For the Love of Main Streets

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Lawrenceville, Shadyside, Strip District, South Side, Squirrel Hill 

Peter Margittai leaves his Southside row house on 15^th St. every weekday and heads straight for the corner Starbucks on East Carson St. By the time he gets to the counter, one of the staff, (all of whom refer to him as “tall house coffee”), has a steaming cup awaiting him. “It is,” he cracks, “a nice perk.” He then walks the remaining distance to his office on 13^th St, a total journey of …two blocks.

His is the kind of trek to work—not to mention morning coffee experience-- any commuter would envy, and those touting the New Urbanism, which is to say just about everyone these days, applaud. Although Peter and his wife, Michele (aka “tall caramel latte”) and their two young children live in an old neighborhood, it represents the new ideal of the sustainable community. East Carson St. runs gunshot-straight through the South Side for miles, a dense commercial district with first-floor retail and businesses and upper-floor residences. This eclectic and historic main street is surrounded by narrow side streets chockablock with row houses with community-friendly front stoops and sidewalks that encourage use. You can walk everywhere in this community and people do.

It’s one of the many draws of this and other Main St. communities throughout Pittsburgh that, for a number of reasons, are more appealing than ever.

“People are becoming more sensitive to quality of life and more sensitive to quality of place,” says Anne-Marie Lubenau, executive director of the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh. “Main St. provides an opportunity to shop where you live and work, and frequent local businesses that often offer products and services not found elsewhere.”

Walk this way
Experts say that if more people lived like Peter, we would have cheaper gas prices, less dependency on foreign oil, far less urban sprawl and overall healthier communities. Healthier people, too, apparently. In a report from the Rand Corp. last year, car-dependent suburbs were blamed in part for the obesity problem facing the nation. Not so in Main St. communities.

Lubenau, for one, likes “the idea that you can step out of your office and get a cup of coffee. It’s healthier and more enjoyable than getting in your car and driving somewhere.” In this kind of community, people stand a better chance of living healthier lives--and they enjoy a sense of belonging that’s hard to beat.

“People want connections,” says Anne J. Swager, executive director of AIA Pittsburgh and former manager of the Main St. program in Mt. Lebanon. “The Main St. design is a very thoughtful process linking the whole community. Typically these Main St. communities are historic, representing a part of us that goes way back. It’s that gutsy connection that says this is my community.”

Certainly the design is a great part of the appeal: The historic buildings and quaint, unique storefronts are a far cry from the big box retail and look-alike malls that are so ubiquitous these days. But there’s more to it, as we become increasingly aware of the environmental crisis we’re speeding toward. The Main Street model is sustainable, as it maximizes the effective use of our resources while minimizing their effect on the environment. It’s environmentally friendly and it makes good economic sense.

“It’s green, it’s sustainable, so why in God’s name are we developing green fields for new communities when we have these already here?” asks Swager. “It makes sense to invest in them because they work. Main Street areas are successful!”

Park the Mini Van. Forever.
Peter and Michele, who easily share one car, certainly think so. No car pool for them as they even walk four-year old Sophia to her activities: indoor soccer practice and dance class are both only blocks away. Their sitter lives across the street. (Seriously. But that’s just a stroke of luck.) Great life? They wouldn’t trade it. But it comes at a cost like most things. They put up with noise at night—a couple breaking up, dramatically, on the street, car doors closing at 2 am, nuisance bars on Carson—but it does little to undermine the convenience, the sense of belonging, the whole urban lifestyle they cherish.

“As an architect,” says Peter, “What’s inspiring about the Southside is not so much the architecture. The housing isn’t really that impressive, not like what you see on the East End. It’s the collective that’s really exciting. The density of the housing. Like Louis Kahn says, the street is the extension of the houses.”

And scenes like this one: In the summer, families get out their lawn chairs and sit in the street and when cars come by they move. “There’s a kind of poetry in that,” says Margittai.

The American Way.  
There are only so many neighborhoods that have the kind of density of the Southside, says Margittai. “Denver doesn’t have anything close to this or L.A. I think it’s unique to Pittsburgh." 

The East Carson St. business district was officially deemed exceptional when it snagged a coveted Great American Main Street Award in 1996 for its extensive and dramatic revitalization. Since 1995, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has awarded only a handful of these prestigious designations annually.

While Pittsburgh has one award winner (which is more than most cities), it has more than its share of Main Streets. Shadyside has two distinct areas while Squirrel Hill boasts two main drags in Forbes and Fifth Avenues. While Bloomfield sports Liberty Avenue, Lawrenceville has Butler St. which is gaining density.

Outside of the city, tiny Aspinwall has a central commercial district that is truly impressive for its size, complete with an old-time general store, grocer and indie book store. And while Mt. Lebanon has the main thoroughfare of Washington Road, Sewickley offers an entire Village with block after block of tidy, charming streets thick with specialty retail, grocers and state stores, restaurants, delis and coffee houses. Generally, the closer the house to the prized Village, the more expensive.

What it really comes down to
Charm, character, history, a sense of community; its no wonder we love our Main Streets. They are the antithesis to our modern communities which are looking more and more the same. “The branding of America—McDonald’s being the greatest brander of all time—has just gone wild,” says Swager. “You could be dropped down on any Interstate in the country and not know where you are since everyplace looks the same with its collection of Wal-Marts and Targets and Costcos and fast food chains.”

Yet, there’s a backlash against it, she says, which could explain why more people are uprooting from their conventional lives in the ‘burbs and moving back to the cities.

“There’s a certain reality that this is a place that’s really used the way it’s been used for a long time,” says Margittai of his Southside neighborhood. “It’s not all perfect and clean and correct but it has a lot more character—and that just really appeals to me.”

Tracy Certo is editor of Pop City and editor of Columns magazine, a publication of AIA Pittsburgh.