Strip District-Lawrenceville

Understand

The Strip District is a bustling warehouse district just northeast of Downtown Pittsburgh, situated along the Allegheny River from 11th to around 31st Streets. The neighborhood has traditionally been a wholesale and retail place for fresh vegetables, fish, and meat. Today it also has many restaurants and nightclubs. If you like to cook this is definitely the place to go: Everything from freshly made sausage to bamboo shoots to expensive cooking gadgets to cut flowers can be found here. Gourmet coffee places mix with Martini bars and pottery stores and ethnic groceries jumble up together. It's also an excellent place to street watch, what with the mix of businesses, people, and a lot of creative marketeers including streetside accordionists. Some of the streets are paved with Belgian block - stone used as ballast for empty boats coming from Europe up the Mississippi and the Ohio via New Orleans.

Lawrenceville, on the Allegheny River just north of the Strip District, is one of the oldest and largest neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh with approximately 11,000 residents and three business districts. Butler Street from 34th Street to 62nd Street contains most of the shops, boutiques, art galleries, restaurants, and neighborhood-serving businesses. Penn Avenue from 34th to Friendship Avenue contains some art studios, coffee shops, funky bars, and ethnic restaurants. Liberty Avenue from 33rd Street to the Bloomfield Street Bridge features some artisan studios and restaurants. Lawrenceville is the most notable example of gentrification in Pittsburgh, as the neighborhood has become known as one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city, with many young entrepreneurs having moved in. There is a large, vibrant art community in the neighborhood, and galleries and studios attract people to art openings and events.

Bloomfield is often referred to as Pittsburgh's "Little Italy." The area was occupied by German immigrants in the late 1700s. Irish immigrants later followed after the civil war. In the late 1800s, millworkers in nearby Lawrenceville constructed small row houses designed for single families and businesses in the style of their homeland. Prior to World War I, Liberty Avenue consisted mostly of German businesses. After the war, however, the neighborhood began to take on its Italian identity. Today, well-maintained rowhouses sit along quaint, narrow streets. Here homes are often passed down through families, and grandchildren usually live just a few blocks from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. By the late 2010s, the neighborhood had been gentrified, and the Liberty Avenue business district now houses trendy bars, shops, and restaurants alongside a few Italian holdovers.

Other neighborhoods in the region include East Liberty, a neighborhood with a prominent business district which gentrified rapidly in the 2000s. This district, contiguous with the affluent Shadyside neighborhood, has become a haven for restaurants and stores (including the only Target and Trader Joe's locations in the city proper). Gentrification has spread west on Penn Ave. to Garfield, whose main business district (contiguous with Bloomfield and Friendship) features a row of art galleries, coffeehouses, and restaurants. Sandwiched between East Liberty, Garfield, Bloomfield, and Shadyside is the tiny, mostly residential neighborhood of Friendship.

Also in the area are Polish Hill, and the affluent Highland Park neighborhood, which surrounds the park of the same name.

Get in

By car

From downtown, simply take Liberty Avenue or Penn Avenue (they're parallel streets) east. You'll pass right through the Strip District. Stay on Liberty Avenue to get to Bloomfield. To get to Lawrenceville, get on Penn Avenue and continue east. Make a left on to Butler Street to get to Upper Lawrenceville, and continue on Butler to get to Highland Park and the Zoo. Staying on Penn Avenue will take you to Garfield and East Liberty.

By public transit

The 86, 87, 88 and 91 Port Authority bus routes serve the Strip and Lawrenceville quite well. Further east, the East Busway routes (including the P1 or P2 to Downtown and the P3 to Oakland) serve East Liberty. The 71B serves East Liberty and the Highland Park area. The 54 connects the Strip to the North Side, Oakland and the South Side.