As I saw peregrine falcons set up new digs at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church, I contemplated the neighborhood. The area was originally farmland around the time of the American revolution. “Liberty” was the name given to areas on the outskirts of cities in those days. East Liberty was developed as orchards by the end of the 1780s.
The Negley family that donated the land for the Presbyterian Church were the first permanent European settlers in the area. By the late 1800s, East Liberty was, according to the East Liberty Development, Inc., “the richest suburb in America.” The Heinz, Westinghouse, Carnegie, and Mellon families counted among its residents.
Gentrification’s Impact on the Future of East Liberty’s Community
The early 1900s saw continued neighborhood growth with the addition of theatres graced by itinerant and local talents. Regent Theatre, the oldest, is now named after local legends Gene Kelly and Billy Strayhorn). The area entered a period of peak prosperity after the Great Depression. The city built numerous churches, synagogues, and community establishments to support the population boom. This would continue until nearly 1960, when a suburbanization program, something akin to neighborhood DDT, destroyed the urban fabric. Single-family housing was demolished in favor of the highway-style Penn Circle that was installed in the district’s center. High-rise apartments were also constructed in their place. The commercial life of the district was disrupted, triggering a period of decline. As seen in so many other parts of the United States, white residents left for the suburbs. East Liberty was all but forgotten.
In 1979, the East Liberty Chamber of Commerce formed East Liberty Development, Inc. (ELDI), a non-profit intended to focus on redevelopment of the neighborhood with a special focus on Penn and Highland Avenues. Despite their initial efforts, the neighborhood suffered. East Liberty had a dangerous reputation, and the chasm between those with and without continued to grow.
Revitalization and Its Realities
Large-scale shifts took place starting in 2000. A Home Depot was constructed on Highland Avenue a few blocks north of the East Liberty Presbyterian Church. Whole Foods followed nearby in 2002. Around the same time, a pedestrian bridge crossed the busway and train tracks that kept Shadyside and East Liberty apart for so long. The dour and dreary apartment buildings came down. Trader Joe’s, Walgreen’s, and other banking and retail outlets established themselves. Google leased office space in nearby Bakery Square in 2010. Target opened its doors to the community a year later. By some accounts, the neighborhood was on an upward trajectory with hundreds of jobs, many reportedly filled by local residents.
Displacement in East Liberty
But, as with all things, it’s a matter of perspective. In their 2016 “Black Homes Matter” report, the Pittsburgh Fair Development Action Group described how recent development targeted a “new demographic.” The reality is easy to see. The “transformation” of the neighborhood is depends on the removal and displacement of lower-income black residents – forced flight. This phenomenon is not, of course, unique to East Liberty. Rather, this is another example to be cited in the growing anthology of gentrified neighborhoods across the United States. From the same report, the numbers make it clear:
“In the late 1990s, the neighborhood CDC (ELDI) developed a plan to replace the largest subsidized housing community (Federal American Properties or FAP) with less dense mixed-income housing owned by a more responsible set of landlords. Hundreds of low-income people were uprooted and displaced. Of the 546 original households, only about 150 were able to remain in East Liberty. Street vendors were chased from the commercial core. At least 14 locally owned businesses were displaced or lost their clientele and were forced to close.”
Words from the Residents Themselves
As of the report’s publication, only 1.6% of all jobs in East Liberty are by residents of the neighborhood. Some quotes from community residents in the report reflect the tenuous nature of its contemporary state:
“I live here. I’m from here. My whole family is here … We try to stay close together. This is America. I’m a Marine. I went to war three times. I served my country. It feels crazy not to be able to live...where I grew up.” — Jaquaie Macatee, East Liberty resident
“There are people looking at me like ‘what are you doing here?’ I had my first kiss on that street. I had to get stitches over there.” — Deion “1.2” Hardy, East Liberty resident
“I grew up around here…I’ve always wanted to live here…But now we have four kids – we need a bigger place. We wasted six months looking for something affordable around here so we finally moved out to Millvale. I had to buy a car to commute back here to my job, and then I had to take another job to pay for the car. I work 48 hours at one job, 32 at the other so I get very little sleep. And I miss my neighborhood.” — Aaron Vire, former East Liberty resident
Micro-Encounters and Hidden Realities
As I spent time at the picnic table and around the neighborhood through the remainder of spring and summer – the young falcons I was watching leave the nest roughly 6 weeks after hatching – I talked to more and more people. These encounters illustrated the complicated dynamics of the falcons’ new eighborhood some 25 stories below. What weren’t they noticing while plucking feathers off of doves and starlings to then feed to their new addition?
On a Wednesday evening at the intersection, I took off my headphones and glanced upward at the church steeple just in time to hear a conversation between two women crossing the street in front of me. One remarked to her companion that she liked my shoes and that she was planning on picking up something similar; I casually let her know in that neighborly Pittsburgh way where I’d just grabbed them on sale before we enjoyed a brief chat and went on our respective ways. After scanning the skies from my spot for around an hour, the two women returned and were happy to find me still there – and I asked if they wanted to sit down and join me for a drink.
An Unlikely Meeting of New Friends
The pair – I’ll call them Mimi and Jo here – were a woman and her auntie. These two are residents of East Liberty and were out for the afternoon having just gotten their nails done at a nearby salon. Mimi, the younger of the two, said she was so glad I told her where to get the shoes because she wanted to wear them for an upcoming court appearance. Her auntie asked why I was looking at the church, and after my usual spiel, she recounted a story of her nephew who once crashed a car while watching birds. Turns out we had more than a few things in common, the three of us.
