West End (Pittsburgh) - Region

Region

The term "West End" is also used to refer to the surrounding region, which includes the West End Valley in addition to western neighborhoods Sheraden, Elliott, Windgap, Esplen, Ridgemont, Westwood, Oakwood, East Carnegie, Chartiers City, Fairywood and Crafton Heights. The West End of Pittsburgh is mostly residential, with some industry and a relative paucity of commercial districts in comparison to the rest of the city. The West End has few notable tourist attractions other than the West End Overlook (actually located in Elliott), a small hilltop park in the neighborhood of Elliott that offers a view of the Golden Triangle (Downtown) from downriver (Ohio River).

The term "West End" is often mistakenly used to refer to the area southwest of the Ohio River. Upon annexation, the City of Pittsburgh renamed the Borough of Temperanceville as West End; Temperanceville was its own entity on the valley floor through which Saw Mill Run flows toward the Ohio River, between the Coal Hill end of Mt. Washington upriver, and River Hill downriver (site of the Elliott bluff lookout, a.k.a. the West End Overlook (c.1961)/West End-Elliott Overlook (c.2004) the top of which is in a neighborhood corner of the (annexed) community of Elliott.

The Pittsburgh southwest communities are essentially well-located residential areas, supported by local businesses, and with ready access to the rest of the City and surrounding areas and highway systems. But, over the past 30+ years and continuing, the West End (Temperanceville) has suffered much demolition of its indigenous residential architecture, and removal of most of its tenant units from the rental market, displacing a once substantial low-middle-fixed income multicultural population, in favor of many unsuccessful attempts to attract business.

The West End, despite its demolitions and depopulation, and especially its sibling, still-affordable 100+ year old residential Elliott, are ideal family residential locations with respect to the City and the surrounding areas.

Despite demolitions and failure to reuse so many indigenous dwellings, and recent demolition of half a block on South Main St., the West End has three designated historic landmark buildings (among many others not designated) the German (now Jerusalem Baptist) Church on Steuben St. at Sanctus St., the 1899 Carnegie Branch Library on Neptune St. (spoken for by Andrew Carnegie himself, 2nd in the Pittsburgh Carnegie system, home of the first Library Story Hour anywhere, and the most recently recognized the Old Stone Tavern on Greentree Rd. at Woodville Ave. --which may turn out to pre-date the Fort Pitt Blockhouse as the oldest building west of the Alleghenies.

In Elliott, the bluff/"overlook", once one of the most-visited sites in Allegheny County has been less so since 2004 when a $2.5+ million improvement eliminated historically-available vehicle access to the bluff-top, thereby impacting all-weather all-season visiting, and altering the once truly unique ambiance that came with the city-view, recognized world-wide, of the 3 rivers (Allegheny-Monogahela-Ohio.) Still, it is something to experience, especially at night when the concrete-ization of the near northside is not so blatant. Elliott and Crafton Heights also share the still open presence of the Obey House (1823) once a true Road House on the Steubenville Pike (the land route West from Pittsburgh.)