Category Archives: Pedestrian Pittsburgh

The West End is sometimes called the West End Valley and sometimes the West End Village, but the names are interchangeable because the neighborhood wouldn’t feel like a village if it weren’t a valley. Following the bend in Wabash Street, … Continue reading →

Pittsburgh often feels inevitable. “Nearly all of the city’s important neighborhoods have strong boundaries,” Franklin Toker writes. The rivers and hills and runs mapped out the neighborhoods before any settlers did. Troy Hill is both a prime example of this … Continue reading →

Because Grand View Scenic Byway Park rings three sides of Mt. Washington, its outer edge is essentially a cliff, or at least a steep slope, falling toward Carson Street on one side and Saw Mill Run Blvd on the other … Continue reading →

North Winebiddle is the steepest street in the East End, a 22 percent grade from Penn to Hillcrest. To aide pedestrians, a loping staircase runs parallel to the street. Its design is common to Pittsburgh: long flat stretches interrupting an … Continue reading →

Allentown catches your eyes on a map because of a feature normal in most cities, but unique in Pittsburgh: a street grid. The neat square blocks just beyond a bluff overlooking the Mon show no sign of the diagonals or … Continue reading →

Stanton Avenue runs along the back of the East End like a zipper up the back of an evening gown (on a woman in repose) hiding some things worth hiding and some things worth seeing. We walked it from end … Continue reading →

The Mexican War Streets are one of the most beloved spots in Pittsburgh — probably in the top five. So when Allison’s friends Lindsay and Marlana visited from Boston a few weeks ago, we decided to take a walk through … Continue reading →

We walked through Point Breeze on a Sunday morning because we wanted to get brunch at Point Brugge, but unless the Super Bowl is on and the Steelers are in it, Sunday morning isn’t a particularly lively time to walk. … Continue reading →

We planned our Super Bowl Sunday around the celebration. We wanted to watch the game in a part of town that would erupt if the Steelers won. So we went to the South Side, where, as Allison noted, the concentration … Continue reading →

The well-worn line is that Pittsburghers won’t cross a river to have a good time. Like most lines, that one misses more points than it touches, but it might hold true for the Ohio. The only East Enders I know … Continue reading →

I walked around Pittsburgh on a recent Saturday afternoon with my friends Allison and Tara. Allison grew up in the Pittsburgh-area and returned to the city this summer after five years in Boston. Tara moved to Pittsburgh from the Bay … Continue reading →