Pedestrian Pittsburgh: The Staircases of Polish Hill

[Pedestrian Pittsburgh is a collaborative effort between Eric Lidji and me. We're gonna walk all over this fantastic city. Check out his blog for his account (which will be much more elegant and whimsical than my account that follows).]

When you put a neighborhood on a steep hill, you end up needing a transportation system to get people from the bottom to the top and back down again. It might seem too basic to be considered a transportation system, but really that's what staircases are. They are a pain when you have to climb several to get to where you're going, but they are way less of a pain than the alternative - scaling the hill without it broken up a bit.


Our plan on possibly the most beautiful January day on record was to walk up or down all of the staircases in Polish Hill. Why? Why not? What else are you going to do with your time?

This staircase is all the way at the back of Polish Hill. On the other side of that wall is Bigelow Boulevard.

From the top of the staircase, you can see Polish Hill, Lawrenceville, Troy Hill and beyond.

But, if you look down, you'll see some lovely little chickens!

The day of our walk it was sunny and almost 60 degrees. Fuck winter, indeed. (Of course, it's now freezing and snowy and blustery, so that whole mild winter thing is probably over. SAD. FACE.)

Definitely my favorite staircase, and maybe Eric's too, was this one above. It's hard to see before most of it is covered in the weird gully-forest overgrowth in Polish Hill's odd little gully. But where it looks like it turns to the right it actually also continues straight, making a big, somewhat unnecessary loop. Though I guess it is not entirely unnecessary for the people who live in the three or four houses it services, which is a nice part of Pittsburgh's charm.

This is one of those snapshots of Pittsburgh that I just absolutely love. Rickety houses teetering comfortably on the edge.

The best part of walking the staircases were the small discoveries along the way: the unnecessary loop, the stickers and graffiti, the chickens and the view. Polish Hill is a treasure trove because the people who live there, have lived there, or have climbed up and down the staircases on trips to the neighborhood have left little remnants of themselves behind. I like wondering who put up these little birds outside their cage or who spray-painted this excellent orange creature on our last staircase of the day. I'll probably never find out, but that's okay so long as there are continually more things to find and enjoy.

You can see more photos from the walk on the EverythingBetterPGH Picasa Page.

Pedestrian Pittsburgh - West End Village: Taming the Dragons

[Pedestrian Pittsburgh is a collaborative effort between Eric Lidji and me. We're gonna walk all over this fantastic city. Check out his blog for his account (which will be much more elegant and whimsical than my account that follows). Also, we have a tumblr and a twitter.]

You may remember a post from a few weeks ago, where the City Paper noted the uncharted-ness of Pittsburgh's West End by denoting it on a map with a "Here There Be Dragons" icon. Eric and I made our second PedPGH trip to the West End recently and discovered there are no dragons, but there is a colorful and interesting neighborhood hidden from view because of the valley it lies within.

Driving into the West End we were treated to a sliver of a rainbow, barely visible in this picture, but we took it to be a welcoming sign.

Mural on the side of the police building in West End Village, the first of several murals we would encounter. (I'm a fan of any mural that captures the confluence of the three rivers and the city's skyline from the point. There could be 100 of these throughout the city and I'd fall in love with each and every one of them.)

A mural fading away.

This mural represents cultural diversity and was painted by several people who are depicted in the picture below.

The West End's branch of the Carnegie Library was one of the first libraries Carnegie built in the city of Pittsburgh.

Another mural in the West End.

Train tracks run above the streets of the West End.

We walked down a few empty streets and came upon this little creek and lush greenery that sit in the West End's backyard.

The West End Village used to be called Temperanceville once upon a time.

One habit Eric and I have been making on these PedPGH walks is to explore a staircase when we come upon it. Such was the case in the West End, and we climbed this very long set of stairs that took us on an adventure through the woods(!!) of Elliott.

This path came out of nowhere, and was completely isolated. It really felt like we were in the Laurel Highlands, but we were within the Pittsburgh city limits.

We came out from the path and found another path leading to the West End Park. When we got to the top of the hill that the park lies on, the sun had started to set, and the sky looked amazing.

This mosaic was great, and when I looked at it up close, I realized it was a mosaic within a mosaic within a mosaic, and so on.

One of my favorite things about the PedPGH walks, especially on ones in neighborhoods I've never before visited, is realizing that Pittsburgh, as a whole, is one of the most interesting places around. The West End Village feels a little remote, and getting in and out of it was no easy task, but it was undoubtedly a Pittsburgh neighborhood, filled with color and a personality all its own. There were no dragons, but there was certainly plenty to discover.

Here There Be Dragons: The Undiscovered West End

This is an illustrated map from the City Paper's City Guide.

I loved that the West End is demarcated with a fire-breather and the caption "Here There Be Dragons." The West End does feel like an uncharted mystery in the Pittsburgh landscape, but Eric and I have ventured there, and plan to make a return visit soon, for Pedestrian Pittsburgh.

Pedestrian Pittsburgh - Troy Hill: Charmingly Isolated

[Pedestrian Pittsburgh is a collaborative effort between Eric Lidji and me. We're gonna walk all over this fantastic city. Check out his blog for his account (which will be much more elegant and whimsical than my account that follows). Also, we have a tumblr and a twitter.]

When I ride my bike home from work, I take Smallman Street from Downtown all the way to the 31st Street Bridge before switching over to Penn for a long, steady climb uphill to Bloomfield. Smallman Street is a calmer street with less traffic than Penn or Liberty, and it also affords one a great view of a row of homes that teeter on the edge of Troy Hill. Seeing those homes always reminds me of my first summer back in Pittsburgh when my friend Dan and I took an epic bike ride up Troy Hill Road to get the neighborhood's spray park on a hot day. The other weekend I returned to Troy Hill, just about a year later.

On this trip, we didn't bike. But we also didn't technically drive. We started our walk like any good walk in Pittsburgh should begin: ascending a seemingly never-ending set of city steps, covered in overgrown brush and smatterings of graffiti.

This is the view, going down. But we were going up!

One of the views, right after finishing our ascent.

Is it possible that a bad view of Pittsburgh exists? I think not.

Some Things I Have Learned About TROY HILL

- It is the second-most isolated Pittsburgh neighborhood in terms of ways into the neighborhood.

- Troy Hill was founded in 1833. And for the first ten years, it was nothing but cemeteries.

- At it's peak, the population of Troy Hill was 10,000. Today, it's more like 2,500.

- St. Anthony's Chapel boasts the largest public collection of relics in the world.

- Rialto Street, a.k.a. Pig Hill, has a 24% grade. The neighborhood used to have an incline, and it directly paralleled Pig Hill's steep grade.

Once we made it to the top, we started our way around the neighborhood. Here are some things we saw, some things we came across, and some things we stumbled upon.

One of my favorite simple pleasures in life is a good flea market, which we happened upon during our adventures in Troy Hill. Our visit coincided with a weekend-long Troy Hill celebration, and I reaped the benefits of that by spending $5 and getting three pretty excellent wooden pieces/decorations for my apartment.

This is Rialto Street, or Pig Hill. Farmers on Troy Hill used to drive their pigs down the hill to the butchers by the Allegheny.

Without a doubt, I was most charmed by the graffitied pigs on Rialto Street.

Troy Hill might be isolated, but it felt welcoming. In fact, on the Pedestrian Pittsburgh walks that Eric and I have done, I've never felt as comfortable as I did in Troy Hill. It's got character, and it feels like a community. If it weren't for the climb, I think I'd be happy living on the edge.