Liberty Avenue (Pittsburgh)

Facade of historical buildings
Buildings along Liberty Avenue

Liberty Avenue (Pittsburgh) is a major thoroughfare starting in downtown Pittsburgh, just outside Point State Park. Liberty Ave. runs through Downtown Pittsburgh, the Strip District, Bloomfield, and ends in the neighborhood of Shadyside at its intersection with Centre Avenue and Aiken Avenue.

A survey of Pittsburgh in 1784 already shows a Liberty Street in its present location.[1] It is also called Liberty Street in a map from 1860.[2] A history of Pittsburgh notes that a Market House was established in 1832 along Liberty Street between Sixth Street and Cecil Alley.[3]

Downtown

A section of Liberty Avenue in Downtown Pittsburgh was a red-light district in the 1970s and '80s, hosting the city's sex industry, including burlesque houses, strip bars, and peep shows, and attracting vice and crime.[4] The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, formed in 1984, worked over the next 25 years to transform the area into the Cultural District, a center for the arts, eventually bringing the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, Bricolage Production Company,[5] Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company,[6] the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Arts Education Center, and a museum of cartoon art, The ToonSeum, to Liberty Avenue.[7]

Liberty Avenue in the downtown area underwent an years-long extensive $3.6 million redesign and repavement that was completed by 1991.[8]

Strip District

Liberty Ave. is a main road through the Strip District. It is the home to many businesses, mostly offices and business-to-business service and product providers. The factory to manufacture George Westinghouse's air brakes was located at 2425 Liberty. This has now become the home of the Pittsburgh Opera. There are few retail establishments on Liberty Ave. in the Strip District.

Bloomfield

Liberty Ave. is the site of the main business district in Bloomfield. Liberty Ave. is also home to West Penn Hospital as well as many small store fronts.

A semi-fictionalized version of Liberty Avenue is featured prominently in the American version of the television program Queer as Folk.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Liberty Avenue (Pittsburgh).
  1. ↑ http://www.mapsofpa.com/pitts/1784fromhopkins.jpg
  2. ↑ http://www.mapsofpa.com/pitts/1860_3622.jpg
  3. ↑ Fleming, George Thornton. History of Pittsburgh and Environs, from Prehistoric Days to the Beginning of the American Revolution. Pp. 73-74. [Vol. 2] Pittsburgh: American Historical Society, Incorporated, 1922. https://books.google.com/books?id=TPUMAAAAYAAJ&dq=Pittsburgh+diseases+history&source=gbs_navlinks_s, retrieved 08/13/2016.
  4. ↑ Seate, Mike (May 12, 2005). "Locals reminisce over red light district's past". Tribune-Review. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
  5. ↑ "Midnight Radio's Pittsburgh Ghost Stories". Pittsburgh City Paper.
  6. ↑ "Pittsburgh Playwrights' Theatre Festival in Black & White". Pittsburgh City Paper.
  7. ↑ Machosky, Michael (December 25, 2009). "First Night celebrates more than New Year". Tribune-Review. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
  8. ↑ "The Pittsburgh Press - Google News Archive Search". google.com.

Coordinates: 40°27′19″N 79°58′34″W / 40.45537°N 79.97617°W / 40.45537; -79.97617


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