Friendship (Pittsburgh)

Friendship is a neighborhood in the East End of the City of Pittsburgh, located some three miles east of the city center. It takes its name from Friendship Avenue, an east-west thoroughfare that bisects the neighborhood.

Like neighboring Bloomfield and Garfield, Friendship is located on land claimed by early settler Casper Taub from the native Delaware tribe. Taub sold the land to his son-in-law, Joseph Conrad Winebiddle, who operated a tannery in Lawrenceville and used the profits to buy additional land. Upon Winebiddle's death, his holdings passed to his four children. One daughter, Barbara, inherited the very eastern portion. Her husband, Jacob Negley, used it and holdings of his own to develop East Liberty. Another daughter, Kitty, inherited the portion that constitutes Friendship today.

Many of the streets in Friendship take their names from members of the Winebiddle clan, including Winebiddle, Roup (Kitty Winebiddle married a John Roup), Aiken, Negley, and Baum. Some residents claim that the eponymous Friendship Avenue is named after the friendship between Joseph Conrad Winebiddle and William Penn, but this seems unlikely, as Penn rarely visited the colony that bears his name, and then only saw the parts near Philadelphia.

Friendship was annexed to the City of Pittsburgh in 1868, at which time Winebiddle's descendants began diving their inheritance into plots and selling it. What is now Bloomfield was developed first, and was divided into narrow plots and used for rowhouses. What is now Friendship began to be developed later, as trolleys extended beyond Bloomfield in the early 1900s. Because the owners of the Roup holdings divided their land into larger plots and set building restrictions upon it, Friendship was developed as a streetcar suburb, and its houses were built by and for members of Pittsburgh's professional class. These houses tend to be large, square homes typical of the Victorian period, with elaborate architectural embellishments, and they are located on some of the only flat streets in the City of Pittsburgh. As a streetcar suburb, Friendship lacks its own business district, but its residents have access to the districts on Penn Avenue in nearby Garfield and East Liberty, and also those on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield, and Walnut Street in Shadyside.

Friendship's history to date features explosive growth, followed by a stunning decline. From 1900 through the 1950s, the neighborhood was inhabited by prosperous professional families who enjoyed the area's many charms. But beginning around 1960, these families moved to the suburbs, at once attracted by the opportunities there and repulsed by changes in the City of Pittsburgh, most notably the construction of massive housing projects in nearby Garfield and East Liberty, and the wholesale demolition of much of the East Liberty business district. For some thirty years, the neighborhood steadily declined, and the massive old Victorian houses were broken up into apartments, with many of their attractions ripped out and sold, or else painted over. By the 1980s, over 70% of the housing stock in Friendship was owned by landlords, many absentee, who rented the grand old houses as multi-unit apartments.

In the 1990s, however, Friendship's fortunes started to improve. Urban homesteaders began to move into Friendship, looking past the blight to see an opportunity to buy, for a low price, large homes with ignored but still extant amenities -- high ceilings, plaster walls, and ornate woodwork -- that were not available in newer suburban homes. By 1995, these individuals had organized a Friendship Preservation Group to advocate for the area, and a subsidiary, the Friendship Development Associates, to buy dilapidated properties, rehabilitate them as single-family dwellings, and sell them to new residents. By 2004, a number of artists and architects had gravitated to the neighborhood, and its future seemed bright.

Friendship is bordered by Bloomfield on the west (at Gross Street), Garfield on the north (Penn Avenue), East Liberty on the east (Negley Avenue), and Shadyside on the south (Baum Boulevard).