Garfield

Garfield

Garfield

Garfield is another neighborhood on the East End of Pittsburgh. Just like Greenfield, this area is known for its steep hills. Garfield’s streets run north-south with a 20 percent incline. The neighborhood is bordered by Bloomfield and Friendship.
Just like Bloomfield and Friendship, this land was acquired by Casper Taub from a Delaware Native American tribe. The area’s first settlers were blue-collar Irish Catholics, those that worked in the steel mills. This popular area was known in the 1960s as a stable, working-class area. Women used to sit on their stoops and catch up nightly after their children went to bed.

The first owner of a lot in the neighborhood bought his plot on September 19, 1881, the day President James Garfield was buried.  After that, the name of the area stuck. To stop what they saw as the decline of the neighborhood in the ’70s, parishioners at Garfield church St. Lawrence O’Toole founded the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, using private and government funds to renovate housing units and commercial properties like restaurants and local theaters.

Like most of the East End of Pittsburgh, this neighborhood is experiencing a revitalization.  Surrounded by new businesses in East Liberty, Bloomfield and Shadyside as well as the new UPMC Children’s Hospital at the north end of Penn Avenue, many small businesses, art galleries, coffee shops, boutiques and restaurants are moving into the neighborhood.

 

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