Garfield (Pittsburgh)

Garfield
Neighborhood of Pittsburgh Former Borough
The western edge of Garfield seen from Allegheny Cemetery
Coordinates: 40°28′01″N 79°56′24″W / 40.467°N 79.940°W / 40.467; -79.940
Country	United States
State	Pennsylvania
County	Allegheny County
City	Pittsburgh
Area
• Total	0.457 sq mi (1.18 km2)
Population (2010)
• Total	3,675
• Density	8,000/sq mi (3,100/km2)

Garfield is a neighborhood in the East End of the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Garfield is bordered on the South by Bloomfield and Friendship (at Penn Avenue), on the West by the Allegheny Cemetery (at Mathilda Street), on the North by Stanton Heights (at Mossfield Street), and on the East by East Liberty (at Negley Avenue). Like many parts of Pittsburgh, Garfield is a fairly steep neighborhood, with north-south residential streets running at about a 20% incline from Penn Avenue at the bottom to Mossfield Street at the top.

Garfield is part of District 9 on the Pittsburgh City Council, and is currently represented by Rev. Ricky Burgess.

Like nearby Bloomfield and Friendship, the land comprising modern-day Garfield was claimed by Casper Taub from the local Delaware tribe. Taub sold it to his son-in-law, Joseph Conrad Winebiddle, in the late 18th century. About a hundred years later, Winebiddle's descendants broke the family estate into lots and sold them to new residents of an expanding City of Pittsburgh. The first owner of a lot in present-day Garfield bought his plot in 1881, on the day that U.S. President James Garfield was buried, so the neighborhood was named for the late President.

Garfield's earliest settlers were predominantly blue-collar Irish laborers and their families, who worked in the mills and foundries down along the Allegheny River, shopped in local stores on Penn Avenue, and built and lived in modest brick foursquare homes on the streets running up from Penn Avenue. The community, then almost exclusively Catholic, built St. Lawrence O'Toole Parish on Penn Avenue in 1897. From 1880 until about 1960, the neighborhood remained as it began: a solid, working-class area. Neighborhood activist Aggie Brose described Garfield in 1960 as a place where "You sponsored each other's kids, you went to all the weddings and funerals, you never wanted for a baby-sitter, you never had to call a repairman, you didn't need for a social. When you put the kids to bed, the women went out on the stoops." ([1])