East Liberty (Pittsburgh)
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.
East Liberty's Beginnings
Around the time of the American Revolution, East Liberty was a free grazing area in Allegheny County located near the eastern edge what was then named 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.
A few farming families owned much of the nearby land, and their names grace streets in and around East Liberty today. Casper Taub claimed the present location of Bloomfield, Garfield, and Friendship from the Delaware tribe, and sold this land to his son-in-law John Conrad Winebiddle. Winebiddle's daughter Barbara inherited a portion close to what is now East Liberty. Alexander Negley owned a farm called "Fertile Bottom" north of present-day East Liberty along the southern bank of the Allegheny River. Negley's land included some of present-day East Liberty and much of nearby Highland Park, Morningside, Larimer, and Stanton Heights.
Ownership of the area merged when Alexander Negley's son Jacob married Barbara Winebiddle. In 1816, Jacob Negley 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 Jacob's daughter Sarah Jane Negley married the ambitious lawyer Thomas Mellon. 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: after first becoming a prosperous lawyer, he made his true 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.
Rise and Fall
In 1868, the City of Pittsburgh annexed what is now East Liberty. Thanks to its favorable location and Mellon's guiding hand, it became a thriving commercial center in the following years. East Liberty's merchants 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.
External links
See also
List of Pittsburgh neighborhoods Template:US-northeast-geo-stub