Discovering a Pattern, Even in 2025
After a round of rosés, Mimi let me know she was preparing to go back to prison. She was in a gang as a drug queenpin, she said. She finally got caught. Her auntie quickly chimed in to note that her niece was one of the best in the business, but Mimi was a little worried about her upcoming stint in jail since it coincided with the release of her boyfriend. Would they remain a pair once the roles reversed? Were they, too, mates for life? We wondered aloud as we lamented the bad timing of it all, and I offered to grab another round to calm Mimi’s growing nerves.
When I got back to the table, Mimi verbalized something that I could sense from the moment I invited them to my perch. She was surprised that I asked her to sit because she and her auntie said they never felt particularly welcomed at this establishment. I did not need no further explanation; the clientele here has, since the bar’s inception, been overwhelmingly white. The kind of white-collar, Carnegie Mellon-graduate (there are those names again) playground that can only be in the beautiful bones of a building that once served a different customer base in a bygone era. I could see management inside shooting glances our way through the pristinely polished large windows, and although I’d become a familiar face, it was obvious that my new friends posed something of a problem.
A Hard Lesson to Learn in Person
Over the course of the previous weeks, I can’t tell you how many times I watched white patrons – myself included – smoke their electronic cigarettes or enjoy weed vapes at the tables without incident as they boisterously caught up with friends, had drinks, and chowed down on $22 personal pizzas (that kind of money buys you a “Monster”-size pizza at the place across the intersection, by the way, which serves 4-6 hungry humans). But when my new friends did the same, a member of the bar staff meekly emerged to inform us, her voice faintly trembling, that smoking was not permitted on the premises. The three of us shared a knowing glance, and Mimi got up and walked two steps to the street corner to finish her cigarette.
During those same weeks, as I peered up toward the church steeple looking for signs of new life, comments from passers-by told me the same story. I’d hear groups of men strolling by and making comments about how that was a “whites-only” place, how it wasn’t for them. And based on who was there – every time I was there – were they wrong? Was this, indeed, on the wrong side of the invisible divide that serves to keep everyone in “their” respective territories?
Diversity Slowly Grows in Certain Parts of East Liberty
For a change of scenery, and to test that theory, I’d sometimes cross Penn Avenue to the café on the northwest corner of the intersection, the newer kid on the block. When the weather got warm enough, they’d put a couple tables out front – not quite as ideal for spotting the peregrine nest, but it afforded me the chance to see things, quite literally, from the other side.
The difference in dynamic was, with each visit, immediately perceptible, and the demographics were approaching something more reflective of the community. The French-themed all-day café proved to be something of a hub for all segments of society, from high school kids grabbing an after-school drink to tech bros working on projects and locals taking a break from their daily errands.
At those outdoor tables, I bought candy for school fundraisers (turns out they take Apple Pay these days) and met a very vocal Scorpio bemoaning the dating scene in this hostile climate – men just want another mother, she said, and I couldn’t argue with that. Neighborhood fixtures shot the shit at the other table, and, soaking in what remained of the sun’s rays, I immediately felt drawn into the community – not an entity separate from it. Taking 8 or 9 steps was like walking into a different world. Maybe, just like Negley Avenue appeared to be for Pittsburgh’s peregrine pairs, this was, indeed, an unseen territorial divide after all.
Nature’s Resilience in a Changing City
At the end of May, my patience found its reward. I spotted the first known peregrine falcon chick hatched on the East Liberty Presbyterian Church. Truth be told, I had become concerned the nest might have been a failure due to no signs of life. But, Kate St. John, our sage local peregrine expert, reassured me that falcons often attempt a second clutch of eggs if the first fails for whatever reason. If the nest did fail, they might not return. If, however, even one egg successfully was to hatch, there was a strong likelihood of them returning next February to once again commence courtship ceremonies.
When, on that afternoon, I noticed a fluffy white ball of feathers peak its head over the stick nest onto Highland Avenue, I knew I was witnessing history – but no one else at street level was any the wiser. Something akin to a miracle was happening at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church, but you wouldn’t find it inside among the yoga mats or the tour groups. You had to know where to look to understand the implications of the events transpiring in the first half of 2024. A species that now calls East Liberty home. Even though it quite literally did not exist here during the redevelopment plans of the 1960s. This would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago. Man-made problems and man-made solutions were, as always, coexisting. Life was again finding a way.
Looking Into a Brighter Future for All, Even the Falcons
In June, I watched the chick take its first hops around its new home, its first frantic, flappy flights, and its first forays into its new neighborhood. Mom and dad would show it how to carve through the sky, swooping swiftly around and above the streets that had seen so much change in so little time. The juvenile’s first flight away from the nest found him in fittingly familiar territory for those of us terrestrial creatures – atop the Whole Foods on Penn Avenue, built in place of a 519-unit affordable housing complex.
By the time the end of July came around, the new peregrine was off to explore on his own. The numbers aren’t exactly encouraging; around 60% of peregrine falcon chicks never survive past their first birthday. I wondered, and still wonder, what might become of him and if he might find a way to succeed against the odds, much like the neighborhood in which he was born. No one officially monitors the church’s nest so the chick is without a band. We’ll never know what ultimately will become of him. Neither of his parents have bands, either. We don’t where they came from, how old they are, or how far they had to fly to call East Liberty home. But we do know this: they saw potential in it, built a nest, and were able to successfully rear a chick.
Learning a Lesson From These Birds
And here’s what else I know: as of writing in March 2025, these same peregrine parents are back at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church to try it again. Because for them, it’s home now, too. Flight and finding a home are constants in this world, and I’ll be watching it all unfold from my perch, from my perspective, at the intersection.
Read More about East Liberty’s evolution in part one and the city’s peregrine falcons in part two.
Story by Adam Knoerzer
Photo Courtesy of East Liberty
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