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East Liberty (Pittsburgh)

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East Liberty is a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Pittsburgh's East End. It is bordered by Highland Park, Morningside, Stanton Heights, Garfield, Friendship, Shadyside and Larimer. The neighborhood is on the mend since falling victim to urban renewal. East Liberty Presbyterian Church, one of the more impressive churches in Pittsburgh, is located there.

At the time of the American Revolution, East Liberty was a free grazing area located near the eastern edge of the town of Pittsburg. (In older English usage, a "liberty" was a plot of common land on the outskirts of a town). A nearby village took its name from this common land, and this village became the East Liberty neighborhood of today.

The early settlement of the area revolved around a few farming families, whose names grace streets in and around East Liberty today. At the time of the Revolution, the area was owned by Casper Taub, who had claimed land to the west of present-day East Liberty from the native Delaware tribe, and by Alexander Negley, who owned a farm called "Fertile Bottom" north of present-day East Liberty along the southern bank of the Allegheny River. Taub's holdings included the nearby neighborhoods of Bloomfield, Garfield, and Friendship. Negley's land included some of present-day East Liberty and much of nearby Highland Park.

These lands were joined when Jacob Negley, Alexander's son, married Barbara Winebiddle, daughter of Joseph Conrad Winebiddle, son-in-law of Casper Taub. In 1816, the Negley family saw to it that the Pittsburgh-Greensburg turnpike was built through present-day East Liberty, which made the area a trading center and ensured its future growth.

East Liberty truly began to develop as a commercial area in 1843, when Sarah Jane Negley, who inherited much of today's East Liberty from her parents Alexander Negley and Barbara Winebiddle Negley, married the ambitious lawyer Thomas Mellon. Mellon, like the Negleys and most of Western Pennsylvania's other early settlers, was of Scots-Irish stock. He was born in County Tyrone, Ulster and was raised as a farmer near present-day Murrysville, Westmoreland County. His son Andrew Mellon later played a prominent role in national politics.

Thomas Mellon first visited the area of modern-day East Liberty in 1823, when as a 10-year-old he saw the Negley mansion for the first time and decided he wanted something like it. He achieved this goal and much more: he worked hard and became a prosperous lawyer, then made his fortune by marrying Sarah Jane Negley, selling or renting the land near East Liberty that she inherited, and using the proceeds to finance Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick in Pittsburgh's steel and coal industries.

By 1900, the City of Pittsburgh had annexed East Liberty, which by then was a thriving commercial center. Its stores served many of Pittsburgh's industrial millionaires, who settled in nearby Shadyside and Point Breeze, as well as professionals in Highland Park and Friendship and laborers in Bloomfield and Garfield. By 1950, it was a bustling and fully urban marketplace, and was in fact the third-busiest retail center in Pennsylvania, behind only center city Philadelphia and downtown Pittsburgh.

The 1960s changed East Liberty, and not for the better.

See also

List of Pittsburgh neighborhoods Template:US-northeast-geo-stub