Bluff (Pittsburgh)

Uptown Bluff
Neighborhood of Pittsburgh
Uptown (visible on the left side of the image) overlooking the Monongahela River.
Coordinates: 40°26′10″N 79°59′20″W / 40.436°N 79.989°W / 40.436; -79.989
Country	United States
State	Pennsylvania
County	Allegheny County
City	Pittsburgh
Area
• Total	0.327 sq mi (0.85 km2)
Population (2000)
• Total	6,600
• Density	20,000/sq mi (7,800/km2)

Uptown or The Bluff (also known by its former name Soho and prior to the 20th century as Boyd's Hill) is a neighborhood in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the southeast of the city's Central Business District. It is bordered in the north by the Hill District and located across the Monongahela River from South Side. The predominant area zip code is 15219.

This area is home to Mercy Hospital as well as Duquesne University. It also includes a residential community that was once flourishing during the first half of the 20th century. Uptown is also the home of the Pittsburgh Fire Bureau 4 Engine and 4 Truck.

The area was known to American frontiersmen and colonists as Ayer's Hill in honor of a fortification built by the English commander Ayers in the mid-1700s. Sometime near the Revolutionary War and throughout the 19th century the area was referred to as Boyd's Hill in the expanding frontier and than industrial city. The name is said to have been given to the neighborhood after a newly arrived businessman swayed by Hugh Brackenridge, left his downtown office and hanged himself on the hill.

The Uptown was first developed by James Tustin, an eccentric English émigré who built an estate in the area in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. His home featured an English taste in architecture and a fruit orchard, and was acknowledged at the time to have been "the most beautiful place in Pittsburgh," according to a 1915 article in the Pittsburgh Gazette–Times. Tustin named his estate "Soho" after his previous residence in Britain, and the name came to be generally applied to the neighborhood.

The neighborhood was originally part of Pitt Township, but was annexed in 1846. The addition was precipitated by the city's efforts at regrowth following a cataclysmic fire in 1845, which destroyed 56 acres (230,000 m²) and 1,000 buildings.