Pittsburgh – East Carson Street

East Carson Street runs along near to the river on the South Side of Pittsburgh, a long and grand street which was named by property developer Nathaniel Bedford after one of his friends. His friend was called Carson, not East…..

What impressed me most about this street is that if you could take the cars away, it felt like nineteenth century America (or what I imagine nineteenth century America was like). Indeed, most of the buildings are from when this area was created in the mid-nineteenth century, when Pittsburgh was becoming a prosperous city.

In the 1950s, the population of Pittsburgh was just shy of 700,000 people, up from 325,000 at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now, with the collapse of the steel industry, the population is under 300,000, which has meant that many buildings were just left and never modernised or developed. This area is now protected to ensure that its heritage is maintained, but it’s a charming and quirky street with many bars and restaurants along it.

I hope that this street doesn’t change, it would be easy to modernise and gentrify it, but I like this piece of nineteenth century heritage. I also thought that I had some better photos of this street with more heritage and fewer traffic cones, but perhaps not…..