Wilkinsburg to that former confluence, then the ancient path of the Ohio down through Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, and the Strip.

A very cool map showing the different ancient versions of the confluence:



In general, those meandering ancient rivers created relatively flat areas throughout Pittsburgh's "East End" which later proved useful for the land routes mentioned above, and utimately became prime development areas through a combination of those good transportation links and large developable areas--a process that is continuing today!

Anyway, that is why if you trace Penn in particular, you don't see major rivers or bridges--the rivers moved! And by tracing the ancient rivers, no major bridges are needed.

[BigKidD]

Great photos and tour! I haven't been in Pittsburgh for years, but I still remember its impressive urban characteristics and it's nice to see recent infill and the pedestrianization of urban locations.

[DGodin]

Excellent, love it. Your methodology rocks. Thanks - very enjoyable tour.

[AFW523]

Quite a few more shots of the same stuff, this time back to front, just to empty the clip.

Downtown:











Strip District:















L'Ville















Garfield:






East Lib:














Larimer:





Point Breeze:



Wilkinsburg:

[Wheelingman04]

Wonderful shots! It's one of the most unique city in the country.
I am glad I live only an hour away.

[Austinlee]

This street represents what Pittsburgh is all about: Young, hip lofts and artists spaces; Huge new tech companies, Food co-ops, historical homes, some rehabbed but some that need TLC, dense business districts. pedestrian, bicyclists, bus transportation. This is what a real city looks like. Not always cohesive and perfect like Hausmannian urban homogenity in Paris and always room for improvement but it has excitement, diverse population and so much hope and love for the futures.

[AFW523]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

This street represents what Pittsburgh is all about: Young, hip lofts and artists spaces; Huge new tech companies, Food co-ops, historical homes, some rehabbed but some that need TLC, dense business districts. pedestrian, bicyclists, bus transportation. This is what a real city looks like. Not always cohesive and perfect like Hausmannian urban homogenity in Paris and always room for improvement but it has excitement, diverse population and so much hope and love for the futures.

Agreed - the significant change in just the past decade is highly illustrative of the transformation of the city proper as a whole. I still feel like something is missing, but I guess that's the point.

My alternate titles were "Pittsburgh - I managed to capture multiple scenes in which bikes and cars are both on the road at the same time without causing massive casualties or debilitating gridlock. Everyone chill the F@#k out."

or

"An ode to the overhead power line"

[AFW523]

Not to unnecessarily revive a dead thread, but since there was a lot of interest in it originally; here are a few developments that have just recently popped up regarding the Penn Avenue corridor:

Washington Post Piece on Wilkinsburg Schools Merging with City of Pittsburgh

Rhetoric aside, it was generally agreeable to both sides.

CNN recently profiled Bakery Square in a puff piece about Pittsburgh's ongoing improvement

Some killer aerial vantage points in there.

Opinion piece on The Frick

Just a quick review of The Frick grounds. A lot of recent renovations have been completed so it's been showing up in the news a bit more frequently.

Penn Plaza is Coming Down

The aforementioned tasteless apartment complex is slated to fall. Heavy-handed resident shove out aside, I cringe at the notion of knocking down this pile of crap only to replace it with generic mid-rise metal-clad horseshit. When we build those things on brownfields or empty lots, no one loses. But this needs to be a marked improvement not only of the overall appeal of the built structure, but of the shared space as well. Renderings not yet available, but I'm skeptical.

Properly Sized Tower Proposal in the Strip

As I mentioned in the original thread - the city and developers absolutely cannot afford to be shortsighted on the future of the Strip District. An 18-story apartment tower would absolutely be a step in the right direction. Movement should happen swiftly on this project, if only to force the market and other less ambitious developers hand.


Anyways - it's an exciting time for an exciting thoroughfare. In all there are probably 10 medium to large scale construction projects that I haven't mentioned in progress. I'm planning on a quick hit revisit with my camera before winter arrives, just to illustrate some of the changes.

[themaguffin]

Nice, detailed tour. However, one note - I have never heard East Liberty referred to as the 3rd busiest district in PA. In the city, perhaps, but not the state. Oakland has typically been called that...

[Nightsky]

Great, Pittsburgh is underrated!

[peanut gallery]

Excellent thread, my man. Quality photography, an amazing subject matter and a wonderful tour all rolled into one. Great idea and even better execution.

[bobdreamz]

Epic thread and pics! Thanks for sharing it with us.

[AFW523]

Originally Posted by themaguffin

Nice, detailed tour. However, one note - I have never heard East Liberty referred to as the 3rd busiest district in PA. In the city, perhaps, but not the state. Oakland has typically been called that...

A Detroiter's Perspective

FTA Piece on the TOD

Page 34

Quick search showing various sources mentioning it without any actually citing hard stats. Without digging down on it, I still say it's highly improbable, but it's certainly something I've heard often enough that it's gained some sort of credence as a means to either romanticize Slib's history, or argue it's potential.

[ragerunner1]

Outstanding tour. Thank you for the work and time you spent on this. Really like Pittsburgh.

[pip]

Something about Pittsburgh I like. Great set of pics. Also I really like those protected bike lanes.