Naomi Girson | opinions editor

Nestled among the Hill District, Oakland and Downtown Pittsburgh lies Uptown. With a long history spanning over three centuries, the small area has taken on multiple identities.

“It’s one of the areas where if you could go back in time and just be dropped somewhere it’d be fascinating… and see how dramatically it has changed,” said Leslie Przybylek, senior curator at the Heinz History Center.

In August 1788, before Duquesne University or UPMC Mercy Hospital, Uptown was largely undeveloped. It became known for John Boyd, manager of the Pittsburgh Gazette (now the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) who climbed the Bluff that is now Duquesne University and hanged himself.

The hill was known for a time as Boyd’s Hill due to the incident, and it cast a dark shadow over the foundations of the town.

According to Przybylek, an incident like Boyd’s so early on in a community can shape the perception of it for years to come.

“There’s gonna be a residence to that story, especially when it was someone who was really involved in the community,” Przybylek said.

In the early 1800s, James Tustin — an English immigrant credited with nicknaming Uptown as “Soho” — purchased a large plot of land on the east side of Uptown. There, he built an estate that was regarded as the most beautiful place in Pittsburgh, according to Pittsburgh Gazette-Times reporter George Fleming.

Tustin also dedicated a knoll in what is now the southwest corner of Forbes Avenue and Seneca Street to be used as a burial ground for those unable to afford to pay the price at a cemetery.

Development continued in 1847, when Mercy Hospital was opened, and again in 1878, when Duquesne University first opened its doors.

At this time, Uptown was a popular residential neighborhood for factory workers and their families who took the incline to their jobs. The incline ran up and down the same hill where the South Side Steps are currently located behind campus.

“They’ve clearly changed the topography, the landscape of what is there,” Przybylek said. “They’ve taken that piece of the Bluff — where the campus now exists — and turned it into a coherent academic environment. It was not that.”

As the academic side of town developed, so did the cultural one.

The 1950s and ’60s streets of Uptown were lined with open businesses like the Merante Brothers Italian Market and the H. Kalson dresswear store. Residents came from all backgrounds.

But then the bustle started to dwindle, and so did the population of the area, according to Uptown Partners.

Mainly due to the collapse of the steel industry at the time, as well as a focus on the redevelopment of Downtown Pittsburgh, Uptown became underfunded. Families moved into the suburbs if they had the money, and the population started to drop.

Since then, Uptown has become a very different place, Hughes said.

“I feel like the Uptown neighborhood has fallen over time, in a sense, it’s lost the major community that it once had,” Hughes said.

Many houses and buildings remain out-of-date, vacant or demolished.

“We’re trying to simply bring it back to where it was, less vacancies, less blight,” McDonald said.

Some organizations, like the Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh, have developed plans to revitalize the area.

The nonprofit runs the EcoInnovation District Plan, which aims to strengthen community, encourage development, provide mobility and invest in sustainable infrastructure, according to their website.

Brittany McDonald, executive director of Uptown Partners, said that despite the town’s hardships, things have been looking up since she first joined the organization in 2020.

With Mercy and Duquesne being such large parts of Uptown, McDonald sees it as a major positive in their work.

“Both of the organizations support Uptown in numerous ways, they have not encroached on the residential areas [of Uptown],” McDonald said. “We’re able to see the impacts of the other businesses being able to expand, even Mercy and Duquesne.”

Naomi Girson can be reached at girsonn@duq.edu