In the Neighborhood, Phase 1

My dog enjoys walking on sidewalks. He prefers streets populated with alleys rather than trees, and likes hot sun as opposed to shade. He did not get this from me, but I try to oblige him whenever I can. It’s a dog’s life.

Unfortunately for the dog, the longer the walk or car-free commute I have ahead of me for the rest of the day, the less interested I am in our morning walk together. We meet in the middle by sticking mostly to our Garfield neighborhood, venturing out further on the weekends to Friendship(where we skip the park), East Liberty and Lawrenceville.

Garfield is a Pittsburgh neighborhood that gets a bad rap for crime and dilapidated buildings from some quarters, and for short-sighted development from others. On our walks, it is plain that there are not as many alleys. There are big, beautiful, fenced- in back yards and houses that look like they have been dropped from the sky. But these newer houses- clean, plain and somehow mid-western looking- have been carefully placed, not dropped, by the Bloomfield Garfield Corporation and Garfield Jubilee Association. They are the country cousins of the brick and other older homes in the area, speaking the same language, but with a different accent, and with scrubbed and more wholesome faces.

On a recent walk, with the first geese formations flying overhead, we saw kids waiting on a neighborhood corner for their yellow school bus while a yellow dirt remover worked to clear the front yard of a new home, a sign exclaiming, “sold” in a shiny new window. Earlier in the summer, we saw a crew of young Amish men put the roof and sides on another house in less than two days.

Some of the new houses are clothed in white DuPont Tyvek Home Wrap, and look like Christmas presents. A sign in front of a lot where a new home is being built tempts potential owners with an $8,000 tax credit if they buy before December 1^st. Next door is a house with a “Danger: Asbestos” sign tacked to the door, which is next to a house with boarded windows, “By owner, $100 down, $100 a month” sprayed in black paint on the wood. Next to that is a house with a small bicycle on the porch, a trash can on the curb awaiting picke up, and t-shirts and insulation wrapped around the pipes of the gas meter. As I worry about what my dog is nosing on the sidewalk, I hear cartoons on a television inside and I am sorry that a child has to live there.

The seven newest houses are part of Phase III of the development. According to this month's Bloomfield Garfield Corporation newsletter, delivered to our door, the mortgage payments for these homes may be “as low as $795/month”. Some of what I imagine are the Phase I houses already have some paint peeling from their less -new steps. I wonder how they will hold up against the elements and local scrutiny, and what kind of investment is really being made in this neighborhood.

Along side the new homes and the broken down homes are the houses that have already been enhancing these streets, with their lush gardens on smaller lots and their owners smiling and waving good morning to me as they get in their cars.

“That's a beautiful dog,” said a neighbor enthusiastically.

I beg to disagree, but didn't at the time. She is entitled to her opinion, her morning cheerfulness, and her bright blue porch carpeting. And she was just being neighborly.